Myth Buster
Rare Matchbox ‘75’and ‘Superfast’ models make a six figure sum
Standard Eight and Ten
JULIAN ROYSE, VECTIS
One man’s lifetime collection of 3000 Matchbox models has netted more than £300,000 at auction.
H&H Classics founder, Simon Hope, 68, began amassing Matchbox 1-75 toys as a child, frequently receiving them as birthday and Christmas gifts.
When his tiny garage grew to include more than 3000 models, Simon decided to sell the entire cache through toy auctioneer, Vectis.
The 1:75 scale cars and trucks included many rare examples; all were in mint condition, right down to their original boxes.
Simon said: ‘[The collection] just grew – and generally they were bought with amounts of money not missed at the time.’
Vectis specialist, Julian Royse, said: ‘There is a big market out there for items like this, particularly the models from the 1970s, because these things do tend to be generational.
‘These toys used to be exported to eastern Europe and surprisingly there is now a really big market in the Czech Republic.
‘This collection was astounding and probably had the biggest range of any I’ve seen.’
CCW’s automobilia guru, David Brown, said:
‘Simon’s collection included many fine examples of difficult to track down variations of otherwise standard models. Suddenly things that started life as “pocket money” models later sold for big money due to their rarity.’
‘There’s a big market for items like this, particularly 1970s models, because these things tend to be generational’