Japanese Auction Wins...

Ok, well I don't have this in my grubby little hands (yet), but I had to share my latest japanese Takara win with you guys as this is just so cool

What we have is a portable scenic track, this is 2nd hand, but nearly complete, just missing the traffic signals and trees. But I'm sure I can find suitable replacements. It also comes with two bonus loco's as well for the bargain opening price of 800yen

[Super]

That is cool. I like the fact that it also has a road for cars. Did they also make powered cars in this line. It is so surprising to me that so much of these items are evidently copied almost exactly from Plarail/Tomy items. That double switch rail looks cool and I don't think Plarail has a comparable track piece like it. What does the straight track piece bottom, middle of the last picture do?

Bearing in mind these products were made back in 2001 who copied who?

That piece at the bottom I think forms the bridge between the two islands and the unusual points are to allow it to be connected to a larger layout

To the best of my knowledge they didn't make motorised cars, but who knows maybe I just not found them yet.

Ok, now I can show you some things that DID turn up today from the land of the rising sun. This time round it is not Takara, but rather the Ban-Dai ZZ Trains I previously mentioned in another thread.

I managed to get hold of some brand new sealed boxes of the 'blind boxes', 2 of the train sets, a bunch of 2nd user trains and track. In addition I also got a box of 'N gauge' japanese buildings. These like the ZZ Trains also come packed in 'blind boxes' so you don't know exactly what building you will get in any particular pack. These are distributed 'flat packed' so you have to assemble the buildings, but they are easy to assemble (or so they say) and fully painted/decorated so in other words ready to go. These are intended to go with my PlaRail Advance and TomyTec moving buses which are both ~ N Gauge in scale.

Anyway enough of my rambling, here's some pictures, in some I've put a normal PlaRail Suburban coach to give some sense of scale of these marvels of engineering

Shinkansens




Suburban/Express Trains




A single blind box of each



And the contents of said blind boxes, in this case they had two non-powered cars in each



A powered EF type loco



A three car Shinkansen type 0

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E231 Suburban Set, this comes with a 3 car train, oval of track and a railroad bridge



A Shinkansen Set, again 3 car train, oval of track and a station




TomyTec N Gauge Buildings

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Wow...you sure are having fun latley opening boxes of treasures.

I have always loved looking at the TomyTec N Scale buildings as they are so detailed and they have a large variety of everything. What I sure don't understand is the practice of blind boxing them. The only business reason I can think of is the easy of one box fits all but simply putting a small circle next to the picture on the box where a check mark could be placed would remedy that. Heck, if you bought several you may get all the same, I don't get it. Very nice haul for you Nigels. I know the feeling of excitement when opening up goodies like these.

The 'Blind Box' concept is a bit of a nod to the concept of Trading Cards, you know you buy a pack, get duplicates, swap with your pals (in theory), but the point is you get addicted to getting a set and therefore odds are you buy more than you would if you could pick and choose. It also appeals to retailers because they are likely to sell their entire stock because the buyers will not just cherry pick the best items.

For some of the items out there sold like this they even carry some 'candy' in the boxes, again a nod to the trading cards with bubblegum concept so popular a few years back. Some were also sold at relatively low prices originally, the idea being to maybe sell them in mass market stores (again the candy) to kids or adults who are out shopping for something else.

If you take the ZZ Trains they also have an added bonus in that as well as the defined set of ten trains (5 power cars and 5 x 2 unpowered cars) there is also a 'secret' train that 'may' be in a factory sealed box of packs. What it is nobody knows till you pull one, but that's one reason why I wanted to get a sealed box, in the hope of pulling the 'rare' secret train

As for the opening 'high', yup can't beat it, next chapter when it arrives will be mainly PlaRail Advance plus a few surprises

[Super]

Those ZZ trains are so tiny, too tiny for my big hands. Because of there size are they difficult to get the trucks situated on the rails properly?

Thats probably why I never got into buying trading cards and don't care for the idea of not getting what you want. Probably why I am not a gambler either.

I grew up with trading cards when I was a kid, used to be football cards back in those days in the UK, world cup, division football etc (that's soccer to you probs Super lol). So the concept of blind bags, boxes, packs are something I'm fine with. I also used to be heavily into Magic the Gathering as well, the ultimate collectible card game which again was blind packs.

The trains are really tiny, yet surprisingly go onto the rails pretty easily, what I got to do is get a circle or something setup and run one as that is just going to be awesome a train that size running under its own power

The only thing smaller is T Gauge and that is too small even for me lol!

Ok, well here's today's arrival, I think possibly the biggest box yet, I had trouble getting it through the front door lol!!

Anyway there is a mixture of items this week, some Takara PlaRail, Tomy PlaRail Advance and some N Scale Locomotives. I have to apologise for some of the shots, but these were all taken hand-held in natural light and with low depth of field so some are a bit fuzzier than I like but there was a lot to take.

So on with the pics, this isn't all the stuff, but it gives you a good idea

First PlaRail Advance for a change

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Then the 2nd job lot of PlaRail Advance;

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Now the Takara PlaRail (I've not included any shots of the track included in this job lot, but there's quite a bit of it including some stations and tunnels etc...

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Finally a couple of N Scale Loco's, I've also got a 'Thunderbird' set and a 'Tsubane' Shinkansen set which I've not photographed yet




Well that's all folks, except I've got another package scheduled for delivery tomorrow

[Super]

Sounds like a little home improvement will be necessary to increase the size of your doors. I like this little cars on the Takara flat beds and are those logs in the one wagon? Ahem....more, more