Marc's Con Report Part 5 -- The Dealers Room!

Hi All,

The next thing I'd like to talk about last week's "Century 21" convention
is the dealers room. This was a smallish room which only had 7
dealers. Here's what I remember:

* there was a table with some guys were selling lots of old Thunderbirds
stuff,
like photos, magazines, etc. Nothing from UFO.

* next to this there was a table where I can't really recall *what* was
being sold, but
the table was memorable as it had a large assembled Skydiver model on
display
(Wave?) and also several replica Captain Scarlet puppets at a command
desk.

* next to this was TNT Hobbies, which has a website that I have a link
to on my
"Other UFO Websites" page. They sold a variety of nifty assembled
models of
Gerry Anderson craft in a realistic setting. I talked to one of the
guys in
charge, and he said that they noticed that most of the Anderson models
are
very expensive and require assembly, so they set out to fill a niche
-- selling
assembled models at a reasonable price. They had all sorts of things, but
the ones I remember most was a Sky One coming out of the water
(cleverly being
held up by the smoke trails), and a UFO crashed in the forest.

TNT Hobbies also had some 8 x 10" photos from one of the owners personal
collection. I had made it a point to go to dealers room as soon as it was
open (missing some of opening ceremonies as a result), and bought a
handful
of high quality black&white UFO photos from him for 3 pounds each, before
anyone else got a chance to even look at them...

* in the back of the room was a large table for Comet Miniatures, which is
well-known in Anderson fandom as having lots of good stuff. It seemed
that this table was mostly filled with new items from the Thunderbirds
re-launch, and I also remember some back issues of SiG for sale.

* the next table... well, I can't remember what they were selling at the
next table, but I do remember that they had the 2 UFO novelizations for
sale.

* As for the next table -- wow! This table was being run by Dave Griffiths,
who many people know on eBay as "TV21Toys". This table had an amazing
number of UFO items -- the Japanese laserdiscs, Italian comics, 8mm film
reels, photos, Japanese guidebooks, puzzles, even some items that I'd
never
heard of! After talking to Dave, it turns out that he was selling the
personal collection of Tony Read, who some of you will recall as being
the current owner of Foster's car. Apparently Tony has lost all interest
in UFO, and is selling off his entire collection. Also, everything
that didn't sell at the con probably will be sold on eBay in the
coming weeks.

Of course, this all brings up an interesting issue -- if Tony Read has
lost all interest in UFO, then what's to become of Foster's car? Dave
felt that Tony was never going to restore that car, and I wonder
if Tony would be open to an offer for it now. So, if anyone wants
to buy what's left of Foster's car, we'll need to track down Tony's
address/phone numner again.

For those of you familiar with "TV21Toys" auctions, you'll probably
remember that the opening bid or reserve price is always rather high.
So not surpringly, the cost of the items at this table were also high.
I bought a few more 8 x 10" high quality black&white UFO photos at this
table for a whopping 10 pounds each!

* the next (and final) table had a huge collection of trading cards
& vintage comics. They had the old UFO "TV Action/Countdown" comics,
plus a bunch of TV21s. I think Simon Wickes spent a lot of money
at that table...

All in all, I think this was a pretty good dealers room, and it certainly
had more UFO items for sale than any other dealers room I've seen!

--
Marc Martin, [hidden email]