A lot of cool things have come out of Great Britain over the years. Dr. Who, Cadbury’s, Manchester United and real beer. Well what do you expect? It has the word “Great” in the name! OK, enough of the shameless patriotic hype, yes I am from England so there.
So what has my anglophile gene all lit up and going crazy right now? Simple, a little package I got in the mail yesterday.
Check this out.
Made by Corgi (ya think? Afetr all it does say it in huge type on the card) in 1982 this is the Barney’s Buggy die cast. This vehicle is about 2.5″ long and roughly the size of a standard Hot Wheel car.
Corgi toys came from Britain and are well known for their high quality die cast toys, particularly car-type ones, and many of their super stars over the years were licensed from popular shows of the time. Case in point, Barney here came straight from the ever popular cartoon the Flintstones.
The back of the card shows some of the other vehicles in this line. The Superman van and also his SuperMobile, the Batmobile, Spiderman on his motorcycle, as well as Woody Woodpecker and Yogi Bear in their cars. Sweet right? Each of these can easily set you back $20 and up, I managed to snag Barney here for just $5. How did I do that you say? Simple, I profited from the fact that someone selling stuff on eBay wasn’t really thinking ahead. I know that doesn’t make me sound so great, but I don’t think that I can be cast as the villain here.
Sellers often spend lots of time taking pictures, writing careful descriptions and setting the price just right to hopefully make the most money possible and there is nothing wrong with that. One of the things that is frequently overlooked though is the auction closing time. Auctions that end in the late afternoon often do really well. That is when many Americans on the east coast are winding down their work days and are bored. Well what better way to break that up than a quick shop online and bid on an auction. Because the rest of the US are anywhere from one to three hours behind the right coast they too can also take a quick look at eBay.
Anyway, lots of bidders (or at least potential ones) can lead to elevated prices. The times with the fewest bidders can often give rise to greatly reduced prices. Late evenings/very early mornings are great for this type of thing, also weekends when the weather is nice or Saturday evenings when many folks are out and about. I call them the bargain hours. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not always sat home by myself staring at my laptop waiting to make a last second bid (I’d be lying if I said I never did this though). Nope, with today’s smart phones and a little planning you can save a fortune… and I for one am always interested in saving a fortune.
This particular car, as well as a couple of others, were won at the king of bargain hours. Yes, holiday times. It was just July 4th and while most normal people were at BBQs or firework displays I was picking up some super steals and deals. In all I figured that the items I won would have typically run me about $500 when in fact I got them for less than $100. Score for me… major loss for the sellers, bummer. If only they had thought about the ending time in the first place, Ha!
I also got this sweet Wilma’s Coupe, cool. My super deal was rounded out with a really nice rowboat with Popeye in it.
I’m going to stick with the Flintstones and the rest of my post today is going to be about some of the other die cast vehicles taken from this show.
Here is a close up of Barney, as you can see the car is really well done… the figure perhaps isn’t. Mr. Rubble’s face looks a bit deformed with the line to suggest border of the perma stubble on his chin… well it looks like a really deep scar if you ask me, almost as if he got it slashed with a straight razor in a bar fight. The weirdness is made worse when you look at his arms, the fattest, jiggliest arms ever. I guess we will never know what happened there.
Wilma looks a lot better.
The set is finished with of course Fred’s Flyer… pure foot power baby.
The Flintmobile by Hot Wheels includes the famous canopy on the vehicle.
From Playing Mantis we have the Barney Rubble’s Sports Car by Johnny Lightning. This line is more recent than the others and included a number of other pieces such as some cool cars from Speed Racer as well as Wacky Races. Awesome!
I don’t know much at all about this Road Stars version of the Flintmobile from the seventies. Very similar to the Hot Wheels version I showed you above, still cool though.
Probably the best of the lot is this 1:18 scale replica put out a few years ago by Ertl. Complete with the gang to ride along, this piece is just sooo sweet. At close to 10″ long and tipping the scales at over three pounds this toy is a beast. Originally retailing for about $40 this guy has shot up in price. In fact one just sold on eBay for an unbelievable $165!
Pricey? Sure, but you have to admit it would look amazing on your desk at work.
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The Corgi Barney looks a lot like Homer Simpson. I loved Corgi toys & had many of them.
I remember loving the Superman Supermobile most. The idea of it was that Superman lost his powers temporarily & needed a space ship (made with Supermanium toughest metal around!) that duplicated all his powers. Best of all, with the reaching arms he could fly around space & gather up all the little chunks of Kryptonite that were floating around.
Corgi’s are always cool no matter what they are. Barney looks like he’s been taking a whole lot of steroids.
I’ve got a Popeye in a little sail boat too, well, it’s more like a dingy but it’s one of the few car toys I still have…or at least I think I still have it. I’m pretty sure it’s in a box in my closet.