The UK’s largest toy and collectors fair is at the NEC on Wednesday December 27th.
If Santa didn’t bring it you then a post-Christmas trip to the NEC this Wednesday might help find that rare or long-desired toy or model. In fact, many of the items on offer in Hall 18 between 10:30am-3pm will have been off Mr. Claus’s radar, being collectible second-hand artefacts, the kind of product to get the juices of any discerning enthusiast flowing, or even just to rekindle warm memories of childhood christmases when die-cast Matchbox and Corgi cars, dolls, bears, and the newest offerings from Hornby, Chad Valley, Scalextric and Triang were feverishly unwrapped and played into the ground, all before Boxing Night was over.
With a staggering 550 stalls to visit, and virtually all the UK’s leading specialist dealers in attendance (selling both new and used collectibles), free valuations of your own old items from Vectis Auctions and the chance to both buy (and possibly arrange to sell) tin toys, model-making kits, Disney-memorabilia, sci-fi, film and tv-related material, even the most ardent enthusiast can’t hope to take in the entire show.
Fortunately then, if you get the collecting bug (or have it already), then this Wednesday’s event is just one of five such toy and collector’s events taking place at the NEC over the forthcoming twelve months, with others scheduled for February 11th, April 29th, September 30th (all Sundays) and Thursday, December 27th 2018.
Admission to the Toy Collectors Fair is £7 adults, £6:50 seniors and £2 children, and car parking is free. And if you do fall in love all over again with that old Star Wars or Star Trek toy you had as a kid, then that Christmas gift money burning a hole in your pocket might just have found a home.