Transpalite table lighter

[hippy624]

Hi,

Apologies if this has been covered ad infinitum before but I'm trying to find out a bit more about the attached table lighter. It was my grandfather's and I remember it as a child, but I recently stumbled upon it again and realised that I'd never come across another one like it.

It says "Transpalite Embedment Made in England" on the bottom, but, and excuse my ignorance on cars, I'm not sure what the car is inside. E-type?

Any help much appreciated

James

dinky.jpg (175.59 KiB) Viewed 2689 times

[matchboxkiwi]

Hi James. Thank you for posting this picture. I know a little bit about Transpalite but I'm sure there are others who could tell you more about it so I'll leave it to them.
The car is MB-32 E-type Jag. It has gray tyres making it an early release. The later issued one's had black tyres. Interestingly yours has no plastic window insert. This would have been a light green colour.
I've not seen this model in a transpalite block before. Another interesting point particularly with the yesteryear models in the transpalite block was they always seemed to get air trapped around the wheels. I don't know why. It may have had something to do with the wire wheels. Your Jaguar obviously has wire wheels but I don't see any problem with air bubbles.

Cheers, Steve
Matchboxkiwi

[GHOSTHUNTER]

Hi James, please have a look at the 'Transpalite' article on this website...http://www.matchboxmemories.com/
Scroll down the left hand side Blue buttons and click on the Seventh one down (Yesteryear Giftware), then click on the 'Other Giftware' picture at extreme right (the picture with the Jumbo Jet model on an Ash tray) and scroll down until you see some bright Red text, that should interest you.

Ghosthunter.

[Moyboy]

I've seen others but not the Jag. It would be a pretty scarce item I think and reason the windows have been left out was to allow the resin to enter the model - they were famous for getting bubbles to form under small places like roofs etc and a lot were no good so got scrapped. There is a post on the Moyboyz site about these models and a copy of an email sent to me by the son of the guy who had the company explain the process etc. Seems a lot of heat and pressure was required to encase the models and afterwards the whole thing had to be buffed up on a polishing wheel as they came out looking cloudy but once polished they became clear. very nice item to have.

[hippy624]

Thank you every one for all your help, makes things a little bit clearer. With regards to the process, there do appear to be a couple of air bubbles, or at least that's what they look like, but mainly on the other side of the car. I think you can just see one towards the rear of the roof on the photo.

[matchboxkiwi]

Yes, I saw that but wasn't sure if it was a chip on the model or an air bubble.

Cheers Steve
Matchboxkiwi