I am adding this maroon bit to all my auctions, so you don't need to read it over and over again (if you've seen it before just skip to the dark blue bit below), but as I am now selling a lot of stuff on ebay.co.uk for the first time in several years, I thought I ought I ought to tell you a bit about me and why I have restarted (and why I stopped to begin with!).
I have what I believe to be the largest collection of classic car accessories in the world. Almost all of it is NOS (New Old Stock - i.e. never previously sold and 'as new') and MIB (Mint in Box - with the original box and in unused condition, although most of the boxes themselves have some 'distress'). Hence my ebay ID of nos-mib-vintage (it used to be sidevalve_it, if you have bought things from me before). Not all my stuff has its original box, but 90% does, and I collect boxes as well as accessories.
I have been collecting for over 30 years, and I buy things in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and the USA. Most years I go to the Beaulieu, Shepton Mallet, Rétromobile, Essen, Antwerp, Avignon, Lyon, Turin, Padova and Hershey autojumbles, and until the early 2000s when I moved away from the area I used to go to Newark as well (and I still think Newark is the best UK show). I buy everything that I see (and can afford), and so, as you can imagine, after 30 years the collection is HUGE and I have to sell things, partly because I have so much money invested in it and partly because my storage places are bursting at the seams.
From 1999 to 2006 I sold principally on ebay.co.uk, and I did very well and built up quite a big following. Then ebay in their wisdom (not) decided to abolish the classic car parts category, and overnight the sales dropped off a cliff because my genuine NOS period accessories were suddenly thrown in with literally millions of items of cheap Chinese repro junk.
So, absolutely furious, I decided to stop listing on ebay.co.uk and list on ebay.com instead, even though I am British (the vintage car parts section still exists on there). That has gone very well for the last 9 years and I still do it, but I recently decided to have another try at ebay.co.uk, and it has gone surprisingly well. I think that a lot of people have realised that the way to avoid the modern repro junk is to search for 'auctions only', and so, although I have an ebay shop and can list shop items free of charge, I don't do that because they'd be submerged in the Chinese junk again. So I am building up a lot of auctions.
On eBay.com and elsewhere I call myself oldcaraccessories, so the word to bear in mind when looking for this kind of stuff is:
oldcaraccessories
Staggeringly rare item - 'the poor man's Halda Speedpilot'. It's a rally route accessory with a roll-up notepad for pace notes (like the one that Dennis Jenkinson used on the 1955 Mille Miglia), but it's a novelty from BP that was sold (or given away?) as a promotional item in the 60s (or possibly early 70s - it's undated).
It has the notebook roll for you to write your route on (I hope you wouldn't use it though!), still sealed with a BP logo, with a few dots of discolouration from damp (but not much), and also the box, although the box is a bit battered and repaired and is missing a flap. But at least it's got the box, and it would make a FANTASTIC display item in your classic rally car.
The item itself is in good unused condition but is missing a small piece of stick-on trim at the bottom of the screen (grey plastic panel) - I assume it was gold-coloured, as at the moment there are no gold parts and so the name is a bit puzzling. The lack of it isn't obvious, and in fact I only came to realise there was anything missing when I was listing it to sell, and I have had it since 1994! It has a brown-coloured anti-slip panel on the bottom, and a BP logo (which has a little discolouration from damp) on top.
I've never seen another one, and I bet you haven't either...
Please note that this will be posted from FRANCE - I am English but I live here most of the time now. It still doesn't cost a fortune though - not much more than Royal Mail prices since they started going berserk a few years back.
Any questions, please ask, and I hope you like my item. Cheers - Alan