I’d like you to look at some smaller cars this weekend if you can. Here’s a chance to buy the car of your dreams, which will not only be affordable, but also easy to store and park.
Grown ups like us may refer to them as scale models, but really they are toys and bring back wonderful memories. Plus they look wonderful on your mantelpiece and they are so much better than some tarnished carriage clock or vase full of dead flowers.
So imagine my delight when I went to a car boot sale last week and found a trestle table full of Corgis. Buried among them was an Ecurie Ecosse transporter. I last saw mine in 1969 and goodness knows what has happened to it since then.
So here was a wonderful opportunity to plug a gap with one of the most iconic toys, sorry, scale models of the last century. I could just imagine pushing my model Lotus up the ramp, then making the required hydraulic noise as it raised into position.
I must point out that the transporter needed some work, so much so that I was going to finish it in my own racing colours, puce/heliotrope orange. It wasn’t mint and it wasn’t boxed. “Twenty quid,” said the seller. Eh? How about those Minis? £8 and £7.
Matey behind the stall said it was a fair price based on 10 per cent of their retail value. Yes, but these are bottom of the toy box awful. So just like real cars then, toys are only worth what someone is prepared to pay and I was not prepared to pay £10.
I always thought if the box was missing that was it, and if the paint was chipped then they were virtually scrap. In toy terms. Indeed, I said to the bloke that I had a 1970 Whizzwheels equipped Marcos and would he do a scrappage allowance against the transporter? He told me to bog off.
Another table had some Matchboxes on them, again in shocking condition and again fortunes were required. This is a car boot in field, not a genteel toy fair.
Where then can I buy a less than perfect and unboxed toy car or commercial vehicle for sensible money?
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