For the past couple of years we’ve been travelling to Barry Potter (no relation to Harry, thankfully) toy fair events across the UK. These huge events have proven to be fantastic opportunities for us to add to our collections, particularly Sam who manages to come away with new robots in the double figures (I believe 19 Is the current record!).
The mix of sellers you find at the fairs sits somewhere between market stall and car boot table top. Some are professional / semi professional dealers who attend multiple shows throughout the year, others are there to clear out the boxes they’ve found in the loft.
This variety is what draws us back time after time. There’s an intrigue to what you might find on each occasion. The phrase “one man’s junk is another man’s treasure..” has never been more appropriate. When you collect something outside of what’s typically recognised as having monetary value, you have the opportunity to land upon pieces that unlock unrivalled levels of dopamine for a collector, often with change from a five pound note.
Barry Potter hosts around 30 events a year at 7 locations. We were completely unaware of these, and, to some extent, the broader toy fair scene in the UK until our favourites at Leicester Vintage featured the BP Sandown Park (our ‘local’) in a special edition of their Toy Shop on Tour YouTube series.
The episode provides a great introduction for anyone new to the events, as well as an insight into the seller experience, all through the novel format of hosts Joe and Gav competing to get the best items they can find at a budget of £100.
Seeing this put Sandown Park firmly on our ‘to do’ list. We first attended a show in November 2023 and we’ve been back twice since. It’s a blessing for our bank accounts that we don’t live any closer than a two hour drive away, else we’d probably go to each of the 4 events held there every year.
By chance we were due to be travelling up the country in late December last year and, more or less, passing two other Barry Potter fairs en route at venues that we’d struggle to justify trekking to ordinarily. This meant we were able to visit the biggest of the lot, the NEC Birmingham show (550 stalls) and its neighbour, Stafford Showground (300 stalls) a couple of days later.
The NEC event took us three hours to walk around once, which was lucky because that was about as long as we had before needing to journey onward. Stafford clocked in at a good couple hours and fortunately featured some of the same sellers that we didn’t have chance for a second look at in Birmingham.
Here are some snaps from those fairs, as well as previous Sandown shows. We always plan to document the events more, but it’s a tough act to juggle when your senses are totally overwhelmed by the scale of everything there is to see. There are always plenty of far more competent YouTubers on site, if you search for Barry Potter over there you’ll find no shortage of walkthrough tours for each location.
A fantastic selection on The Vintage Toy Monster’s stall at the NEC Fair. Be sure to check out their great shop in Portsmouth, I found a grail piece for my Pez collection there, the Jar Jar Binks in Mos Espa scene (read more about that here).
I’ve not seen this many carded MMPR figs since the 90s. I’m tempted to start collecting the villains from this line or ‘Evil Space Aliens’ as they’re called on the packaging. I’ll probably go for loose rather than carded though or this will get pricey quick!
I’m not sure I’ve ever watched more than one Jurassic Park film but this stall at the NEC was brilliant to see. Rexy’s Reviews is a dinosaur exclusive toy seller, they also have a bricks and mortar shop ‘The Dino Den’ in South Shields. I definitely had the JP Dimetrodon in my childhood toy box.
Growing up in the 90s the 60s felt like a lifetime ago, but these characters from the Trumptonshire trilogy of Camberwick Green, Chigley and Trumpton were still appearing in repeats on Channel 4. For context, we’re now the same amount of time from the 90s. 30 years doesn’t seem so long now.
In amongst them are Beano and Dandy comics characters, which I was also still reading well into the late 90s.
Lego Minifigures as far as the eye can see… It’s a close call on whether you’ll see more of these in total or Funko Pop Vinyl at most toy fairs. Minifigures have the size advantage but there really are gazillions of Pops out there.
I learnt a few things about TaleSpin at Stafford Toy Fair. 1. There was a line of figures, 2. They fetch a fair price, 3. The French version of the show was called ‘Super Baloo’ (another stall had those cardbacks).
These bears are a pretty accurate representation of what it was like trying to move down some of the aisles in the sheds at Stafford Showground.
Toy fairs are as much museums of niche character collections as they are opportunities to buy. Have you ever seen this much Big Boy merch in one spot? Us either.
Some stalls are just candy for the eyes. How good do all of these mint condition carded (and boxed) Simpsons figures look?
Just when you think you might have seen every piece of Star Wars merchandise every produced, you stumble upon a collection of Japanese bottle caps from 1978.
You never know what you’re going to find when you look underneath table tops, it could be the jackpot for a Taz or Snoopy fan…
It’s probably fair to say that toys from the 80s and 90s are driving the current resurgence of interest in toy fairs. You’ll find almost as many stalls stacked with characters from this era as you will the more overtly ‘vintage’. The mix of bright and zany colours always make the presentation on these stalls really pop.
I’ve seen so many of these Smurfs toys in the past few years that if I’d started collecting them in Autumn 2023, I’d probably have a full set now!
Although I’ve not featured any in the photos above, there are so many cars and trains to be found at the Barry Potter fairs. Sandown Park even has an engine set up and running in the centre of each event.
These trains are more my era! I wrote about seeing this collection for sale in a previous post about the Thomas ERTL series and being very tempted to buy them, just for how nostalgic seeing these card backs again made me.
As long as you’re not being a skinflint, there’s usually a bit of room to haggle with sellers. For example, I reckon you could definitely get 3 pigs for £1 if you ask nicely.
If we’ve piqued your interest you can find upcoming listings and further details at bpfairs.com
Liam Toms 