Unusual arrivals this month Part 2!

May has certainly been a fascinating month for the items coming into the village. Today three more arrived and each is a little special! 

I'll start with the Riley Pathfinder. These are always wonderful models and this is the very rare 205M mechanical edition in red. 

I have had one for a while but it has lost a lot of its paint. This one is in very good condition but there is just one insurmountable problem! It didn't come with a rear axle! For the photos I dropped one in. Actually, I am somewhat heartened to find that the motor inside and the mechanism and base generally are pristine and barely used at all. I suspect the rear axle will have come off early in its life. If I can find another gear housing and axle (with crown gear affixed) then I think I should be able to make a decent repair of this. Normally the housing is attached by two long posts, sealed inside, but I am sure I can do something that will not look markedly different.

This will then, even as a repaired item, be worth a substantial sum.

The second item is this lovely little maroon 226 Morris Mini-Minor. Well, just as its maroon colleague, the Rover 2000, featured cast wheels yesterday this model reverses all that and, instead of what I thought all of them had, cast wheels, we have the earlier type.

I am really surprised to find this. I am not 100% convinced of its authenticity and that isn't just because it has come from Russia! Three wheels are marked - the rims dented or scratched in a way that you don't normally see on even much played-with models. One wheel also seems fixed to the axle too but I have not yet been able to ascertain whether it is some sort of glue or just corrosion.

The front axle seems fine, though and, unless it has been joined by a sleeve in the middle, I can't see how anyone could have simply replaced the wheels or, for that matter, why. I mean, I may find it intriguing but the seller did not receive any more for this than he would have done for a 'normal' maroon 226 with cast wheels.

So, I shall investigate this one a bit more closely. If it is original then it's the first one I have seen and won't be at all easy to find.

Lastly, my bank balance will be pleasantly enhanced should I ever find a buyer for this beautiful Simca 1000 in blue.

It is in A+ condition with no faults other than a small mark on the front bumper. Otherwise the paintwork is immaculate and the racing decals perfect. The windows are crystal clear and undamaged and this lacks only a box really. Serious collectors often have a space where this one should be and I sold a quite worn example with a cracked rear screen some time ago for about £150.

Although a blue 205M (not sure which blue) and a red and black 216M are on their way I think these will be in too good a condition for me to extract the bits I need. So I shall be looking around for a wrecked M model going cheap and, ideally, one with the right length back axle as well as a 315 box.

Black is black: the trouble with taxis

When 418, the good old London Taxi, first appeared in 1960 it was quite clearly black. And it stayed that way through the 1960s, despite being dropped from the catalogue and stocks lists sometime in 1964, continuing, with either Kato or Templar (or was it the Thunderbird chap?) driving, in the London Traffic Gift Set 35 for a while after.

In the early 1970s, however, the same casting gets Whizzwheels and most of these get a red interior in place of the lemon. Now, I had always thought these were mostly black. I had seen adverts for various shades of deep maroon but considered that they were the scarce colour, black remaining the dominant issue.

A little while ago I encountered one with blue tinted windows. That looked very black too, if it is, indeed, possible to add a comparative term to black. Shortly after I saw a distinctly washed-out maroon which was most odd and obviously an oddity, especially with the lemon interior. I got hold of the black one with blue tinted windows and knew the seller of the miserable maroon shade but the model was in a pretty poor state so I didn't bother buying it. Taxis were, and still are, generally cheap and plentiful and I reckoned something like that in decent condition would come along soon enough from someone who just looked up '418 taxis' and found them selling for only a few pounds.

I also started looking for this mysterious deep maroon colour. I found several quite quickly and bought one in almost perfect condition, in a box too for about £10. It might have had a purplish tinge in the photo, I can't remember now, but it just looked black on my desk. So I bought another advertised as dark maroon. That looked just the same and just as black to me. Third time lucky, I thought and I spent another tenner on a third 'deep maroon' edition. It still looked black so I gave up.

I had managed to get one with a red interior and one with a lemon interior along the way so that was something, and they'd not been expensive.

I didn't think a great deal more about these until a collector friend in Germany said he'd bought a 'very dark shade of maroon' taxi and, because the seller didn't post abroad, it was on its way to my village. It arrived today and I was intrigued to see just what this 'very dark maroon' might look like. It looked pretty darn black to me. So I got out the other models, lined them up and, for the first time, added the one with tinted windows that'd I stored somewhere else.

Now it became clear.

For all this time, the only one that had actually been black was the one, third from the left, with tinted windows. The others are all deep ruddy maroon! 

The shade becomes more obvious when you add a bit more light to the image using some software. My friend's acquisition is on the far right and, whilst slightly darker than the others, qualifies as dark maroon like the rest.

So, after all this time, it has been an example of a 418 with Whizzwheels in black that I have not got and now I need to find one with each of the red and lemon interiors. (I understand that there are also variations of grey or black steering wheels but I may skip that variety for now).

This has made me wonder whether I am going to find that most Whizzwheels 418s were, in fact, deep / dark maroon and not black at all.