Enterprise, I'll pick you up.

As most folks who read this blog have probably figured out, I am a swap meet and garage sale junkie.

A Junkin' junkie, if you will.

It's genetic. I get it from my mom. So it should come as no surprise to discover that the Saturday after Thanksgiving led to a car load of family members seeking out swap meets and yard sales.

The pickings were slim, like the bones of a turkey two days after Thanksgiving. In fact, we only found two garage sales in the whole town.

But I still did good.

Because at the second garage sale I found this Dinky beauty for a buck:

I never even knew this cool U.S.S. Enterprise existed until last year, when fellow toy blogger Charles of Eclectorama blogged about his childhood Dinky Starship Enterprise.

Thanks to Charles, I knew exactly what I was looking at when I saw this Enterprise laying in a pile of toys , clothes and other miscellaneous castaways. It was pretty filthy (I've cleaned it up) and clearly missing some decals and a warp nacelle tip. I also knew it fired disks from the saucer section (also missing) but otherwise it is quite an unexpected gem and, having been manufactured in 1976 by Dinky toys, not a very common garage sale find.

The satellite dish in the front points upwards a tiny bit but is in excellent shape. In fact, the whole ship is in really good condition, all things considered. This is one solid toy, and it was built to last. There's a lot of metal in it's make-up, probably more than the current Mattel releases (which likely have no metal) and the "action" feature is really cool without detracting from the ship's design (even if I don't have any disks to shoot!)

One of the nacelle arms was pretty (...wait for it...) warped, but all it required to straighten it out was a blast from a hair dryer.

Having seen Charles' Starship a year ago, I knew this Enterprise (potentially) held a neat little bonus. But I wanted to act casual, so I didn't bother checking before I made the transaction.

I happily paid the dollar the lady asked for the ship (it was hers since childhood - how do people let go of these things?!?!) - I didn't even try to talk her down in price ;) - and returned to the car after shuffling through some more toys (found some old school Little People, including Bert and Ernie, for a quarter each.)

Once we started driving away I popped open the bay doors beneath the Enterprise, and there it was:

The little bitty shuttle craft! I did not expect to find it in there! But there it safely hung from it's little metal peg. So cool.

I found it kind of ironic that Eclectorama was just wrapping up it's Batmobile theme week as I found this puppy, seeing as how the Enterprise lost to the Batmobile in Charles' theme week poll. While it's no surprise that the Batmobile won, because it is so awesome, this Dinky Starship does prove that the U.S.S. Enterprise is one cool space ship, and there probably hasn't been a better toy version made.

I think I'll try to track down a new nacelle tip, or maybe even make one somehow. I dig this Dinky ship!