The Keys to Successful Collecting
Promotional items are amongst the most sought after and valuable pieces in any line of toy collectables. From store displays such as Kenner’s Star Wars to salesman samples and awards such as Mattel’s Hot Wheels we all love having items in our collections that are outside the standard production stuff that was available to everyone.
As you may recall from my last post I’m a bit of a LEGO nut, so imagine my delight to find this promotional keyring in a lot of 80’s LEGO items I bought the other day.
Not only is it a promo item, it’s an Australian exclusive – and you know how I feel about those! I love finding stuff like this, it’s often a challenge to track down info about them. In this case I knew I had the vast resources of the web’s extraordinarily comprehensive LEGO collector’s sites such as Peeron, Lugnet and BrickLink. It was the latter who came to my aid with pics of a few of the little Elephant’s buddies from the long gone Birkenhead Point LEGO Centre in Sydney.
After a bit more digging I discovered that the Sydney LEGO Centre was apparently the only one outside Denmark, and that it closed down in the mid 1990’s. The keyring is probably from 1985, but I don’t know if they were giveaways or could be purchased as souvenirs or the like.
If you grew up in Sydney and remember the centre let me know, I’d love to share some memories of it.
Cheers All!
Will
Hi, I went down to Birkenhead point today for the first time since 1989, when I spent a lot of time as a 7 year old in the lego centre. I remember having to put a coin in the turn style at the far end of the warehouse sized shop to go through lego- world. I also remember pestering parents to sit and help me build stuff at the free lego tables in the middle. I can’t believe how much lego has changed! From the really simple stuff to the technical stuff. Anyhow, I couldn’t even place the centre today and think it has been demolished, although I know for a while the building was used as a clothing outlet. Sad loss really, it was a highlight of my weekends as a kid.
I have never been to the Lego Center but I managed to get a coin from there through a relative, I think its the coin you put in the turn style, It reads Lego on one side and Lego Centre with the brick logo on the other. I would like to post pictures of it on this site 🙂