Leigh’s Diecast Diary

It would seem that the Minichamps monthly release schedule is alive and well, after all. It must have just had a couple of weeks off! Today we received notification of what we can expect to see from them over the next four weeks.

Next week we will receive the 1:6 Honda CB750 in gold (PG161001), and the winning Ford Escort Mk.I from the 1974 RAC Rally of Timo Makinen in 1:18 scale (PG748101). There will also be long-awaited restocks of Ayrton Senna’s 1992 McLaren-Honda MP4/7 in 1:18 (AS198).

The week after we will receive Timo Makinen’s victorious Mk.I Escort from the 1973 RAC Rally in 1:18 (PG738113), and Pedro de la Rosa’s 1:18 McLaren-Mercedes MP4/21 from the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix, where he scored his first Formula One podium (DC2604H). We will also see our first 2007 Formula One showcar, Fernando Alonso’s 1:43 McLaren (DC27401P).

The week commencing 2nd July we are down to get Troy Bayliss’ 1:12 Ducati Desmosedici from the 2006 Valencia Moto GP (PO60012), where he brilliantly won the race on his one-off return to the championship. There will also be the 1:18 replica of the Bentley Continental GT in silver (PG139021).

The last week of the schedule tails off a bit, the only notable release being the 1:18 Alan Mann Ford Escort from the 1968 Nurburgring race (PG688136). I normally say that the last week of these schedules doesn’t look particularly interesting though, only for Minichamps to add more items to them by the time those weeks come around.

It would be good to see some more 2006 F1 cars come through by the time we get to the middle of July, particularly those pre-season orange McLaren testcars of Raikkonen and Montoya! We get asked nearly every day when we are going to see those, not that I can blame our customers, as it’s been a good 18 months now since they were first announced.

We had a big delivery from Guiloy today, which had their new 2006 1:10 and 1:6 race bikes on it.

In 1:10, we received the World Superbike Honda Fireblades of James Toseland (GY13718) and Alex Barros (GY13719). Our exclusive signed Toseland version (GY13718S) should be available in a couple of weeks too.

In 1:6, we received the Moto GP Honda RC211Vs of 2006 world champion Nicky Hayden (GY16287) and Dani Pedrosa (GY16285). These replicas are 30cm long, they will easily be the centrepiece of any collection!

As expected, the day after Lewis Hamilton’s first Grand Prix win, we were inundated with requests today about information on a ‘First Win’ special.

Neither Minichamps nor Mattel have announced anything today, but it took Minichamps just over a week to confirm their Hamilton ‘First Podium’ special after the Australian Grand Prix. Therefore I don’t expect to hear anything this week. As soon as anything is confirmed, it will be on the front page of our diecast site straight away, as well as covered in this blog.

The absolute best case scenario would be for someone’s special to incorporate a figure of Lewis stood on the sidepod of his McLaren after the race, in his triumphant victory pose. That really would be something very different, and no doubt highly collectible given that he’s got a good decade of this Formula One business ahead of him yet.

As for the race, talk about hectic! Dramatic accidents (mercifully Kubica escaped serious injury), drivers getting disqualified for disobeying the red light (Massa and Fisichella), drivers crashing under the safety car (Trulli), synchronised spinning (Trulli and Rosberg), even drivers hitting beavers (Davidson)! And Takuma Sato overtook Fernando Alonso too!

Through it all Hamilton remained incredibly composed to take a comfortable victory at a circuit he’d never driven on before in any discipline. Now with a championship lead of eight points over Alonso, can he really take the title in his first season?

IXO confirmed today that we will now see their latest delivery, which was originally scheduled to arrive with us the week commencing 21st May (see 8th May for new items on it), next week instead.

Bigger news was that we finally, finally, after 18 months of waiting, received restocks of the AUTOart double car display case (AA90082)! When we got our last batch of them just before Christmas 2005 we were short-delivered, and I actually selflessly gave up my order so that a customer could have it instead. Little did I know that it would then take 18 months before I would be able to house my 2005 Raikkonen Race Suit Special in another one! That’s the last time I put the customer first!

You must all have got tired by now of reading our articles about the diecast manufacturers putting up the prices of their replicas because of the shocking price increases in the zinc industry.

Well, here’s something different, Sun Star have announced that they will actually be reducing the prices of their 1:24 Routemaster buses and Bedford OB coaches!

No matter how much zinc content a Routemaster replica has, an increase of 25% from £99.99 to £124.99 was more than most people’s wallets could bear, and this must have had an effect on Sun Star’s sales, as now the price has been brought back down to the original £99.99.

The Bedford OB coaches have also gone back down to the original £74.99 from £89.99.

This means that Sun Star’s forthcoming Routemasters will come through at £99.99; SS2912, SS2913 and SS2914. Our signed version of the last Routemaster (SS2914S) has also now been reduced from £149.99 to £124.99.

The forthcoming Bedford OB coaches SS5004, SS5005, SS5006 and SS5007 will also now come through at £74.99.

It would seem that the Minichamps monthly release schedule is dead, as today we received a release list from them that again only covered what we will see in a week’s time.

There were some gems on it though. We are finally going to see the 2006 F1 Hondas in 1:18 scale for both drivers, Jenson Button (DC2612), and Rubens Barrichello (DC2611).

There will also at long last be the second release in the 1:8 Valentino Rossi helmet collection, a good eight months after we saw the first release. This new one will be his helmet from the 2005 Valencia Grand Prix (PO50886), also known as the ‘White Zoo’ as it has different animals painted all over it!

Exoto announced two new 1:18 releases today. The first one is quite exciting, Nigel Mansell’s Williams-Renault FW14B testcar from 1992 (GP97114), complete in a carbon fibre finish! The sample shot from Exoto looks stunning, so this model is sure to do really well for us. We are also offering it signed by Nigel Mansell (GP97114S).

The second announcement was of a second Alberto Ascari Ferrari 500 F2. The Silverstone 1952 version (GP97190) has now been discontinued, and we have less than a dozen pieces left in stock before it will be sold out for good. Replacing it will be a replica of Ascari’s winning car from the 1953 Grand Prix of Argentina (GP97193).

We received our second delivery of the Rossi Donington Honda (PO06196) today, so we have been able to clear a few more backorders. The warehouse staff are even staying late tonight to get on top of despatching all the orders that have built up for it. We will need another delivery though before we have finally fulfilled all of our backorders and are able to start selling the replica straight from stock.

It’s my birthday today! No interest to anyone I know, but it’s my diary so I thought I would mention it!

The Moto GP championship momentum swung back towards Rossi yesterday, with a sixth consecutive home win for the Italian at Mugello. That slashed Casey Stoner’s lead from 21 to 9 points, but Barcelona’s next with that incredibly long main straight so the Ozzie should be able to benefit from the Ducati’s straight line speed advantage there.

Red Line announced a very interesting new 1:43 scale model today in the form of the Ferrari F430 campaigned by Nigel Mansell in the FIA GT race at Silverstone in May (RL001). It will be limited to just 300 pieces worldwide, so it is bound to be highly collectible. Even more collectible will be the version we are offering signed by Nigel, which is exclusive to us (RL001S).

Now that Peugeot have confirmed their Le Mans line-up, we can finally offer the two Spark 1:43 908s from this year’s race, confident in which one will have which drivers! We were a bit unsure before, and know that a lot of Villeneuve fans were putting off ordering until they were certain whether he would be driving the #7 or the #8 car.

Anyway, the #7 car will be driven by Villeneuve, Minassian and Gene (SPK1272), and the #8 car will be campaigned by Bourdais, Sarrazin and Lamy (SPK1273). The team performed well in the official test at the weekend, and look like they have the pace to give Audi a run for their money this year.

Today’s entry is mainly concerned with the first ever Lewis Hamilton replicas. We received notification this morning on when we can expect to see some of them released.

The week beginning 13th August we should receive our delivery of Lewis’ first McLaren testcar, his 2006 MP4/21 in 1:43 scale (DC26484). This is the earliest Hamilton replica so far announced, and will always remain his first ever F1 car so its ongoing collectibility is assured. We very much hope to see GP2 and F3 models for him one day.

In 1:18 scale, we have been told to expect Mattel’s replica of Lewis’ 2007 MP4/22 (DC2702M) in the first week of October. We have even been told to expect Minichamps’ example (DC2702) in the third week of December, so to be honest this one will be touch and go for Christmas. If it makes it for Christmas, that will be fantastic, but even if it just misses, it will be a big improvement on the 2006 Minichamps 1:18 McLaren which was only released a couple of weeks ago.

As tragic as it sounds, this week I was looking forward to Minichamps distributing their June monthly release schedule, so I could see what was coming in the next few weeks. All we have had though is a release schedule for the first week of June, so I don’t know if Minichamps have decided to only work in weekly release schedules from now on. The highlight of next week’s delivery is Juan Pablo Montoya’s 1:18 2006 McLaren MP4/21 (DC2604).