Random reminder

Press, 29 May 1981, Page 26

Random reminder

OLD GOLD SOLD throw anything away, says our Random Collectors Correspondent of Brighton. She keeps one eye on antique shops and the.other on reports in "The Press" of. for example, motor-cycle rallies, and there is a tear in each of them. A BkS.A. motor-cycle hack in our correspondent’s student days was even then oid. and worthless. Today it is cherished, newsworthy, and not for sale at any price, although you could start bidding at ten. Ten'.' ’■Ten. " as in house deposits. Our correspondent never owned a 8.5. A.. but she did once have a 1924 Austin 7. Like a biscuit box on pram wheels, all brass and leather and cellulose lacquer, it cost her seventy dollars and she was struggling to get fifty for it a year later. It ran perfectly, she recalls, starting every time after I'.z turns of the handle, but it took eight days advertising

'even in ‘The Press " |o give it away. Shifting house or marrying arc Ihe easiest and saddest ways to disperse what, later, you will regret dispersing. A complete set of ■■penguins’’ from first publication to rni(l-l!i4.T.’ Dumped. Lead toys, mostly hand-painted soldiers’. 1 Melted. A lounge suite with sprung rolled arms’.' The Salvation Army didn't want it. Too big. So they slashed it up for the loose lost change — nine pence and 13c — and burnt it.

Speaking of loose change, have you tried to buy a halfpenny or a pound note lately’.' (tents are worthless -- try dropping a handful in the street — and the dollar depreciates daily, but a halfpenny, once four-tf'nths of a cent, is now hoc and rising; And the nostalgic "pound ".' s;')o’.’

Our correspondent knows a man with a tin trunk full of halfpennies. Back in the fibs, he saw the 80s coming.