1951 Hudson Estate Sale Find

A dear friend of mine in her '80's loves to go to estate sales.  Knowing that I collect diecast cars, she sent me a link to one that she said, "has a lot of little cars".  I opened the link and looked thru the pictures the estate company provided and saw that there were a lot of Nascar, FM, DM, and other interesting cars that the owner had collected over the past 30 or so years.  Unfortunately, they were all exposed on open shelves and were very dusty, as you can see.  No boxes or paperwork.  I already had many of the cars, but there were a few that I was interested in.  However, they would be duplicates so I didn't really have to have them.  If you're not familiar with how a professional estate sale is conducted, it goes something like this:  The family doesn't want to deal with cleaning out the house, so they hire a company to liquidate the contents in the house.  The company prices everything in the house, and I mean EVERYTHING, from the piano to the pictures on the walls, based on their expertise. The estate sale runs for three days, usually from Thursday to Saturday for 5-6 hours per day.  The first day, all items are sold at their marked price, no exceptions.  Day two, everything is marked down 30%, and day three, all remaining items are half price.  The estate company will deal on the last day because everything that doesn't sell is donated or thrown out. 

Screen shots from my phone of some of the collection.

Most of the FM and DM cars were priced at $80 each.  Based on condition, many were overpriced, but there were some that were bargains at that price, in spite of their condition.  In looking at the pictures, one car caught my eye.  It was Franklin Mint's Hudson Hornet stock car.  It was hard to tell if it was the early Smokey's issue or the later Pure Premium model.  It became clear after the estate company posted new pictures after they dusted the cars and move them around, but in the process the antennas of the Hudsons were missing.   🙁

 My friend went to the sale on the first day and grabbed the Hudson stock car and was able to get it for a $5 discount, complaining about the missing antenna and it being so dusty.  I could just envision her doing that, lol.  So, here's the car as I got it and then, cleaned up.  It really is a cool looking model, and the big plus being a Smokey's version!

I went back with her to the estate sale on day two hoping to find the antenna on a dusty shelf or on the dusty carpeting, but no luck.  However, we did manage to get an old working German cuckoo clock for the amazing price of $24! 

Geoff Jowett was kind enough to send me an antenna from his '54 Hudson kit he built and posted a couple of days ago.  Here's Smokey's Hudson all cleaned up:

To make the antenna match the FM antenna as closely as possible I went to my parts bin and modified an emblem to act as the base of the antenna.  I think it worked out very well.  Thanks Geoff!!

Sorry for the long post and thanks for checking my estate sale bargain!

Pete