Today is the first day of summer vacation for me, so I celebrated by hitting the local thrift shops. In one of them, in a display case, there was that Ziploc bag of random toys for $5.00 we've all seen. But at the bottom, I could clearly see a TycoPro Chapparal. I asked to see the bag, picked these two items out of the bottom, gave the guy $5, and told him he could sell the rest of the bag to someone else for $5.
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As I was paying, I mentioned that I'm always looking for slot cars like this. The man and woman behind the counter said they had just put a bunch of old toy stuff in the display window if I wanted to look, and even mentioned a big Tonka fire truck. I hadn't walked far enough down the block to see that display, so I went back outside and took a look just for curiosity. On either side of the fire truck were these:
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Sadly, they both sported stickers saying "NO CARS". Still, I couldn't believe they hadn't thought to mention the sets to me. They wanted $10 each. After poking through them, I offered $15 for both. Done deal.
Here's what's inside the Sand Van set:
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All the track is there, but none of the bridge supports, and one of the curves is damaged where the lock goes in. I went through the box and cleaned out all the random junk that gets thrown in a set box over the years, but I decided to leave this once I realized what it was:
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My wife thinks I'm nuts.
Anyways, this is the inside of the other set:
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All the track pieces are here too. I thought this was more interesting, though... too bad someone cut the corner off it:
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This was also curled up in that box. There were a couple segments sprung out of line when I first took it out, but I was able to pop them back in and it looks like it would actually work (as well as this stuff ever worked, anyway...)
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Summer treasure hunting has begun!
--rick
As I was paying, I mentioned that I'm always looking for slot cars like this. The man and woman behind the counter said they had just put a bunch of old toy stuff in the display window if I wanted to look, and even mentioned a big Tonka fire truck. I hadn't walked far enough down the block to see that display, so I went back outside and took a look just for curiosity. On either side of the fire truck were these:
Sadly, they both sported stickers saying "NO CARS". Still, I couldn't believe they hadn't thought to mention the sets to me. They wanted $10 each. After poking through them, I offered $15 for both. Done deal.
Here's what's inside the Sand Van set:
All the track is there, but none of the bridge supports, and one of the curves is damaged where the lock goes in. I went through the box and cleaned out all the random junk that gets thrown in a set box over the years, but I decided to leave this once I realized what it was:
My wife thinks I'm nuts.
Anyways, this is the inside of the other set:
All the track pieces are here too. I thought this was more interesting, though... too bad someone cut the corner off it:
This was also curled up in that box. There were a couple segments sprung out of line when I first took it out, but I was able to pop them back in and it looks like it would actually work (as well as this stuff ever worked, anyway...)
Summer treasure hunting has begun!
--rick
