Well its been a COLD and SNOWY last week, dear readers! Your humble blogger has been busy with work and with some other things, but primarily preoccupied with staying warm as the latest “Polar Vortex” hit with a vengeance between last weekend and this Friday morning! And yet, by Saturday of this weekend, the sun came out, the weather warmed dramatically, and the snow began to melt! Ah, life in the Rockies!
Back in June of last year I attended my first basement-level swap meet at the huge hobby store called Colpar’s Hobbytown in Aurora, a wonderland of model trains, planes, RC cars, and slot cars. This weekend on Saturday morning, I attended my second such event.
It so happened that the date coincided with a short visit from my oldest friend, who flew in from CA to hang out with me for one night, so it was cool to me to take him to this place, since he is an aviation fanatic the way I am a vintage car fanatic, and he was floored with Colpar’s huge selection of model aircraft, including passenger liners of today and the past. As for your humble blogger? I was there to meet the proprietors of Performance Slots and Hobbies, who made the trek to the Denver area bringing some of their wares for the event, including a couple of special requests from yours truly! I was not disappointed!
There is at least one way that going to Colpar’s is like stepping back into the past: namely the crowd there! For this popular event, the place was packed making it difficult to move around even considering the size of the store, and crowd was probably 99% men: there were guys of all ages ranging from very young boys who were there with their dads all the way to octogenarians, but the only women I saw were some wives that had been dragged there by their husbands…which goes to show you what the audience is for the kinds of hobbies this store sells! The world of transportation logistics and careers may have been diversified up to a point over the last 50 years, but the toys and models of those same transportation methods is clearly still almost exclusively a man’s reserve…and you won’t get any complaints from me!
I spent several bills there and brought home some nifty things I’d been wanting, but I was also surprised at being knocked off guard by wanting a couple of things I didn’t see coming, and here’s a look at the latest additions to The Road Crew that resulted!
Olds Toronado in “Standard Blue.”
I’m a big fan of Aurora’s model of the 1st Oldsmobile front-driver, and I knew that Doug @ PSH was hiding a blue one that had escaped sale over the last few years, and I asked him to bring it for me. He did, and I got it; overall a great model in good condition; the chrome on the front bumper is fairly deteriorated, but everything else is very good including the A-pillars, which are often bent or broken on this model. This is a great addition to my collection!
“Mako Shark” in Bright Red
Ah, the pleasure and the pain of red cars! This beauty caught my eye due primarily to its fetching color, but also because it was in almost mint condition! T-Jetters know its very hard to come by any copy of this car without bent or broken A-pillers, as the posts are so slender and delicate that the slightest use resulted in them getting damaged. Although the asking price was high, and although it was not remotely on my radar, I couldn’t resist this one, so I made a deal with Doug on the price and took it home to line up with the sports car section of The Road Crew!
Another Handmade Special: A VW “Type 2” Pickup!
Another one that was so unusual I couldn’t pass it up! I had never seen one of these before and I suspected it was work of Joel Furuli, but I had to have it no matter who made it, and I got it! Upon taking it apart and finding a stamp reading “FOI” underneath, I wasn’t sure what that meant until I got a call from Joel, who clarified that it was not “FOI” but rather “F01”, which stood for Furuli (20)01. He confirmed it was his work, and that was nearly a quarter-century old and must have been the property of Ken Noah, who built several impressive customs of his own.
Unlike some of the older T-Jet’s I’ve acquired in the past from PSH, it appeared that all 3 of these cars were mounted on late-production open-rivet T-Jet chassis with green/white field magnets, and all 3 seemed virtually unused, so they needed a lot of oil and breaking in, but once they did, they ran like tops: fast and smooth and easy to cruise! The “Mako Shark” had a set of Super Tires on the back which wouldn’t adhere to the wheels so I replaced those with a brand new set of Jel Claws 2031’s, but other than this, these cars needed very little work to run around the HO Highway fast and happy!
Another Score: a New Set of AJ’s Tires for the Turquoise Charger
I discussed the details of my first acquisition of an original Aurora Dodge Charger a while ago, and I wanted a new set of tires to go on the AJ’s aluminum wheels it came with, since I didn’t like the look on the red tires with the turquoise body. I wanted a set of white tires, but Doug had several sets of black ones, including a couple that were completely unused, so I gladly took those, and dressed up this rare and valuable piece with a new set of rear shoes that look much better than what it had!
An Oddity: A Dash Motorsports Repro With Some Strange Characteristics
The last thing I picked up is something that Doug has been holding for me for a long time: this is a 1963 Ford Fairlane coupe which appears to be a Dash Motorsports reproduction of the original Aurora model. I already have a couple of these in my fleet, but this one is unusual; not only is it a very strange color that I’ve never seen, but its also significantly rougher around the edges, showing a lot of molding imperfections, rougher screw posts, and poor-quality paint detailing in comparison to the beautifully made finished models I’ve acquired in the past. No one really knows what the story is behind this model; personally, I believe it to be an early pre-production test shot, done in a color that the final model was never released in. It appears never to have been mounted; I was considering putting it on a T-Jet 500 chassis, but so far I have refrained from doing so, and to be honest I’m not really sure what I’m going to do with this unusual piece.
Any other collectors out there have any idea exactly what I have here? If you know anything about this unusual car, please contact me and fill me in!
Desafortunadamente…
About the only misfire I had was the attempt to install a replacement block motor in my non-running Faller Opel. I did get a running motor from Doug, but it turned out to be incompatible, which is an example of why changing the designs of the chassis as often as Faller did is a bad idea, especially for toys: it makes me appreciate the Aurora Thunderjet all that much more to see these European designs where hardly any 2 I have seen or acquired appear to be exactly alike! So, my gray Opel sedan remains a non-runner, and at this point, I’m pretty sure it will stay that way. Oh Well.
Overall it was a fun Saturday, and when my guest left on that evening, that left me free to spend Sunday at the work bench to get all these cars running, so you see the results of that work here!
Naturally there were a few new die-casts added to my collection as a result of this trip as well, and there’s more details about those goodies coming up in future posts, so as always, stay tuned!
That is terrific that John came to visit and you acquired such wonderful things! The Ford will make a cool display piece and it interesting in and of itself. What an amazing selection and I didn’t remember that they had a slot track in the basement. Those VW’s are just so nifty and you really came home with some cool things and made some cool connections!