In the market for a small car?
Auctioneer Simon Hope loves classic vehicles, whatever the size…
GOOD things come in small packages, so the saying goes. And that’s certainly the case for auctioneer Simon Hope whose collection of classic cars has just netted him £300,000. Admittedly there were close to 3,000 of them and each one would have fitted in his trouser pocket.
Not that any of them ever did. That would have spoiled the boxes they came in when they were bought and every one of Simon’s cars – and its box – was in mint condition. Hence the staggering amount they raised.
Simon’s hobby began when his parents and grandparents started buying him a model for birthdays and Christmases as a young boy. They stayed in mint condition largely because his grandma banned him from playing with them on her lovely mahogany dining table.
His enjoyment of them was thus restricted to taking them out of the box to admire them and then putting them back, practically untouched.
His passion continued into adulthood. Since then, the man who founded H&H Classics, a specialist auction house dedicated solely to roadgoing motorcars and motorcycles, built a world-class collection of Matchbox models. His focus was the 1-75 series, so-called because there were originally only ever 75 in the range. As one new model was introduced, another was discontinued.
“It was only when I got older that I realised there was actually a collecting scene out there and information on rarer versions and colours,” says Simon, now 68.
“I never took part in that scene, preferring to simply track down the ones I wanted in perfect, or as near as possible, condition. It just grew and generally, they were bought with amounts not missed at the time.”
The collection, rightly noted as one of the finest and best kept in the world, comprised some extremely rare examples, attracting bidders from all over the globe.
It was so big it had to be spread out over three different sales with specialist toy auctioneers Vectis of Thornaby, North Yorkshire.
The most expensive model was a lime green ERF Dropside lorry that alone sold for £6,200. A green Ford Kennel truck for transporting dogs fetched £3,200 and a white Ford Mustang £2,100.
Julian Royse, a specialist at Vectis, says: “This collection was astounding and probably had the biggest range of any I’ve seen.
“There is a big market out there for items like this, particularly the models from the 1970s, as these things do tend to be generational. Models from the 1950s which have previously been very valuable are now less so and later examples are desirable.
“We find the demand far outstrips the supply and as such, people are very keen to get their hands on pieces which may not come up again in their lifetimes. These toys used to be exported to eastern Europe and there is surprisingly now a big market in the Czech Republic.”
Matchbox Toys was founded in 1952 by engineer Jack Odell around the same time that Simon Hope was born. Tradition has it that Odell’s daughter Anne delighted in taking spiders to school in matchboxes.
Odell saw the potential and made a tiny steamroller to take the place of the spiders. Matchbox Toys was born.
By the following year steam rollers, Land Rovers, London buses, a bulldozer and a fire engine were rolling off the production line. The first Matchbox car, an MG TD Roadster, appeared in 1954 and it has been estimated that three billion toys followed in 12,000 different models.
John William Odell (1920-2007), was born into a working class family in East London. He was expelled from school aged 13 and at 14, he started working his way through a number of jobs including van driver, cinema projectionist and a period at Simms Motor Units. The outbreak of war was the making of him. He joined the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) which gave him a trade and on demobilisation, he joined forces with two pals, Leslie Smith and Rodney Smith (no relation) who had formed their own die-casting company called Lesney Products. The name came from the first and last syllables respectively of each of the Smiths’ Christian names. Working in a former London pub in Tottenham named The Rifleman, they began making electrical components and door handles and dashboards for full-sized vehicles but turned to toys when Jack joined the business. Their first product was a popgun that fired corks.
The business tasted its first real success when they made a matchbox-sized model of the Coronation coach, designed by Jack and launched in time for the Queen’s Coronation in 1953. It was an expensive souvenir at 2/11 but more than a million were sold alongside their main business of supplying castings to industry.
Rodney subsequently sold his share of the business and emigrated to Australia, leaving Leslie and Jack to concentrate on toys. The idea of marketing them in matchboxes was a stroke of genius. The toys would fit into a child’s hand but were big enough not to be swallowed and they were easily smuggled into the classroom.
The larger, exactly to scale “Models of Yesteryear” were introduced by the mid-1950s and proved highly popular with dads and purist collectors, but it was children and Matchbox toys that were the most successful.
By the 1960s, more than 100 million were being sold annually.
In the late 1960s, Matchbox toys were being produced in factories around the world, but competition from Husky, Corgi, Bluebird and the American brands Bayco and Mattel’s Hot Wheels took its toll.
Despite winning the Queen’s Award for Export on three occasions, Lesney began to lose its momentum, hastened by Jack’s retirement in 1973. It went into receivership in 1982 and was sold the following year by Universal Toys, who were acquired themselves by the US firm Tyco Toys in 1992. The US giant Mattel bought out Tyco Toys in 1997.
H&H Classics was founded by Simon Hope in 1993 and handles everything from 1890s London to Brighton runners through to 1990s Formula 1 cars.
Auctions with online bidding are held regularly at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford; the National Motorcycle Museum, West Midlands and the Pavilion Gardens, Buxton, while its private sales garage is near Hindhead in Surrey.