I’M SO EXCITED… Tim Goodwin from Peak Hill opens his birthday present to find the very first toy car he bought with his pocket money. It disappeared 50 years ago until he found it on eBay. (Photo: The Guardian)
When Tim Goodwin from Peak Hill opened a present for his 58th birthday recently he was shaking with anticipation.
When he finally got all the bubble wrapping off he exclaimed over and over: “It’s my toy, it’s my toy!”
Tim, who has been the mail contractor or postie in Peak Hill for 22 years, was scrolling on eBay one day when it was too wet to mow the lawn during winter.
“I typed in Ford Capri, not sure why, and started looking at all the toys, and on the third or fourth page I saw it.
“It was my toy car – the very first Matchbox car I ever bought with my pocket money when I was a kid in Wellington, Somerset in the UK in the early 1970s!”
Tim said he slept over it and a few days
later he looked at it again. “It was definitely mine.” He said after many years of playing with it on a homemade dirt track in the backyard with his two brothers, it was chipped and he painted it red over the original pink and turned it into a rally car. “I stuck a Castrol sticker on the bonnet and cut the tow hook off.
“I bought the car with the pocket money I earned washing the family car, which was about 25 pence.” He said Ford Capri was much loved in the UK. “It was the Englishman’s Ford Mustang. Some teachers at our school had them and we held them in high regard. It was a great car and I always wished I owned one. I even collect the workshop manuals.”
His favourite toy car went missing one day. “I remember seeing a boy in our shed one day taking something, but he denied it.” While the seller on eBay was in Doncaster, about 370km away from his home town, the car on eBay looked exactly like his with the modifications. “Nobody has changed it.” Tim sent a photo of the car to his brothers in England and they also recognised it.
When Tim’s wife Cathy asked what he wanted for his birthday he did not hesitate to show her the toy car on eBay for $34.62.
The seller has a toy shop and promised Tim to try and trace the whereabouts of how the Ford Capri came to him.
Tim is stoked to have his toy back and although he will become a grandfather for the first time later this year, he is not prepared to let the grandkids play with it. “This one has pride of place on the mantelpiece.” While Tim has a collection of over 300 Matchbox cars dating form the 60s to the 90s, he has now been inspired to look for more of his childhood toys.
“I am still gobsmacked that I found it back. I felt like a little boy again. It has brought back so many family memories and of playing in the dirt with our Matchbox toys.”
By Maggi Barnard
