Buy It Now: A RARE & FULLY WORKING Excellent/Near Mint
Spacenik No. 2 Set aka
Grippidee Gravidee, from Tomy Toys & Rovex, UK-only circa 1969. This set was made in Japan and produced only for the European market, and is one of the first Grippidee Gravidee sets ever made. This extremely hard to find set features a first generation Single Rocket Car, here called a Probe Capsule, along with the incredible unique-to-this-set Space-Freighter with Orbital Tracking Light (the rear fin area lights up during operation so you can run it in the dark). Comes with both vehicles and 22 Track Pieces. This set is approximately 55 years old and is nearly impossible to find at all, much less in fully working condition. Fully working means that both vehicles climb, travel upside-down, and descend a vertical track layout as they should.
This remarkable and rare set is being sold as is with no returns.
For both versions of the UK-only Spacenik Sets - Spacenik and Spacenik-2, Tomy and Rovex completely re-designed the Grippidee Gravidee brand with the box top showing extra text and pictures illustrating how to set it up. The track pieces are solid without the standard port holes of the GG track pieces, with the only exception being the 90 degree cross section which TOMY borrowed from their GG sets. The two-colored red and yellow 180 degree turnaround track pieces are also unique to the Spacenik sets. Here is a nice opportunity to own a rare working Spacenik-2 Set for your GG collection.
Watch the video of this set in operation: TOMY Spacenik-2 Set Video - a new YouTube.com page will open for viewing. You can also copy and paste this link to see the video:
https://youtu.be/Jtj3z6dZxOE
Both the
Probe
Capsule and Space-Freighter are in beautiful condition with pristine battery compartments. Both vehicles operate smoothly with C sized batteries but I highly recommend using a fresh AA sized batteries instead to create less stress on the gear boxes. For the Space-Freighter I'm including small pieces of foam that can be folded and placed in the battery compartment as shown in the photos to help secure the two AA batteries. The top and side stickers on both vehicles are untouched but have yellowed some with age which is very common with these toys. As mentioned above the Space-Freighter also has a lighted rear tail fin, which is the only GG vehicle in any of their UK and US sets that have it -- great for running in a dark room!
All the track pieces are in perfect near mint condition, having been used very little. See photos for detail. All the track end-connectors and white locking tabs are in perfect condition with the locking tabs tight for secure track connections. This UK set also has re-designed white locking tabs - just a little bit different than all the US and Japan GG sets. I recommended handling all parts of the set gently since these are relatively delicate toys.
The large toy box measures: 25 in. Length, 20 in. Width, 2-3/4 in. Height. The box top has a few small creases and has some clear tape on a couple of the corners to help secure them. The box top shows very light scuff marks and very minimal wear but overall the box top is in excellent condition with bright crisp colors. The inside light blue vacuum-formed plastic insert is shiny and beautiful in near mint condition, with only one small crack in the lower R corner.
Please review photos for condition details.
Special care will be taken in packaging this toy: I will place packing material inside the box to keep all the pieces from moving around during shipping, and then wrap the entire toy box in bubble wrap before packing it into the shipping box.
Buyer can choose USPS Priority or Ground Advantage.
Feel free to ask any questions and I'll get back to you ASAP. Good luck and thanks for looking!
SHIPPING NOTE: I only ship using USPS because I've had problems with UPS and FedEx. I've found that USPS is usually less expensive than the other two carriers. I highly recommend using USPS Priority Shipping as it travels via airplane and arrives the fastest for not too much more than USPS Ground Advantage. Ground shipping means it travels via truck and has to go from truck to truck and from postal station to postal station and can take four times longer than Priority. I still give the buyer the Ground shipping option but I don't recommend using it. Having said that, the cost for shipping has just gone up and up in recent years and yes, it's very expensive to ship across the USA. This set is LARGE and while I always custom make most of my shipping boxes to fit as small as possible around the item, I also use bubble wrap to protect my items which makes the shipping box slightly bigger than the item. So this particular toy set is going to be relatively expensive to ship due to its size and weight, including packing material and the shipping box. Thanks for reading and understanding.
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