BRINGING SOME TOYS DOWN FROM THE ATTIC

We had a bit of an old toy sort-out this weekend. A few trips into the dusty attic and down came a big bundle from my old toy fair days.

We had a local toy enthusiast coming round to see what they might want so it was a good excuse to pull down a large pile and set them out in the kitchen for his inspection.

It was like the old days!

Checking completeness, stacking them up, chatting about toys and 'sadly' seeing some go. Yay!

The piles included 4 complete Mouse Traps, a Carlton SPV and Cap Scarlet figure, the classic Buckaroo, Go for Broke [which always makes me think of Sixties Christmasses when we got that game], hats Off, Kimbo, the Vampire Game and the ubiquitous Spy Ring [later edition box].

There was a busted Matchbox Tracy Island, a Matchbox Mobile Action Command MAC Rescue Centre set and two Manta Force boxed vehicles.

From the back there's an Argos military mountain, the name of which eludes me. Its like Zero Hour in style.

The MAC box also included this rather nice Hestair Toys moon buggy and astronauts inside. I blogged about these for our Ninth Birthday [see label below]. Have you anything like this?

There's two Hong Kong rack toy Secretary Sets, things a beauty which simply wouldn't exist nowadays. I love the line 'Private Secretary' on the briefcase! The card art is quite funny too, the boss with his feet up! Again, of its time! The brand sticker on the card is Rojo Toys, which I imagine were the distributor and not the maker.

Further piles including a space sparking gun bought on holiday in Crete, when I used to raid toy shops in Rethymnon. They always had old toys mixed in with new ones! It was fabulous and I brought loads back during the 90's!

Another lovely rack toy baggy of plastic baby bricks, bought in an old fancy goods shop in Borth, Mid Wales, about five years ago. I just can't resist old rack toys. Can you?

Further piles at a distance including Tic Tac Toad and a plastic Tardis.

It was fun getting this lot out again after 10 years plus gathering dust in the attic. Reminded me of when I used to load up the estate car and tootle off to Doncaster toy fair on a Sunday early doors and fill my stall. That's twenty years ago. I was in my thirties! Where has the time gone!

Have you stood at toy or comic or sci-fi fairs at all readers?

Happy Days Buying and Selling at Vintage Toy Fairs

Toy Fairs were a big thing for me at one time.

Not so much now at all but years ago I visited as many as I could as both a punter and stall holder.

There were lots of characters at toy fairs [or swapmeets as they were once known] but inevitably I've forgotten most of their names.

One chap from North Yorkshire specialised in JR21 toys. He often went north of the border and sold in Scotland. His boxed toys were all pristine  and all the classics were there on his table: Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the odd project SWORD.  I think he'd bought the contents of an old toy shop in York.

Oddly enough it was a large box of loose Matt Mason toys I bought off him one Boxing Day at the Morley Toy Fair. There were figures, small tools, accessories and the space station. All for £60 I think. It was 1995 but felt like 1967! I have a feeling the chap's stock was sold off by Vectis, which suggests he may have sold up. I think his name was Peter Leonard.

Its easy to arrange stuff at Toy Fairs because of the set dates. I often ordered toys so I could pick them up whilst I was there. I remember meeting a robot dealer called STARC and buying the Yone Space Frontier rocket off him in the foyer at Donnington before it closed for refurbishment. I still have that boxed rocket but I've no idea if STARC are still going. Its years ago.

Probably further back was buying an Imai Good Boy die-cast of the Scramble Bug. I remember ordering it off a dealer, who often went to Japan. He got me one and I picked it up from his stall. It could have been Birmingham's Memorabilia or Doncaster Racecourse. The dealer was Banzandy. It was a superb toy. A lot like an Edai Grip die-cast and years later our first blog exclusive on MC was offering these toys inside a custom Project SWORD box. Blog friend Terry H had found us a whole case of them!

My Missus and young daughter used to come to some fairs with me. Cabbage patch dolls and cookies were Junior's objective. There was one stall which had a chap selling excellent vintage toys on one side and, presumably his Missus, selling home-made cookies on the other! We all went to that one!

The two giants of selling vintage toys in the UK back then were Jim Star Wars Stevenson and Andy Foley's TV Toy Zone. I don't think I bought anything off them at toy fairs but I did get a task Force 3 by mail order from Andy Foley's fabulous printed catalogue in the 1990's. In fact it was a catalogue by Andy trading as TV Toy Zone that was the first vintage toy mail order catalogue I'd ever seen. I still have it and it reads like a collector's wedding list. Just superb.

I often visited fairs with my friend Mark, who passions were and are as eclectic as mine. After visiting small evening fairs in Normanton and Stanley Ferry and big local meets like Pudsey and Doncaster, it was Memorabilia that always had us really excited. We would go down to this grand affair at the NEC twice a year when we could. This would have been the late 90's-early 00's, when Henry Cook ran it, before Sport memorabilia took over. 

We always saved up for the NEC. It was like being a kid again. Money jangling in our pockets, lists of wants we were after, frenzied chatter all the way there in the car. yep, it was a blast and we always came away with bags of great stuff. We'd natter all the drive home and then show my Missus everything we'd bought before having a marvellous meal she's made. She was gracious enough to look interested in our 'amazing' finds so we all sat down to eat happy. The highlight of our NEC forays for me was finding a mint boxed Johnny Seven, my favourite toy as a kid in '67.

I still have the trestle table and plastic shelving I used for my own stall at fairs and often toy with the idea of doing another one with my remaining stock. It was hard work though, getting up early on a weekend, driving, setting up, standing all day, packing everything away, driving home. Ten years older I'm not sure I'm up to it now!

In the meantime, I've found a whole stack of old toy lists, notes, letters, business cards and scraps of stuff from back then squirreled away in the attic so I hope to do a few more posts on toy fairs and my own time as a toy dealer in the near future.

Do you go to toy fairs? Did you? Have you ever sold at one? Is it still a thriving scene where you are?

antiquing in danum

This morning Missus Moonbase and I set off for a day in the local town of Doncaster in South Yorkshire.

Named after the River Don running through it Doncaster was formerly a wet northern outpost of the Roman Empire, which they called Danum.

It was the modern Apple Empire we were seeking today though as our Ipad was on the blink.

A Saturday in Doncaster has always revolved around three particular shops and a cafe. We hadn't been for a while so we were keen to finish with Apple and check out these favourite spots. It had been two years since we last visited them.

The drive to the Park and Ride began as normal, passing the derelict house I've blogged about before, Ivy Farm Cottage. Once crammed with classic cars this roadside property, though still up for sale, is now a sad ruin, overgrown and abandoned with nothing of its looted saloons and coupes visible from the front anymore.

I wonder how many more derelict piles there are across the globe hiding classic vehicles like this?

The bus journey was without event as well. £4 for two return tickets into the Town Centre. The windows were steamed up as usual but I couldn't help thinking about the other more famous house nearby, Home Farm in Burghwallis, former home of one Jeremy Clarkson. 

His Mum produced the first Paddington Bear toy figure there for him in 1971 and the rest is a suitcase of marmalade sandwiches. The firm no longer exists as reported in the local press but the red-wellied Paddington can still be found in Charity shops and antique fairs. There were even some in the Town's Tourist Information Centre alongside models of Doncaster's famous Vulcan bomber!

With the first glimpse of the dark Don through the driver's windscreen I couldn't help thinking of the riverside hamlet of Kirk Sandall to the east. It was here that one John McLaughlin was born in 1942, later to become one of the most influential guitarists of all time as Mahavishnu John McLaughlin [once home again and googling I see that John's on tour in Europe and the States all this year!]

Once in the town and having been suitably Appled we headed off to find our clutch of past haunts. Things were looking good when we found the first, a long standing vintage toy stall in the Wool Market. Stuffed with goodies, the stall, on both sides of the aisle, is not big on presentation but large on quantity. 

In the various ancient cabinets, boxes and shelves I saw carded Space 1999 figures, countless TV related die-casts, loose TV action figures, tons of annuals and a stack of Gerry Anderson jigsaws including a few 1960's Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons boxed puzzles by Waddingtons. Seeing an Avengers annual I couldn't help smiling since my favourite Avenger Emma Peel aka Dianna Rigg was born but a bowler hat's throw away on the Thorne Road.

We then went in search of more of our prior destinations but alas it was not to be. The fabulous old VHS second hand video stall I adored was no more. In the Market's bid to improve it's stalls, a form of gentrification I suspect, the old double front had vanished completely along with its hundreds of small and big box vids. 

A sad day for a VHS collector like me as sources for big boxes dwindle every day in the UK. I had bought many fine collectable cassettes off the knowledgeable young owner over the years. Today was the end of an era.

The search for our next venue was as equally fruitless as we found that our favourite Polish deli-counter had also been gentrified out of existence. It had been a goldmine at one time, with five friendly staff serving countless customers every type of European sausage, cheese and delicatessen going, We regularly stocked up on Knoedel, Zweiback, Mettwurst and Pumpernickel there. It was gutting to see it gone.

Seeking solace we sat down at a Mediterranean market cafe. The freezing temperature of the cavernous market hall was not lessened by the waiter's obvious warmth. It was simply too cold but we ate nonetheless, the mediocre meal doing nothing to raise our spirits. 

My visit to the adjoining cake decorations stall also proved unsuccessful. Despite bundles of beautiful small plastic ballet dancers, footballers, pirates, cupids and more, the owner looked non-plussed when I enquired about golden or silver astronauts for cakes. 

This was the last straw and we left for the return bus journey to the Park and Ride, a journey on which windows were steamed-up, babies cried and we realised that a lot can change in a town centre in the space of two years.

Do you have favourite places in your town readers?

Moonbase Weekend Finale

Back at our respective bases after a successful rendezvous at Moonbase and the weekends already becoming a blur. Woodsy was the perfect host as always and besides taking in the new Filmed in Supermarionation dvd, we hit the Doncaster toy fair for some vintage retail therapy.

Besides rows and rows of trains and boxes of diecast, there was a good showing of Anderson toys. Matt Mason and Spacex even put in an appearance, which was very unusual. Tin toys from the fifties and earlier were on show and pricing overall was very keen. There was nothing utterly outstanding for me, so I contented myself with cruising the scrap boxes and picked up a few bargains. Possibly my best buy was a blue Tonka Tote Screamn Demon and a Corgi Buck Rogers Starfighter. A fabulous weekend all round!