Santa Monica, where nothing is quite as it first appears!

Three vehicles brighten up the streets of Santa Monica in California. The Lotus Elan looks quite at home, ready for the sunshine, although I am not too sure what residents will think the sticker on the boot refers to! I've Got A Tiger In My Tank may well get the new owner into some difficulty with the local animal protection people. You know what they're like across the Pond!

The Mini is not just any old Mini. This is a Fernel Mini - a very rare item from a late edition of the company's East African Safari game.

Thirdly, there's a VW Pick-up in a very bright shade of yellow. Both the VW and Lotus have the unusual feature of one wheel being the wrong way round - with a flat, old style hub showing instead of the shaped side.

Looks like this particular collector likes the slightly different models!

More information about the Fernel East African Safari game

I found this Mini a long time ago when I first started this task of finding as many different models as I could. A few weeks previously I had noticed a blue Mini sell for a crazy amount - well over £300 - and all that I could see that was different about it was a hole in the base. The description referred to something called a Fernel game. In that case it was a Monte Carlo game where (I am guessing) players threw dice and their cars were propelled by some device that fitted into the base around a track.

I remember looking this up at the time but never expected to see any more. Then this one appeared. It got little attention as the photos were poor and that hole was not at all obvious. the person selling it made no mention of it either, which was good as far as I was concerned. I won it easily and have since been trying to make sure that there was, indeed, a version of the game with purple Minis too.

Before buying it I had found a good reference to a later version of the game but no decent images. Now, at last, I have found all the information that I was looking for.

It's an odd looking affair. A Monte Carlo version is for sale at about £800 but I haven't seen this East African Safari one for sale yet.

My car didn't have the stickers. I have added a replacement East African one for the bonnet - they are the same as Corgi made for the VW1200! The numbers do not look familiar so I may skip those for now.

I would love to get hold of one of these games - and the other car as there would have been two - but suspect they'll be at crazy prices unless I happen to see one somewhere completely off the collectors' beaten track. Actually, I would love to find some places where odd cars and things like this could still appear and the people with them having no idea of what they have. This game, for instance, looks really quite cheap and nasty with its red and yellow plastic and not a great deal more!

Now that mine does at least look a bit more like it should I shall see what interest there is but I am definitely not letting it go for a song.

I would dearly love to give some credit to the place where I found these images a few days ago but I'll have to search through my browsing history to find the site again. I have tried a pile of Google searches to no avail.

A very rare metallic red Mini from the East African Safari game

So here's what looks like a simple #226 Morris Mini Minor, one of the later editions in red-purple. Look underneath, though, and there's a drilled hole and that makes it a bit special and possibly one of my rarer items.

I found it for sale at a very cheap price, just a few pounds, probably because the paintwork has one or two small marks and there are a few of these around at the moment. It really was only a chip of paint off the boot, though, and some loss on the risen lines round the roof and on the bonnet. What the seller didn't realise was that a company called Fernel Developments Ltd made two games in around 1967: Monte Carlo Rally and East African Safari. In these games there was a device that pulled two Corgi minis around a track. The minis were usually #226 in lilac blue with either Monte Carlo stickers (often with the 117 number from the Hillman Imp decal) or East African Safari stickers which were the same as used on the VW1200. Here are the only images I can find of someone's rather damaged one.

The game, with two minis in the box

#256 VW1200 with the same sticker

Mine doesn't have the sticker but I can obtain one for the bonnet. I am not too sure what were used for the numbers, though. That needs a bit more research. There have been one or two lilac blue minis going through Ebay and these have made crazy prices in hundreds, being rare items and collectors do like to get a complete set of the different mini variations. What I never seen to date is a red-purple variant for sale. It would appear to come from the later East Africa Safari version and must have been a late version of that game too as the colour didn't appear until much later and, according to this expert, it appears to be the very last of this type. So I have a feeling this could be very valuable indeed.

No idea yet how much and I haven't put a price on it on the site. Someone somewhere will know about these things, hopefully.