Elsecar evening Toy Fair, Barnsley, is always fun. Amongst the trains and die-casts there were a few interesting gems for Swordhaeds and Anderfans: a loose JR21 SPC £12 (lots missing), loose JR21 TB3 £30, a boxed JR21 TB1 £250 ( the tray box is HUGE!) and most interesting of all, a boxed LP/JR21 A-70 Robot as posted by Ferryman in late Summer. This one was £75 but the box was covered in ballpoint pen scribbles. I picked up a couple of bits of boxed Sindy furniture for £5 to sell on and a few odds'n'sods for my modelling spares box. Pleaseant. Do any of you go to toy fairs? Do you think Ebay has changed them?
I go to a monthly swapmeet held in a shopping centre on the outskirts of Brussels (and always find it strange to go there at other times, because it looks empty without all the tables full of toys :) Stuff is mostly what I call "modern" eg last 10-20 years, but there's some people with vintage toys. Back in my 0-Gauge tinplate train days I did notice a definite trend: first they dried up on fleamarkets, then they virtually dried up on swapmeets (still some, but nowhere the quantity of before) moving to auctions and now ePay. Also met many a dealer that said he'd either kept the best stuff for ePay because of the much larger market, or indeed some that said selling on ePay was much easier than getting up early on a sunday and carting everything up and down and paying for a table with the chance of not selling anything. Though all agree the follow-up on ePay is a lot of time-consuming work. But once in awhile I find a nice toy or a real bargain (f ex a white-rubber Matt Mason for EUR 25 from a chap who didn't know the distinction :) so not complaining (except I wish somebody'd have some Spacex again :) and basically trying to find what I want wherever it may be sold.
ReplyDeleteBest
--
Paul
i havent been to a good fair for years, but i do find that the influence of ebay has permeated most sales of collectibles in the real world. Even charity shops and car boot/garage sales have inflated prices for anything that might be classed as collectible. I saw a loose Dinky MSV which looked like it had been attacked with an orbital sander at a boot sale recently and the bullish seller told me from the back of his white van that he wanted £200 for it...
ReplyDeleteI go to a few Toy Fairs each year. WOTAN is correct - the Ebay influence has resulted in inflated prices.
ReplyDeleteEach year the sellers moan that there are fewer and fewer attendees, and that no one is spending money. Perhaps part of the reason for supposed drop is this silliness with prices.
"How much do I want for the battered Corgi James Bond Aston Martin that's missing the figures and has a fake box that's been scribbled on? Couldn't possibly do it for less than three million quid mate, and even then I'm cutting me own arm off."
OK, I'm exaggerating ... but not by much.
But Toy Fairs are worth going to just to look around - sort of like a museum trip where you'll see amazing things. And there are honest traders. Just beware the white-van men.
I have some old fluff from Captain lazers navel. Swap it for a ride on Zero X!
ReplyDeleteThe seriously inflated prices for junk derive from a dealer having stuff he doesn't know -anything- about, but who's seen something vaguely like it with some of his colleagues (or on tv) as being valuable. So to him a box of rusted junk will be "rare" and worth a fortune because he's never seen much of the stuff himself, and more importantly because it's -his- to sell. I've also once had a dealer openly admit that his toys (in good nick in his case) were vastly overpriced, but that sooner or later some newby would come along and pay his price...
ReplyDelete