My '94 Jeep Cherokee broke down yesterday morning before I had gotten a mile , heading to a big train show near Baltimore, MD, so I had to turn around and work all day on replacing the water pump. I consoled myself with meeting up with a new diecast collector friend I'd met online, on Sunday,and we hit a local Firehouse toy show at Tyson's Corner, VA. Turns out to be a great show, I found some nice AMC brochures, a nice Pacer 4-pager, and a water-damaged Matador Coupe piece, and one guy was selling post cards for 50 cents each, and had a fairly large amount of AMC cards, and Jeeps. I bought them all, many duplicates, and figure on selling some of them. Several including the Ambassador , Javelin, Matador Coupe and Gremlin cards are especially mint. No creases, look like they're
right out of a dealer's stock. Amazing. I also found some Jeep cards, and these are SWEET, like the DJ-3A Dispatcher convertible ( '50's? ), the Jeep FC-150 in grey with red grille going thru snow, and a 1-ton Jeep pickup, maybe '50's or '60's. No years on them. A few have wear and tear, but most are extremely nice, I'd say C-9.5 or better. When the guy said .50 cents each, I almost got wallet burn on my leg from reaching to pay for them so fast.
Needless to say, I also looked for diecast metal and plastic AMC related vehicles,and found some, including Metro's and Hudson. Found a 1992 Legends of Racing 1952 Hudson Hornet, Tim FLock, for $3, no case. Who cares? Found a chrome Rebel JL christmas ornament, didn't find many of those when they first came out, either. A few slot car guys were there, with plenty of vintage HO Javelin AMX racers. No Gremlins, darn it. But I bought other diecasts for my model railroading hobby as well, and that was the
bulk of my purchases of cars and trucks. I did get a red Willys Gasser by Johnny Lightning, and a white Rumblur wagon, too.
Found a few AMC-related plastic models, including an opera window Nascar Matador Coupe for $20, but I had that one already. Definitely some plastic there, but I wasn't as interested in those as I was the diecast cars.
So, I missed the big Train show ( again, 3rd or 4th year in a row something happened that I had to cancel my plans to go ), but at least the nice AMC surprises at the toy show made up for it somewhat. And, I even won the first raffle door prize! A Signature Models Fire Truck, 1960 Mack C Rescue Box truck, maybe 1/43rd scale?. I guess the Lord felt sorry that'd I'd missed another train show, and gave me some special gifts today. <grin> I'm happy! Can't make every show every week, so those that I do make, sure is nice to find some special stuff when I do go. My new buddy spent quite a
bit, especially on the Johnny Lightning White Lightnings, he walked out with two big plastic bags full of diecasts. Glad some people have the money to still shop like that! I'll try to make some back when I sell off some duplicate AMC post cards.
Well, that's all for now, I think I'll go try to find that HEI distributor for my AMC conversion out in the garage. Plus do some more cleaning up. Bye for now,
Jerry Casper
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