I have wanted a vintage filofax for a while now, because they are the classics of the Filofax brand and would be an amazing addition to my collection!
On Saturday night I found one on ebay that was finishing soon, and at that time the bids on it were only about £4.50! So I decided to wait until the dying minutes and try to bid on it!
Someone had placed a maximum bid on it, so every one of my bids was immediately outbid. But their maximum bid was £20, so I bid £21 and I won it!!
The auction didn't make it very clear what the filofax was. This is the picture, the one and only, that was on the auction page:
"Vintage filofax in dark green leather. Some inserts included. The original filofax logo is clearly visible inside the front cover. Both front and back covers have pockets and there is a pen holder. Looks like new."
And the condition was: "Use: An item that has been previously used..."
That's it! No model name or number, no size, barely any clear description! I could only work out that it looked like a personal sized filo, and from the photo, Steve from Philofaxy said it was probably a Winchester!
It arrived today!!! I was very surprised, because it is the Christmas period and the Royal Mail is notoriously difficult to get through now! But I bought it on Saturday night, it was dispatched on Monday, and it was delivered today, Wednesday!! Excellent!
First impressions: The leather is very stiff. I supposed I am used to the supple leather of the Malden, but hopefully this will soften up over time! It doesn't lay flat AT ALL!! I think it mustn't have been used a lot, because Steve's filo of the same range lays flat. It is in relatively good condition, in comparison with what I would expect a filo of over 25 years to be! So I think it wasn't used much in the 80s, and definitely not much recently, because it's FILTHY!! Fluff has gathered near the rings and needs a PROPER cleaning!! The only bit I'm annoyed about is that the clasp is quite delicate, if bent too much it will probably snap, so I'm going to try to do something about that ASAP. The leather is such a dark green it almost looks black!!
I googled the number on the inside cover, and Steve was of course correct, it is a Winchester!
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| The clasp is a bit damaged |
Tonight I am going to clean it and give it the treatment it needs- using the Nivea trick!!
I've posted lots more photos on flikr, and I'll put some more up and do another post when it's all cleaned up!
Merry Christmas in the meantime!!
Great Christmas present to yourself! Hope you can fix the problems with it though and bring it back to life and get some good use out of it!
ReplyDeleteOMG, that's fabulous! I look around for old ones all the time! Its beautiful!
ReplyDeleteTracy
I recently saw a mis-described pigskin Winchester in the states on eBay that went for US$40. I tried to get the owner to post to my country, but that was too hard. I was fuming. About two months earlier I had sold my own pigskin Winchester for $340 on eBay, and desperately wanted one back. Seller remorse! I usually scour the eBay sites by looking at secondhand Filofax listings: there are often little gems there.
ReplyDelete