Lists of models

Someone recently asked me whether there is any information on how many models Corgi produced. Whilst I have not seen any figures for production, the Great Book of Corgi does include a figure in the information panels for many models indicating sales. I may have confused these terms myself in various articles and lists but I think it is safe to assume that the majority of those figures will be a good representation of the likely scarcity of a model. There have to be caveats, though; the most important one being that these are numbers copied by me from a database published by another Andrew on an early Little Wheels website which, in turn, were copied from the Great Book itself and so it is quite possible that there are some errors. An extra digit or missing zero on the right makes a huge difference!

Another aspect to bear in mind is that the figure for any model shows the total sales and this will be for all the variations. So there may be a model that looks relatively common with large sales but which may have had a small number issued with a different type of wheel, different colour or other changes, one or more of which may have applied in just a tiny percentage of sold models.

I remember trying to estimate how many #422 Bedford 'Corgi Toys' Van with a blue body and yellow roof or 50-50 split might have been available. The book says that just 67000 Bedford #422 vans were sold, which isn't many to start with. The period during which it was available for sale was just 24 months as an absolute maximum (we never get months for when a model was withdrawn, only years). During that period smooth wheels were changed to shaped wheels at some point. Let's assume that was half-way during production so there might have been 33500 of each but, as it would be fair to add the assumption that there would have been rather more produced at the start of the period than the end, a more accurate division might be 45000 / 22000. Next, from experience, all the models with different paint finishes have had smooth wheels so the maximum number of any of the three known paint variations would be one-third of 45000 which is 15000.

It is also reasonable to assume that there were rather more of the 'normal' yellow vans with blue roofs made than either of the other two so, if we say 80% of them were 'normal' then just 3000 would have one of the two rare finishes and I've certainly seen more 50-50s than yellow roof examples so I'm inclined to settle on there being around 1000 with the blue body and yellow roof. That's 1000, not 67000, a massive difference and which, incidentally, would make that edition one of Corgi's rarest, but that's another story entirely!

So you can see just how misleading these numbers can be, unless there really were no significant variations during a model's production.

For those who would still like to know, however, I have summarised the numbers on a page on my website. the address is https://www.corgi.toys/models-1956-70s or just click here. You will see small tabs to the lists which will permit them to be shown in different orders.

I hope this is helpful for whoever wrote to me and provides fascinating food for thought for others.

Note: there was a lot of data destroyed in the fire at Mettoy's factory in March 1969 so several models have no figures shown, nor are there available records for many from the 1970s

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