Help From Down Under - Mr. Peter Cozens

Monday, October 8, 2012
(Canadian Thanksgiving)

Weather:
First Frost of the Fall (Autumn)
Bright and Sunny

Help From Down Under

(Australia)

Mr. Peter Cozens

http://www.antiquetoyworld.com.au/

     I'm very fortunate to have another antique toy seller help me out. With Mr. Peter Cozens, I was reminded of the Tom Hanks line in the movie Forest Gump -  "Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." 

       I had discovered his toy store (in Australia) on the web. He has great toys, but little did I realize just how great. When I got his permission to go ahead and use his photos, I went to his site, and started to use my great program (Snag It) to capture his images.  I started on page 1, then page 2, and then I had to go through all of the pages. There just were too many unbelievable toys to pick. I was transformed into a kid of 8 years old in a candy store. I couldn't choose which toys to download for Peter's instalment today!

      Since Australia is a day ahead and 14 hours different from where I live in Montreal, Quebec,Canada, I have to wait until Peter gets up tomorrow in my tonight (if you can figure out what I just sais). I  wrote to Peter again to ask if I might wrote 3 posts (instalments) on his great store, his photos, and of course, Peter. I'll have to wait until my tonight to hear from him.

Below is Peter's bio and narrative. Like everyone in the world, and as well toy people, his story is very interesting, so I'll just let you read about what he has to say.

"Hi Stacey,

                 I don’t have any objection to you improving my photos. Unfortunately they are not as good as they could be as I have a new Canon camera, which I don’t understand as well as my old Sony, which I accidently dropped.  (Peter is to modest - his photos are excellent in terms of focus, exposure, colour-balance, and composition!) 

Some information about me:  I am 63 years old and my wife Barbara and I are both born on the same day (about a 10 million to one chance). The shop, which I started in March 1996 at age 47, will be 17 years established in March 2013. I have 2 adult daughters and 1 grandchild. I previously worked in the Public Service for 21 years and prior to that worked with my father for 5 years in a textile knitting business.

I really only became interested in toys in about 1988 when my mother asked me to give her a hand sorting out some belongings at my parent’s home and I found my old Hornby clockwork ‘201 LMS Tank Goods Set’ c1953 still in excellent boxed condition and I then began earnestly collecting Hornby tinplate trains and Dinky Toys.

My long-term interest has always been old classic cars and I have owned 2 old Austin Healeys, (1 a 100/4 BN1 for 35 years), a Triumph TR6 and currently own a 1962 Porsche 356B in nice original condition. The only problem is I am always at work as we are open 6 days a week and I very rarely get to drive the old Porsche.

The shop basically deals with toys from the turn of the century up until the late 1960s/early 1970s.

We sell traditional toys such as:

Dinky Toys, Corgi Toys, Matchbox cars, Hornby O Gauge & Dublo, Bassett-Lowke, Marklin & Bing, Britains Soldiers, Meccano, Tin Toys, new toy reference books and we also sell about 25/30% new diecast models such as NEO, Minichamps, Ixo, Spark, Corgi, Vanguards & Oxford to name a few.

The website lists approx 500 toys for sale at any one time and this is just a fraction of the toys I hold in stock.

Hope this gives you some background.

Regards

Peter Cozens

Antique Toy World

Australia"

http://www.antiquetoyworld.com.au/

As you can see, Peter is certainly very interesting and I'm sure knows how to fix his cars when he has the time. As you'll also see form the descriptions of the toys below, he certainly is knowledgeable. So below are some of the toys that I chose for today's instalment. If Peter gives me permission, I will write 2 more instalments, and do some Web searching to write about some of the toys he is selling in Australia. I have lots of homework to do, as the toys that were and are sold  "down under" come from Europe, Great Britain, and I forgot Japan, which is relatively close to Australia.

  What I found interesting from Peter Cozen's toys is that they are in such good shape considering the age of some of the,. Also many have their original boxes, which is an added asset and adds value to the toy. As well, the diversity of the toys themselves, their colours, and their sources (Japan, Great Britain, Europe) certainly make for great diversity, interest, and value.

So that's it for today.

It's already 12:30 P.M. and I going to walk my dog.

It's a beautiful day, and I should be outdoors.

As always,

Thanks to all of you readers who visit and follow this blog, 

and have a great morning, afternoon, or evening,

wherever you may be.

And a special thanks to Mr. Peter Cozens for his help today for this post.