Deals on wheels Small yet mighty, Dinky toys attract a lot of collectors and can fetch a small fortune
HEY may be small but Dinky cars continue to attract a huge following of collectors, all driven in the search for that elusive model and sometimes regardless of the cost.
For boys and girls of all ages, it’s a desire to find the toys they played with as kids. Or perhaps the car their father owned, or the cars they drove themselves in their youth.
“It’s the car I passed my test in,” one delighted flea market lady visitor told me as she handed the stallholder a £5 note for a somewhat battered 1960s Ford Anglia.
At the other end of the scale, investor-collectors are paying many thousands for rarities, the holy grail being “first-cast” examples of the Number 28 Series advertising delivery vans dating from the 1930s like the ones pictured here.
In 2008, an example marked “W. E. Boyce”, a cycle shop on the Archway Road in Highgate, London, in the 1930s, sold for £17,000 (£19,975 with charges levied by Stockton-on-Tees auctioneers Vectis and VAT added).
Thought to be a unique commission and somewhat more costly than the real thing, the van still stands as the UK auction record holder, as far as I am aware.
Boxed sets of six fetch more. In the same Vectis sale, what was then one of only two complete boxes to come on the market fetched £30,000. Each van was branded individually for Hornby Trains, Pickfords, Manchester Guardian, Oxo, Ensign Cameras and Palethorpes.
More recently, two boxed sets which had been stored and forgotten in a loft, sold last month for £10,200 and £9,500 respectively, much to the delight of the family that had owned them since new. They were purchased by the same collector in the specialist toy sale at M&M Auctions in Lincolnshire.
More valuable of the two was a set of six advertising Oxo Beef, Kodak Film, Dunlop Tyres, Marsh’s Sausages, Wakefield Castro! and Crawfords still in the printed yellow cardboard trade box and separated by dividers that had kept them in such good condition.
The second set had decals for Golden Shred Marmalade, Seccontine Sticks Everything, Manchester Guardian, Firestone Tyres, Atco Motor Mowers and Virol.
A sale on Wednesday, October 2, will test the market for later Dinky advertising vehicles when a collection of mint-condition, boxed milk floats will be offered by Surrey auctioneers Ewbank’s on behalf of a family that owned a local Job’s Dairy for many years.
Forty sets of the vehicles were commissioned by Job’s from Dinky in the 1960s but just eight sets were
Six Dinky No 28 delivery vans with their original yellow trade box which sold at Special Auction
Services in Berkshire for £11,000 hammer One of 32 boxes of 1960s Dinky electric milk floats, each containing six vehicles promoting Job’s Dairy, each box estimated at £250-350, to be sold at Ewbank’s auctioneers in Surrey on October 2
given away, while the rest were put away in a cupboard where they have remained since.
The 32 lots, some in the original yellow trade boxes, each containing six of the milk floats in cream with red lettering and red load-bed and treaded tyres, are each estimated at £250 to £350.
Every collector knows that Frank Hornby (1863-1936), the Liverpool inventor of Meccano, or “Mechanics Made Easy” as he called it, was the man behind Dinky, but fewer know that the cars were marketed originally as “Hornby Modelled Miniatures”.
They first appeared in 1933, just three years before his death, and were intended as accessories to Hornby’s blossoming electric train sets. Once a child had a train layout with stations and other paraphernalia, a display of vehicles to transport miniature passengers to them became essential.
The first cars appeared in the shops in 1933 and the name Dinky Toys followed in 1934.
In the years up to the Second
World War, a bewilderingly extensive range of models was produced.
Production was affected severely during the war years when the Binns Road factory was put over almost exclusively to war work, but somehow the company managed to release small numbers of cars and Meccano sets each Christmas, probably from existing stocks since the shortage of metal would have precluded new production runs.
Come 1946 and the company was able to announce “new” models that were, in fact, often reissues of those seen previously using the same moulds but different colour schemes.
The austere post-war years saw new Dinky issues concentrating mainly on lorries, vans and commercial vehicles, but in the later 1950s, new models from the car giants were quickly matched by an explosion of well modelled Dinky versions.
The company’s eventual decline began in the early 1960s with the appearance of Corgi and Lesney toys.
The two firms brought with them new ideas, more modern manufacturing plant and innovative advancement in model making.
Corgi, for example, advertised their models as “the ones with windows.”
Meccano was taken over by Lines Brothers in 1964 with the promise that high quality toy cars would continue to flow from the Liverpool plant. However, this proved to be too difficult a promise to keep and much to the disappointment of
Dinky and Meccano lovers and collectors all over the world, the factory closed on the last day of November 1979.
The Dinky tradename subsequently changed hands several times, becoming part of Matchbox International Ltd in the late 1980s, itself owned by the US giant Mattel, of Hot Wheels fame.
The coveted 1920s-style 28 Series delivery vans now commanding such astronomical prices were produced for just a year, from 1934-35, and used the same moulds as the Modelled Miniatures version.
In these early years, the models were cast in lead which proved to be better able to withstand the passage of time as opposed to the later alloy cast models that replaced lead on the grounds of health and safety and cost of manufacturing.
Condition is everything. Paint loss, Most collectors’ fairs have selections of Dinky cars like these to tempt buyers, with prices starting at a few pounds. The eagle-eyed will spot the treasures and bag bargains metal fatigue and crazing, missing parts or just simply “play-worn condition” to coin the collecting phrase, can knock chunks off the prices buyers are prepared to pay.
Restoration is at least as bad and sometimes worse. Sadly, fakes and frauds dog the market, so it’s best to buy only from reputable dealers and auction houses, particularly if the price stakes are high.
Don’t try to buy one of every Dinky model made, you’ll need a bigger house. Instead, pick a theme and try to stick to it.
Oh, and collectable Dinky cars are definitely not to be played with.