History of Dinnages, the early days...
Dinnages based in Hove, now part of the Brighton & Hove City, in East Sussex, commenced trading in 1989 following a number of childhood years as collectors of toys such as the Lesney and Matchbox brands, which soon became more than just sentimental play things, as reminders of those childhood days. These items when moved from home to home over the years were the provocation for my then fiance to wonder what was in these old tea packing crates. From there a regular trip round car-boot fairs, toy collector fairs eventually moving into serious dealing by late 1988 saw the collectables over taking space in our home. We soon realised we could buy, back then just toys, at favorable prices and sell them on to others at more realistic prices, paying for the stall costs with ease. Over greater time, our range of items has increased and changed direction from just old toys, to include modern collectable diecast, books, photographs, videos (now DVD), leading to publishing our own exclusive postcards forming an avenue for profits towards charitable concerns on a transport theme.
History of Dinnages, as retailers...
We opened a retail shop originally in late 1990, which was staffed by my Wife & partner Carolyn, initially four days a week, until its final days as all the young children of ours were at school full-time, where we closed the shop near the end of 2000. Our original open days were Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, where Tuesdays were dropped through lack of serious sales, and in the last two months, just Saturdays while attending to lease requirements prior to closure. You can see our family team pictured, check out the link provided.
History of Dinnages, progressing online...
From an early trial with webpages, adding specific products 'buy-now' buttons, this principle of selling online grew, adding our colectables through auction and familiar other sites, with the deeper study of programming in code brought us to experiment with this online 'shopping cart' as often they are referred to. Without the expense of monthly fees or a massive outlay on commercial software, our 'online shop' has progressed from a handful of our transport collectables, many new items plus a migration of products from the older 'hand coded' pages have been included with many more to follow.
The future of Dinnages, publishing...
From those early days of taking photographs in exchange and selling specialist booklets on transport, we have a vast library of our own material and many sources of good historians that we have visions of drawing on ideas of those smaller publishers therefore aim to create a similar publication or two in time to come.
We continue forward in looking after the enthusiast, historian, book publishers, and industry in our sales.
More about our history can be found from our Home Page at, www.TransportPostcards.co.uk
