Shite in Miniature II

[Metal Guru]

On 06/03/2023 at 22:10, eddyramrod said:

I was in town this morning with a little time to myself, so I thought I'd check out my big BuM... oh.  That might sound slightly more risque than it actually was!

Imagine my delight at finding clipstrips full of Matchbox cars at £1.79 each.  That's reassuring.

I can remember Matchbox cars costing half a crown !

[sierraman]

8 hours ago, Jon said:

Not sure why but the stripey Cortina is my least favorite version but I do like the casting, in general. Was never a fan of the low hanging front number plate, though - too easy to get caught up in the carpet, back in the day.

I had that Matchbox 959 in the same shade but don't remember it being a colour changer!

I think I can trace my love of Ford back to having a metallic green Matchbox Cortina as a kid. I’d often recreate scrapyards with the broken stuff and have the Cortina as ‘my’ car. 

[Jon]

1 hour ago, sierraman said:

I think I can trace my love of Ford back to having a metallic green Matchbox Cortina as a kid. I’d often recreate scrapyards with the broken stuff and have the Cortina as ‘my’ car. 

Thinking about it, there were lots of my brother's toy cars I liked, as he was older, so had slightly earlier ones. Green Cortina, green Mk1 Golf,  brown SD1, orange Transit pickup, metallic blue Corgi Juniors SD1, orange Volvo 245, light green VW Polo, to name a quite a few. Dinky 265, Superkings 245 in red (mine was a rally support one, so far less realistic/uninteresting)

I must've been a proper green eyed monster!

 

Funny old thing, this shite reminiscing...

 

[bunglebus]

I still need to find a decent rally support Superkings Volvo to replace my childhood one. Somehow the Datsun survived and is still with me

[flat4alfa]

1 hour ago, bunglebus said:

I still need to find a decent rally support Superkings Volvo to replace my childhood one. Somehow the Datsun survived and is still with me

This one is cheap and looks ok, needs a clean https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/325565146670

You might even be able to smoke what it's covered in

[eddyramrod]

7 hours ago, Metal Guru said:

I can remember Matchbox cars costing half a crown !

I can remember them going up to half a crown!

[Metal Guru]

3 minutes ago, eddyramrod said:

I can remember them going up to half a crown!

Actually , I can remember them being 2 shillings.

[eddyramrod]

4 minutes ago, Metal Guru said:

Actually , I can remember them being 2 shillings.

Yes, me too.  It coincided with my pocket money so I was able to buy my own.  That was nearly 60 years ago and I've never really stopped.

 

[bunglebus]

29 minutes ago, flat4alfa said:

This one is cheap and looks ok, needs a clean https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/325565146670

You might even be able to smoke what it's covered in

Already watchlisted 😁

[flat4alfa]

Was confused by all this Imperial currency speak, so looked it up.  Half a Crown was two Shillings and Sixpence?  Which in 1960 was equivalent to approx £3.50 decimal today

Hmmm...   perhaps I need to stop complaining about £2 Matchboxes in the Supermarkets 😁 

[Datsuncog]

3 hours ago, bunglebus said:

I still need to find a decent rally support Superkings Volvo to replace my childhood one. Somehow the Datsun survived and is still with me

Weirdly, I've never seen a Superkings 245 in the metal. Not at the time they were still current in the shops, and not in any secondhand shops/ stalls since.

Which is odd, as they're not rare. I've owned/ encountered a fair few Dinky 265s over the years- but not the Matchbox version.

I'm curiously ambivalent about late 70s/ early 80s Superkings as I reckon the proportions could be a bit blocky, but still... if I saw a reasonable one at a decent price - either plain red/ green or white rally support - I'd be sure to nab it.

[Metal Guru]

1 hour ago, flat4alfa said:

Was confused by all this Imperial currency speak, so looked it up.  Half a Crown was two Shillings and Sixpence?  Which in 1960 was equivalent to approx £3.50 decimal today

Hmmm...   perhaps I need to stop complaining about £2 Matchboxes in the Supermarkets 😁 

Half a crown probably sounds almost medieval to millennials.

 

[danthecapriman]

6 minutes ago, Datsuncog said:

Weirdly, I've never seen a Superkings 245 in the metal. Not at the time they were still current in the shops, and not in any secondhand shops/ stalls since.

Which is odd, as they're not rare. I've owned/ encountered a fair few Dinky 265s over the years- but not the Matchbox version.

I'm curiously ambivalent about late 70s/ early 80s Superkings as I reckon the proportions could be a bit blocky, but still... if I saw a reasonable one at a decent price - either plain red/ green or white rally support - I'd be sure to nab it.

I’ve got a nice red Superkings 245, they’re nice looking models imho. And you get a sprung fat lip front bumper too! Shame they didn’t do the 244 though. 
I think they did a metallic green version too, which I’d like to get.

[bunglebus]

I shouldn't really complain, as I have a pretty decent rally support 

As well as the ambulance 

A blue

A really lovely red

And I did have a green...

But I customised it

I should try and find another to replace it

[flat4alfa]

Ken only ever had one Matchbox Volvo 245 and that was in Police livery with flacid horns.  Not unlike Ken.

The Ambulance did come in handy when Dolly had a bit of a turn

What irked me was the choice of wheels, seemed to put me off the model.  It was purged some time ago, for shelf space

[Datsuncog]

2 hours ago, flat4alfa said:

Was confused by all this Imperial currency speak, so looked it up.  Half a Crown was two Shillings and Sixpence?  Which in 1960 was equivalent to approx £3.50 decimal today

Hmmm...   perhaps I need to stop complaining about £2 Matchboxes in the Supermarkets 😁 

It's true - there's been a huge skew in relative prices in the past half-century or so. Some things that were cheap have become very cheap, other things that were pricey have become fairly cheap, while other things have become rather more expensive...

Obviously electronic technology is the the one that seems most noticeable - the Cogparents never tire of telling me how their first colour telly in the late '70s (a Teleton, I seem to recall) cost them the equivalent of two months' take-home wages; say about £4,000 now, relatively speaking. Whereas these days you can get a smallish basic flatscreen for not much over a day's take-home wages (say £100) - though of course you can still blow £4k on a big flashy plasma jobber, should you feel so inclined.

Small cheap things like toy cars are one of those things I dimly remember as costing about 75p in the mid-to-late 1980s, at the point I was earning 50p a week pocket money and so able to develop a small degree of financial autonomy. I couldn't buy myself a car each week, so I'd have to save up if I wanted one. Superkings were priced about £4.99, so they were a lot more - ten weeks' pocket money, and so the kind of things that were only realistically achievable for Christmas and birthdays.

So that's interesting to learn that a basic Matchbox cost the equivalent of £3.50 back in 1960 - it gives an idea of how much cheaper they had become, relatively, over 25 years or so - £0.75 in 1985 equates to £2.13 in 2023 prices, so they had effectively dropped in price quite a bit since 1960.

The fact that individual Matchbox toys were still retailing at £1.50 until a few months ago is kinda mind-boggling when you think about it. So I guess that a rise to £2.00 for a Matchbox car and £2.20 for a Hot Wheels right now is probably only returning them to the same price point as before.

Paying £5 for a Superkings toy in 1985 equates to nearly £15 in today's money, which now seems pretty spendy. I can remember combining saved pocket money with Christmas money to go down to Woolworths and buy myself both a Plymouth Gran Fury police car and a Mercedes 190 - that felt giddily plutocratic to spend ten whole pounds in one go, and come home with two 'big' cars.

I can now understand my mother's horror upon discovering I'd blown £11 on a Bburago 1/18 Mercedes 300SL, in 1987 - that's an eyewatering £29 in today's money. Quite the investment for a seven-year-old.

Interestingly, Bburago's pricing seems to have remained fairly constant over time - by the time I was working in that same model shop about ten years later in the mid/late 90's, I was pricing up Bburago 1/18 at £16.99. That's the equivalent of £30.21 in 2023.

Today (owned by Maisto) Bburago's larger offerings seem to retail at around the £40 mark, although appear to have moved upmarket a bit with much finer detailing than their '90s equivalents. Pricey enough - but it's interesting to realise that they were never really 'cheap'.

And to put in perspective my moaning about £36 for a Vanguards model today - I spunked most of the profits from my Spot-On figurine racket on a much-coveted Trofeu Mk1 Escort around 1995, which was nearly as detailed as modern Vanguards are. It set me back £17.99 - which works out the same as spending £34.77 today.

Nothing's really changed then, except our perceptions...

[Split_Pin]

Also, toys like Superkings and 1/36 are no longer available, nor are the kind of shops that used to sell them. Before I discovered McLaren Models in Falkirk, my go- to place for mainstream cars was Woolworths in Falkirk.  They had a huge range although I don't recall them selling BBuragos, just Corgi and Matchbox.

Nowadays you're restricted to the patchy availability at Supermarkets or TK Maxx, else go online and pay high prices. So, I don't really bother, instead I just wait to see what subconscious callings of the past come up for sale on here!

[Datsuncog]

In terms of global trade, I suppose the shift to far-east manufacturing following Lesney's bankruptcy and the Universal Toys buy-out enabled Matchbox toys to be made at much lower cost than they had been in the UK, through the use of lower rates of pay to the local workforce, locating factories in Special Economic Zones with specific tax exemptions (Macau, in Matchbox's case, then China and now Thailand - though other diecast manufacturers preferred Hong Kong and Singapore, while Mattel shifted Hot Wheels production to Malaysia), as well as exchange rates that favoured such manufacturing and shipping arrangements.

I guess this became the norm as toy car sales had declined steadily from their late-60s peak, as kids developed other interests and spent their cash on other things - manufacturers couldn't rely on sheer volume to drive profitability (remember the main Matchbox factory in Enfield was churning out something insane like SIX MILLION models A WEEK in the late '60s) and, as Corgi and finally Lledo realised, it just wasn't economically viable to manufacture affordable diecast toys in the UK.

If you follow the Corgi Model Club account on Instagram, you may have noticed a chap (well, apparently it's a cat going by the avatar) who pops up on every post about a new release to ask where it's made. And every time the social media bod replies to advise that they're made in China, and then goes on to explain that the original Corgi factory in Swansea closed many years ago, and there are no diecast production facilities in the UK anymore - and even if there were, the economies of scale would mean that they'd need to charge two or three times the price to cover their costs compared to China - which would severely hamper sales.

I guess it's a niche hobby we have, and the fact we have access to so many relatively-affordable toys and models, both new and old, is still kinda cool. It could be better - but equally it could be worse. There are decent 1960s Corgi models I'm picking up in the market for £5 now that would easily have cost me £10 at an autojumble or swapmeet back in the early 1990s - that's like £20 today.

Anyway - here endeth the lesson...

[Split_Pin]

I started going to Swapmeets in 1989 and prices were definitely higher then, relatively speaking. The 60s were going through something of a revival at that time and the boom in the 1/1 classic car market seemed to trickle down to Dinky and Corgi toys of the period.  I recall mint and boxed examples being priced at well into 3 figures although these being an interstellar distance from my £5-15 budget, I didn't notice if these items ever actually sold. I don't think they'd achieve that price nowadays, unless the fantasy ebay prices are to be believed.

[MiniMinorMk3]

E-Types, from the crude 1980s to the better detailed 21st Century.

Joal Series 1 Roadster

Eligor Series 1 Roadster

Box Series 1 Roadster

Box Series 1 Coupe

Best Series 1 Coupe

Best Series 1 Lightweight

Matchbox Dinky Collection Series 1 Roadster

Matchbox Collectibles Series 1 Roadster

Vanguard Series 1 Roadster

Kyosho Series 1 Coupe

Vanguards Gold Series 1 Coupe

Vanguards Gold Series 1 Roadster

Kyosho Series 1 Roadster

Atlas Series 1 Coupe

White Box Series 1 Coupe

Oxford Series 3 V12 Coupe

Auto Art Series 3 V12 Coupe

 

[MiniMinorMk3]

28 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

I started going to Swapmeets in 1989 and prices were definitely higher then, relatively speaking. The 60s were going through something of a revival at that time and the boom in the 1/1 classic car market seemed to trickle down to Dinky and Corgi toys of the period.  I recall mint and boxed examples being priced at well into 3 figures although these being an interstellar distance from my £5-15 budget, I didn't notice if these items ever actually sold. I don't think they'd achieve that price nowadays, unless the fantasy ebay prices are to be believed.

You'd be surprised what people will pay for the right mint and boxed model. You also nee to add 25% buyers premium to these prices to get the actual amount paid.

[sierraman]

39 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

I started going to Swapmeets in 1989 and prices were definitely higher then, relatively speaking. The 60s were going through something of a revival at that time and the boom in the 1/1 classic car market seemed to trickle down to Dinky and Corgi toys of the period.  I recall mint and boxed examples being priced at well into 3 figures although these being an interstellar distance from my £5-15 budget, I didn't notice if these items ever actually sold. I don't think they'd achieve that price nowadays, unless the fantasy ebay prices are to be believed.

Also round that time the whole ‘Collectors Item’ movement got going, so things that were touted as being future heirlooms ended up being worth sweet fuck all like the Lledo Days Gone and Yesteryears. I’d be interested to see in 20 years time, will today’s Matchbox be sought after? I think maybe yes as they are often done in short runs with poor supply. Something in the 1980’s range might have been sold for 2-3 years whereas that same colour/spec might only get sold for 2-3 months meaning it becomes hard to track down. Maybe I’m talking bollocks but it’s a possibility. 

[Split_Pin]

I think the main thing is that apart from the examples us lot hoover up, most HW and MB will be played with to either destruction or at least well worn, so as you say some of the shorter runs will become sought after. 

I just can't understand how Bburago and Polistil 1/24/5 scale cars from the 1970s and 80s have not become more collectable. They were almost ubiquitous when I was a kid yet fell to bits after a few days. They modeled real cars you could see down your street which themselves are now collectable. But apart from some high prices for MIB examples on ebay unboxed items are relatively overlooked. They probably don't appear on this thread much as over the years I think I have acquired most of the collections of other members! I think they are brilliant as they were well beyond pocket money budget as a kid so I'm now trying to own all the ones other kids had that I didn't!

[Datsuncog]

Forgot to say - picked up a Hot Wheels Miura in MoreThanAPoundLand last night.

They didn't have much else of interest, but I'd picked this one up and put it back several times already over the past year and decided that tonight was the night...

I do like a Miura. I'm not normally a supercar fan, but they just look so right from every angle.

Also swung by Asda in North Belfast last night - not normally a supermarket I would go into as there aren't any local to me, but I was on the way back from the MOT centre in Mallusk and thought I might give it a try just in case...

Yeah, that'll be a no then.

Ah well.

[Split_Pin]

I'll check the tubs in Tesco tonight although they only seem to replenish the stock a few times a year.

[quicksilver]

18 hours ago, Jon said:

Finally, look at this piece!

 

I'm still struggling to decipher what the heck it's supposed to have been based on, about 4 stolen casting renditions prior; the closest so far is a sort of resemblance to a late 60s Buick Electra, at the front. Vaguely.

There was a little feigning of delight as my wife sought credit for her hand picked efforts but in reality, this brought more pleasure than I imagined it would have.

I mean, there's no way I'd have picked it up and bought it myself but to be given something as a gift transcends the significance, somehow. Yes, it's the closest of the 4 selected that aligns with my core interest - but just look at it! A rolling relic of the sad decline in the die cast industry.

Admittedly though, it rolls beautifully!

Maybe just because you're in that part of the world, but my first thought was Leyland P76. That would be a pretty off the wall choice but then again toy manufacturers have often gone for some weird subjects. Makes me wonder, has anyone ever modelled the P76?

[bunglebus]

Had a couple of left-field choices arrive. This Zowee was hidden in with a load of broken Hot Wheels and Corgi junk

I got very excited about this one, thinking for a minute I'd finally found the 1:64 Polistil 928

And in a way I have - this is the same casting but with the name removed and made by Golden Wheel. I've already got the yellow version

One day I'll find an original and complete the set

 

[Datsuncog]

1 hour ago, quicksilver said:

Makes me wonder, has anyone ever modelled the P76?

I don't think it was ever modelled in period, but Trax do a 1/43 version:

It's resin rather than diecast - I think I saw one in a model shop in Brisbane around 2005, but it was strong money and I couldn't very well justify it... I did leave with a 1/60-ish Ford Falcon XY GTHO...

 but I'd sooner have had the P76...

Trax also do a model of the strangled-at-birth P76 Force 7 coupe, too.

HFM?

Strewth.

[bunglebus]

I also had a whole bunch of Marx cars turn up too, mainly as some still had the card base/interior present

That Camaro is laughably bad really, I'd never have guessed that's what it's supposed to be.

I updated my Eldorado post too as I forgot this one

[bunglebus]

Any guesses what this is?