powerrabbit

I reached the second point two years ago Bill! 3000 tractors later and space is very much at a premium but I am continuing with any David Brown models that come along and possibly can find a small nook somewhere for any more lead figures.

Released in 1992 for the Swiss market only. Based on the Lamborghini.

I think the 'black hole' would be more like the price you would possibly have to pay for obsolete studies, some of them more than double their original issue price, especially the limited ones, it's very rare indeed to come across any that are the same or lower than the original price unless you're very lucky. For anyone that does collect them, and I'm sure that Bill will agree, bite the bulklet and buy them when they are first released, usually the cheapest way of obtaining them.

CB's still have a good role to play but seems now to have largeley died a natural with the advent of the mobile phone and computers. All around me used them through the 1980's and there was a huge cb radio society and was a fantastic means of communication and a lot of fun. I progressed to a slightly different form of cb radio and using the natural phenomina of the sun spot activity on the Earths outer atmosphere, known as 'tropospheric propogation', was able to communicate with people literally all over the World, very satisfying to be able to sit in your armchair and have a good long conversation with people in Australia and Easter Island, Outer Mongolia and Japan, India and all the Russian sattelite countries, Azerbaijan, Usbekistan and other such exotic Countries, I still have big boxes full of loveley postcards and souvineers from all the people I used to speak to, now that really was interesting.

Here's one for the David Brown fans. A very rare early 1960's tie clip. I've never come across one of these before although there are other tie clips out there but normaly only slide type, not like this one with an 'alligator' spring clasp.

A very smart Cub you have there Bill, a credit to you and very desireable. I have spent today starting up and cleaning and checking over 2 of my tractors today, we have a little Club ploughing day tomorrow, weather permitting, forecast is not good and it's raining pretty heavy here now so we may have to call it off.

Britains (Tomy) Series One pale green Land Rover with 'canvas' canopy, LAF 811. This Land Rover was the same one that came in the special limited edition blue box when Land Rover celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2009 now released in a normal Britains box.

Best way to destroy them if you dig up the bulbs is to expose them to the strong sun over the summer or put them on a metal tray in the greenhouse to 'bake' them or in the winter put them in a bucket, cover with water and let them freeze, they don't like being exposed to sun or frost. Of course, you could also blitz the bulbs in a liquidiser. If you miss any, wait until they come to flower and break off the flower stem, that way they don't get a chance to cross pollenate with the natives.

They've been on about the Spanish bluebells now for several seasons and are asking people to report any pockets of them that they find to DEFRA, trouble is that they easily cross with our native bluebells due to them being the same species and there are a lot of hybrids about. Spanish blubells are quite distinct in their difference from our native ones having flowers all around the stem, longer anthers, more pointed flower petals on the 'bells' and the flowers are more upright and don't hang like the natives. Where they are in the pictures I posted, the area covered is about 2 acres disected by the narrow road, passing through at dusk or early morning the scent of them in the air is very strong and most pleasant. There are no Spanish ones around here, no need for them as our gardens seem to naturally grow the natives, they seem to appear from nowhere.

Wh are the bluebells like in your area this year? Here around me they seem to be having a really good year, with the wet April and now the very warm conditions have given them really good growing conditions.

A Nintendo 3DS for my 9 year old Neice, all her little friends seem to have a Nintendo and her Father, my Brother is too tight to buy her one, she talks a lot about Nintendo so I thought I'd splash out and buy one for her and with the right games they can be quite educational. I got her 3 games with it, one was free with it, you could choose one from four titles, the store chap chucked in a free 'pen' and stylus pack, 10 screen protectors, a £10 voucher and reduced the price on the other 2 games, that's her next birthday and Christmas present sorted. She hasn't watched the television for the last 3 days!

Pretty warm here yesterday but today, 09.10am it's 22.2C outside and will get hotter as the day goes on, winter to high summer in 2 days! There'll be a drought declared by the end of next week I expect!

There will be some dissapointed buyers from eBay then if the burner is not with them, I can understand no gas bottle, that goes without saying but without the burner then it's not complete and if this is not stated in the description of those being sold then there's going to be a lot of returns.

They're banging on about it on all the tv news programmes, nothing's been said about wheather the bearers have had to pay for them or no but it was mentioned that around 800 have been made, one of the bearers has had 2 torches as he/she did a 'double run'. I see no problem in them being offered on the internet with proceeds going to charity but I don't agree just selling for self profit, if I had one I'd be keeping it. The first that came over from Athens is reported to have made over 150K but as the seller said 'we'll see how genuine it is when the money turns up'. Some people would sell their a** if they could sh** through their teeth!

If you go on the official London Olypics shop site they are auctioning the one that's being carried around the country at present calling it the 'number one' torch and up to a couple of days ago it was up to just over a grand. Watched a bit on the telly the other night about the making of the Olympic torch and there have been several hundred made. Any Olympic 1212 stuff being offered on eBay is a total rip-off, you can get it much cheaper elsewhere.

We down here Bill know the first tool simply as a 'turnip hook', I've got one myself, It was used for swedes as well but never on mangolds, you had to handle mangolds like eggs as being 85% water, if you cut them, bruised or broke the skin they would rot in the clamp and if one rotted the rest would rot as well.

The 'trycycle' 900 brochure is from 1957, notice the off-set steering wheel and that the engine chassis is different from that of the colour brochures. The 1957 900 was basically an uprated 30D and the later 1958 900 had the square profile chassis as did the 950. The 900 had an inherent problem with blowing head gaskets, this was later cured by fitting an extra cylinder head/block stud/bolt. The main innovative feature of the 900 was that the bonnet was a one piece unit as opposed to the former several seperate panel bonet of the 25 and 30D tractors.

The rowcrop 900 leaflet is indeed rare Lee as this variant never went into comercial production. It was to be for the North American market predominantly but those prototypes that went out to work on evaluation proved to be too heavy in the front and easily toppled over on gradients and in certain ground conditions so it was subsaquently dropped. I believe that there were major issues with the steering as well.

'Fraid they won't tighten up any of my nuts Sue!

Oooohhhh Sue, that's cheating you little devil.

Thanks for that David, I should really dig out the book and refresh myself of identities! I also have the hay rake that was the other part of the 'set' to go with the large scale horse.

And here is the ulta ultra rare larger scale horse, together with one of their regular 1:32 horses for comparison.

Here's a quick snap of the log wagon.

Here's one that has not as yet been mentioned, the 'village idiot'. There are I believe several colour combination variants. I am not sure that these two that I have are originals as there are copies about but any replica is better than nothing. Both have the swinging arm. The story of how the village idiot came into being was when the Queen Mother visited the Great Exhibition of 1951 she came to the William Britains exhibit of which there was a display of, amongst their other products, the non farm figures, looking over the village scene she remarked or asked 'where's the village idiot?, every village has an idiot! the rest as they say, is history.

As you can see, mine is in good condition metal wise, all its legs, not bent and has its tail and horns, no holes, no dents, but I just had to give it a good coat, I don't think it's detracted anything from it, the cow itself is original and that's the main thing. I myself don't see any harm in what may be termed as a re-paint providing it's done well.