Have a Deco at this

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I then employed a mechanic to work on the cars I bought and so began a thriving business. In the course of locating the cars I encountered some amazing sights, like a man who owned nearly one hundred old pre-war Rolls-Royce cars all lined up in dusty sheds. He just wanted to sell me his un-restored SS DHC and showed me about twenty tea chests filled with around five hundred old car mascots. Among them was a lovely SS Jaguar leaping Brau mascot that I bought from him. This man owned a scrap yard and was very secretive about owning so many great cars. He saw that I was very interested in the mascots and took me to a walk-in safe. Inside there were even more mascots, including a number of glass ones, which I later found out were Lalique.

As I’d started selling SS Jaguar cars to enthusiasts in the UK, USA and Europe, I started advertising spare parts for them too. I soon built up a thriving trade in such pieces including P100 headlamps. As demand for these was so great, especially from the USA, and they sold so well, I decided to employ specialists to restore them. I used to attend the RR rally and Beaulieu Autojumble, setting up a gigantic stall with dozens of restored lamps. I also started to collect rare car mascots at this time. However, I was a dealer foremost and always sold the best ones, especially Lalique, as these were the easiest to sell.

I never realised in those carefree days that there were thirty different types. When I eventually found out I was determined to track them all down and build my own collection. My lamp, old car sales and restoration businesses were all steadily building up and so I decided to advertise. Placing ‘wanted’ advertisements in all the old motoring publications proved to be an excellent idea as I soon started to locate some beautiful mascots and to buy a few Lalique variations.

My interest in SS Jaguars continued and I found many more examples up and down the country. After about ten years I had purchased about fifteen Lalique mascots and so I started to include them in my stock advertising. This encouraged private owners throughout the world to contact me and one day I received a call from an overseas private collector. This call was to change my life forever. The client wanted to buy not just one Lalique mascot, but all my Lalique mascots, then further decided to build on my holding of fifteen examples and achieve the ultimate collection in the world. This dream commission led me to the far corners of the earth for many years afterwards.

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