Junkman

Hey, if you have questions, please feel free to fire away!

OMG these are NIIIICE!

Dog tag and miniature sales brochure:

Dog tag: No sales brochure shocker!

Next up is the one nobody ever thinks of - Toad's Vespa. Maisto makes it.

Oh aye.

Comes with the obligatory dog tag: And a miniaturised sales brochure:

Of course I start with Milner's Deuce. I have the Ertl issue. Motormax also made one.

Well, who is the Junkman around here then? As to why Ertl chose to make these in the wrong shade of yellow I know not. Sadly the model suffered "transport damage" courtesy of the Hermes lackay flingin it over my 7ft high garden gate. I have obtained another one in kit form and will eventually swap the bodies. If I had any confidence in my ability to replicate the black striping, I'd might as well correct the colour.

Another model that's basically there, but would greatly benefit from some careful detailing.

Next up was this rather shonky 2CV van, but shonky is better than none at all. Besides, have you ever seen a real one of these that wasn't battered to smithereens? Then I ran into another rake. A Panhard PL 17. Simca Aronde P60. Mercedes W196. They came in all sorts of colours and with numbers 1 - 9. Imagine my delight to score a #1 in swirly silver! I even got an original box with it. Yeah, windscreen, blah... And this Citroen 5CV, a real one of which was the first ever car to be driven around Australia.

Guys, I haven't even started yet. Great 4CV repop there, Peter! So, where were we? Oh yes, the longest passenger car Norev made during its toy years. It's a '58 New Yorker convertible, which reputedly was modelled after Joseph Véron's real car, which is currently undergoing restoration in France. I managed to amass this rake of wrecks, each of which is knackered in its own peculiar way. Another toy fair haul yielded this bunch. A grotesquely warped, but miraculously complete, H Van. Pole dancing pole included: Yes, I know. But try to find a straighter example for anything near sane money. Dayglow Simca 1300. Another in non dayglow. Simca 1500 Break (Wagon) Ford Taunus 12m. Ford Cortina. Another one of these 2CVs just because it was for sale. Might be used for bartering in the future. Then I found one of the holy grails of Norev collectorship - a marbled example - in form of a lilac Lancia Aurelia.

Aren't they just. Another amazing thing is that you have a choice of colours. It's almost like buying a real car. Sadly I have yet to shell out for one of the buses. The RT is a dream.

No matter how you look at it, but Sunstar simply is the pinnacle if you are into old American cars. All Platinum series models come with a miniaturised copy of the original sales brochure and a "platinum" dog tag. The models are truly amazing.

IMO Maistos are incredible value for money. Usually everything opens and the detailing is very good. However, they would greatly benefit from some enhancements courtesy of coatings technology and BMF.

A parcel with genuine postage stamps on it was received from Greece. It contained this: There was another toy fair haul. The Daffodil is tireless. The Renault 4CV is from the pre windowed era. Twisted R8 Gordini. They modified the old R8 tool for it. Lancia Banana Flaminia. It was my only Norev with a tow bar trailer hitch back then. A Renault Floride and an R16 were aquierd aequird bought. I also managed to source a trailer for the Rocca. The Flaminia was thusly pressed into yachting service. The gent who gave me the trailer threw in a Norev matchbook, Norev shopping bag and Norev sticker. I put the sticker to good use. I celebrated. Some DUI was committed.

Anyway, #9 was a VW T1 Kombi Bus, which I skipped. But I got #10, this Citroen Ami6. #11 was this Simca Chambord V8. #12, a Peugeot 205 GTI was again skipped, because I have zero interest in such cars. #13 was this Citroen H van. It's hitherto the only model in the series that has a moving part. And #14 was this Renault 16. For obvious reasons, I bought two of them. Just for fun, I dusted off my old Barlux caravan. Everything plus the kitchen sink. And look.

Yes, it's the proper one, not that Greenlight cheat without any details.

However, this wasn't even the beginning. Next I scored the holy grail of vintage Norev collectors, alas, a wreck without a steering wheel and windscreen windshield. OMG, it's even leaking LHM. Then I got my first MIB one. But that's not all, oh no. This was the score of yet another local toy fair. A hilariously warped Jaaaag Mark 10. A vanilla Citroen Ami6. A distorted Renault 16. A nearly mint 2CV AZ Luxe. A Fiat 2300S Coupe. A Rocca motorboat without a trailer. And a Peugeot 301 courtesy of eBay. All stars aligned and I managed to obtain a windscreen windshield and steering wheel for my DS Chapron decapotable. And thus, my friends, it's time for another group photo.

It's got a cop motor... And I was lucky enough to obtain these figurines from a souvenir shop in - you guessed it - Hollywood.

Wahey, thank you so much!

This Renault R8 is raring to go. Fiat 1100 D in an untypically dull colour. This is well offset by this DKW Junior. Staying in Wirtschaftswunder Germany for a moment with this Opel Kapitän. And a Mercedes 220 SE. If you think the subjects were unusual so far, think again. This is a Swiss Monteverdi 375L. Time for a little break? Okay, I give you a little breather with this group photo.

Next I got this Saviem SC10 U city bus because it was available cheaply on eBay. It's a very late original Norev with speed wheels and - as a last gasp - from a final production run they had outsourced to Portugal. It's one of the biggest original models they made and I learned later that the Portugese made models are highly sought after by French collectors.

I still think this is the most appropriate sector for them on this forum. For the ones not in the know, Norev started making 1/43 scale plastic miniatures way back in the early Fifties. The name "Norev" is the surname Véron of the brothers who founded the company 1946 near Lyon in France spelled backwards. As the moulding medium, they chose a French plastic material called "Rhodialite", which, like Acetate, warps wonderfully over time. These were cheap toys aimed at juveniles, hence the attrition rate is huge and thusly undamaged examples are scarce nowadays. It was a highly successful business endeavour until ca 1980 when they were hit by - you've heard it before - them yoofz losing interest in toy cars and starting to play with those computers. After a decade or so of indifference and near bankruptcy the company reemerged as what you know it nowadays, a supplier of fine chod aimed at the adult collectors. But this is about my traditional plastic Norevs of yore. I had a lot of them when I was a kiddo and they've all been lost in the big ether you all are familiar with. About two years ago, I started to collect them again, maybe to relive my childhood, or some such rubbish. Ask a psychologist. So here we go. It all began with this brush painted beauty I snached at a local toy fair for 50p. Yes, that's half a quid. For an astonishing further half quid, the same fair yielded this 2CV sans headlights. Since there was absolutely nothing broken or missing on the R4, I carefully restored it. One could say that from that moment on, I was hooked.