tbtc
Veteran Member
Are there any decent Flea Markets, or other places that you’d recommend beyond the full price model shops (where you can easily spend a couple of hundred pounds on a locomotive) and eBay (where there are some apparent bargains but then you find yourself paying a fiver for delivery which makes the item quite expensive, plus you can’t see things “in the flesh”)?
Car boot sales used to be interesting but seem increasingly grubby as people have worked out that anything remotely valuable would fetch a lot more money online
Charity shops similarly save their best stuff for their eBay shop (and, fair enough, they are trying to raise as much money as they can for a good cause, I understand that)
Some model railway exhibitions have some great stalls but I don’t know where these vendors are the rest of the time
I was thinking of a trip to the market in Chesterfield some time but don’t know if there’s any model stalls at it - a number of the markets that have survived have done so by going upmarket and focusing on hand made middle class trinkets - buying a bar of scented soap for five quid isn’t really my scene
I’m just after some “toys” to play with, rather than worrying about sound effects or just how carefully detailed the updated cab windows are on the re-release of some locomotive that now costs an extra fifty quid for the privilege of this extra degree of accuracy
If it means buying HST carriages of the wrong length or wagons showing signs of their age then I can cope with that, but we’ve lost the outdoor market place in Sheffield where there was a stall that used to sell serving hand trains/ buses and I’m reluctant to go much further afield unless I know there’s likely to be a stall selling treats from back in the day
Car boot sales used to be interesting but seem increasingly grubby as people have worked out that anything remotely valuable would fetch a lot more money online
Charity shops similarly save their best stuff for their eBay shop (and, fair enough, they are trying to raise as much money as they can for a good cause, I understand that)
Some model railway exhibitions have some great stalls but I don’t know where these vendors are the rest of the time
I was thinking of a trip to the market in Chesterfield some time but don’t know if there’s any model stalls at it - a number of the markets that have survived have done so by going upmarket and focusing on hand made middle class trinkets - buying a bar of scented soap for five quid isn’t really my scene
I’m just after some “toys” to play with, rather than worrying about sound effects or just how carefully detailed the updated cab windows are on the re-release of some locomotive that now costs an extra fifty quid for the privilege of this extra degree of accuracy
If it means buying HST carriages of the wrong length or wagons showing signs of their age then I can cope with that, but we’ve lost the outdoor market place in Sheffield where there was a stall that used to sell serving hand trains/ buses and I’m reluctant to go much further afield unless I know there’s likely to be a stall selling treats from back in the day