Long gone dealers of military and useful stuff

[Mike K]

Another great place was AUTO SURPLUS in Mitcham . The guy on the counter Colin was very friendly and a WW2 vet . I asked him who owned the business and he said old man Hancock . Hancock had a finger in many pies .

Anyway, they had a large amount of WW2 parts NOS . US pattern tailights $5 EACH . Trico vacuum wiper units 10 bucks for the box of 2 . They had a lot of NOS Studebaker stuff , I remember buying the headlight units in the boxes .

Colin was telling me they were scrapping some of the Stude parts , stuff like shock absorbers as nobody wanted them, he said they had contacted Israel but they didn't want any ! He had boxes of the early CMP rubber tailights . I used to buy the packets of trico wiper blades , painted in various shades of OD .

Colin was telling me, just after the war, he was a buyer for HEALINGS in Melbourne, he said he attended many surplus autions , some held in remote locations. He said the best buys were vehicles that were not running because of a missing dissy or similar , he said they sold for next to nothing . He was saying HEALINGS had F15A Blitzes brand new .

They had a few White scout car bits too, I found NOS instrument cluster and speedo , didnt buy them .