I is for Is This an AI Blog?

Three posts in 2020, and not one of them makes more than a gnat's crochet of sense?

https://jeffreyantiquetoys.wordpress.com/ 

AI has improved exponentially since 2020, but I don't know what was going on there, one wonders if it's auto-translating from another language, but the subjects - of the three posts - are all based in and around London.

And then . . . you go here:

https://jeffreytoysnews.mystrikingly.com/#_blog

And find the same strangled English, this time with four posts? Did the 'Bot responsible;e succumb to Covid a few weeks later? Does anyone know the history behind all this?

There's a rumour that the owner of Mint & Boxed was convicted of fraud and sent to gaol, but I have no firm knowledge of such happenings, and it looks like it was before these two sites (how many were there?) were churning out their pidgin rubbish! The Internet is groaning under the weight of this garbage.

I was actually searching because I picked this up the other day, thinking it was a book in the Shire Album or Self Publishing oeuvres, but in fact it's a sort of glorified catalogue, of really rather pricey stuff, and I wanted to find out more about the shop/auction house, only to find the above-linked weirdness!

It appears to be the only edition ever issued, with several on sale around the Internet, but all Issue 1 Winter 1990/1991, so a short-lived enterprise, whatever happened to the owner! Although I have also found a Summer 1989 copy, in a different format, which is unnumbered? And there are two versions of this, one (2nd printing?) cuts the logo's of Wells and Brimtoy off the bottom of the artwork.

One hobby site says, "Possible [sic] the largest vintage toy shop that ever was. Now closed." , but they like their hyperbole over there, and this mint Dinky-Corgi-Matchbox stuff goes through Vectis by the lorry load, umpteen times a year! Whilst Modeller's Loft had a pretty big store or two?

The internecine goings-on at the top of the hobby, where a few people think there's a fortune to be made from old toys? A couple of auction houses do OK, a few top evilBayers do OK, many bottom-feeders keep from starving, and the odd gentleman-amateur throws money at a loss-making enterprise, because he enjoys doing it, and can afford to.

But when a millionaire pays £250k for a tin-plate liner, or locomotive, or over a million-quid for a plastic Boba Fett, that's not our hobby, that's the Art World, the world of investment, and that's a very different thing.

And damn-me if another one hasn't appeared as I write this!

https://levytoysboxes.tumblr.com/