Apart from a single Charity shop a couple of weeks ago, its been unusual this weekend as we have gone out in the remaining quarter-Lockdown to look for toys for our Grandkids properly for the first time since February.
We went to several town-centre charity shops yesterday and a big Sunday car boot sale today. Amazing but scary to be out in outdoor crowds again. We wore face masks at the sale but only about a tenth of the punters did the same.
Anyways, here's what I can recall from what we bought for Moonbase Junior and what we saw - pictures taken from online equivalents.
Bought. £1, a Sainsbury's Blancpain extreme racer with revving sound effects, no box. The revving sounds are brilliant!
Bought. £1. Og on the Bog. A shrek-like figure has tummy trouble! All you have to do is remove loo rolls before he parps and blows his hut! Now that is my kind of toy! Junior will love it!
Bought. £1. Tesco plastic roadway. Interlocking parts form various road layouts. It'll be great for zooming round.
Seen. £40. Little Tikes Dolls House, Tikes Place, and all the accessories. very collectable as it turns out. Maybe we should have got this as an investment?
My Missus used to have them at the Children's Centre she worked at years ago. It was all new to me!
Seen. £20. Two die-cast Chipperfields vehicles like these minus the Lion's cage. Bit battered too. Loved these as a kid.
Seen. £20. Corgi Airport Fire Service. Lovely big die-cast toy. So Thunderbirds! I wanted this but £20 is too much.
Seen. Erector 200 boxed set by Ideal. Looked like meccano to me. The vehicle itself looks cool though! From 1983.
Final things seen, there was a seller with a huge divided stall with different bundles of old plastic toy soldiers in each compartment: Crescent, Kelloggs premiums, Britains, Timpo, Herald and many more including Lone Star Frogmen like these.
All £1 each. Too many to choose from! I didn't get any.
Elsewhere at the boot sale in a cheapo rummage box I got a small sheaf of plastic action figures, which I'll blog later.
Is there anything you would have bought readers?
That great airport crash tender, the roadway set, all the toy soldiers I could carry - especially the Timpos (a pound each, that is about $2 NZ), perhaps the Chiperfields models, although I never had any of these as a boy. Erector Sets were the American rival of Meccano.
ReplyDeleteThere were hundreds of toy soldiers Paul. £1 each. One hundred soldiers, one hundred pounds! Too dear for me and too hard to choose from all the array. the Lone Star frogmen were pretty damn cool I must say.
DeletePlastic toy soldiers £1 each ! I need to sit down in a darkened room with a cup of sweet tea
ReplyDeleteFenton
Is that dear? When I say soldiers Fenton I mean knights in armour, cowboys, Indians, frogmen, astronauts, Hussars, Lifeguards, Infantry and Cavalry on horses. All old and collectable makes like Crescent and Herald. Or is £1 cheap?
DeleteA quid is pretty good for a good quality vintage figure. Id have spent a few pounds there no doubt
ReplyDeleteYou'd have stayed there half an hour!
DeleteId not have touched the dolls house or the erector set. The Pathfinder Crash Tender is nice, but 20 quid is too much, same with the circus set. Og on the Bog is hilarious
ReplyDeleteYeah, can't wait to play Og with Junior. Reminds me of those outhouse plastic novelties we had in the Seventies.
DeleteHere you hardly ever see good toy soldier figures at fairs, most are battered. Good Timpos are hard to find at a reasonable price ($2 each would be fine). Were mounted cavalry the same as the infantry ? If so, that is really, really good. I never collected figures, but I do still have my old figures, and if I came across some nice figures at a reasonable price, I would certainly buy them. I did get a nice book from Amazon UK called Timpo Model Toys - the A to Z of Timpo, Third Edition, by Michael Maughan, 2015. They had such a great range: Romans, knights, cowboys and Indians, Eskimos, as well as the usual WW2. Things like Crescent, Lone Star, and Herald are seldom seen in NZ.
ReplyDeleteAhh fair enough - I had visions of individual 1/32 Airfix soldiers - as much as I like 'em I couldn't bring myself to pay a quid each though lol
ReplyDeleteFenton