The Mossman Family Website
This Matchbox No. 75 Ferrari Berlinetta was in the junk box at a toy fair, on sale for just 50p….
This Ferrari was purchased for 50pence at a toy fair, dirty, broken windows and no tyres. However, as the required parts were already in the spares box, it was too good an opportunity to pass up.
Aftermarket Window Unit, after market tyres, base polished (just love Basso!), fine wire wool to clean the wheels and axels, removing rust. The inside had a good wash and going over with plastic polish. This will sit well with other two No. 75’s restored some years back and now part of the collection.
Husky Ambulance was never going to be a mint model, but it has been considerably improved….
This Husky Ambulance was covered in paint, sadly not the paint applied at the factory in the 1960’s.
The Problem with Husky toys (and Corgi Juniors) is the bases are very fragile and difficult to remove. Using Dettol(c) to remove paint from plastic doesn’t work very well on bases, however, it did work well on the window unit which had become stuck to the body of the car. The original decal was under the brown paint which also revealed this originally the military version of this model. As green gloss paint was already mixed, it had an upgrade!
Matchbox No. 23 VW Camper Van Restored.
This No. 23 Camper Van had seen better days when it arrived from an eBay seller.
After removing the paint and respraying (Keeping the original wheels) we had much improved model.
Although not in a dreadful state this bus was a little tired. Having plenty of red buses, I thought I would go for a yellow bus. Yellow buses are common in Bournemouth. Just to make the bus current (and date in the future) I made a decal for the upcoming Top Gun film.
This is how the bus looked before I set to work on it.
Two Matchbox Thames Trader Wrecker Trucks restored, these both came with different issues, both were in a poor state – wrecked in fact.
I had to install a new hook (daming the end of the arm trying to get the stub of the old one off). I also found that the arm had been glued in, the paint stripper broke some very old glue. The axels were bent and the wheels had rusted to them. I reattached with 10ba screnw. The before pictures…
The Second Truck. The axels were also bent but wheels were free and the plastic hook reused. This must have been a later variant as the first model had the remains of a metal hook where as this came with a plastic one. I choose not to remove the hook having had problems with the first model.
While not in a terrible state, the GT-40 had seen better days. As the Gold/Black combination of this vintage Siku is quite common, a Blue version seemed more interesting.
