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Books > Arts & Architecture > Antiques & collectables > Toys, games & models
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Sophia's Gift
(Hardcover)
Karen B. Kurtz; Illustrated by Loran Chavez
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R724
R593
Discovery Miles 5 930
Save R131 (18%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Contained within this authoritative text is the exciting history of
the manufacture of toy forts and castles in western Europe
throughout the turbulent nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Lavishly illustrated with nearly 800 images, this book provides
detailed information on who made these castles, palaces, and
fortresses, when, where, and how, and with what materials. The
author focuses especially on manufacturers in Germany and Great
Britain, but covers Denmark, Belgium, and France as well-and
describes the fascinating story of the industry's rise and demise.
Company histories show how these manufacturers, often successive
generations of families, dealt with the enormous economic and
political obstacles of the times. Organized spreadsheets with
serial numbers, dates, dimensions, and distinctive features of
products will satisfy the curiosities of toy collectors, museum
curators, archivists, antique dealers, architectural history buffs,
and more.
The best-known and most important manufacturer of plastic model
kits in the UK, Airfix has been at the forefront of the industry
since 1955 when the first Airfix aircraft kit appeared in UK
branches of Woolworth's. The kits were made to a constant scale and
covered a wide variety of subjects, from aircraft to birds and from
tanks to dinosaurs. In 1981 the famous London-based company closed
down and only the kits survived intact. For the next twenty-five
years Airfix was run by Palitoy and later Humbrol, but suffered
from a lack of investment. In 2006, Hornby Hobbies Ltd, the train
and Scalextric manufacturer, bought the ailing company and
transformed it. Money and resources were ploughed into the range,
and today Airfix releases around twenty new kits per year, designed
to an incredibly high standard. The old kits of the 1950s and 1960s
are gradually being replaced by new state-of-the-art tooling, all
bearing that most prestigious name - Airfix. Published to coincide
with the sixtieth anniversary of the first Airfix aircraft kit,
Sixty Years of Airfix Models, tells the full story, year by year,
of the company and its products.
In the annals of consumer crazes, nothing compares to Beanie
Babies. With no advertising or big-box distribution, creator Ty
Warner - an eccentric college dropout - become a billionaire in
just three years. And it was all thanks to collectors. The end of
the craze was just as swift and extremely devastating, with "rare"
Beanie Babies deemed worthless as quickly as they'd once been
deemed priceless. Bissonnette draws on hundreds of interviews
(including a visit to a man who lives with his 40,000 Ty products
and an in-prison interview with a guy who killed a coworker over a
Beanie Baby debt) for the first book on the most extraordinary
craze of the 1990s.
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Corgi Toys
(Paperback)
Mick Overton
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R280
R228
Discovery Miles 2 280
Save R52 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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The Corgi model of James Bond's Aston Martin DB5 is the
best-selling toy car ever produced and found a place in the hearts
of children of all ages around the world. Corgi Toys was founded in
Swansea in 1956 and was always highly innovative, introducing many
new gimmicks that children loved. Corgi became the first maker of
zinc diecast toy cars to compete successfully with Dinky Toys and
the Matchbox 1-75 series made by Lesney. Author Mick Overton
provides an informative introduction to Corgi Toys, illustrated
with beautiful, previously unpublished photographs that show the
most desirable variants worth collecting when spotted in an antique
store or at a car-boot sale. He also covers the pitfalls of Ebay,
fakes and customs. This book is part of the Britain's Heritage
series, which provides definitive introductions to the riches of
Britain's past, and is the perfect way to get acquainted with Corgi
Toys in all their variety.
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