Rocket Age Models in individual boxes top the 'Likely to be least common' Table

I was lucky to win a couple of items at an auction in a sleepy village a few days ago. No-one seemed very interested in anything being sold and I had no competition for the two Rocket Age Models I liked the look of.

These are very rare models in boxes, close to the top of the table for Corgi's published sales when that is sorted to put the smallest at the top and Batmobile at the bottom. Just 8000 each. To put that in perspective, the purple 281 Rover 2000TC with Whizzwheels sold 48000 and the equally hard to find Fiat Ghia 600 Jolly 49000. So there are not many around in their original boxes. Sure, there are more of the individual Loading Trolley and Launcher that were sold but these were in sets or with the Bloodhound Missile included. There probably wasn't much demand for a spare Launcher or Trolley as these would have been included with whatever Rocket Age set we got for Christmas 1959. I cannot imagine the parent or uncle that would have purchased just the 1115 Bloodhound Missile in a box which, incidentally but quite understandably, also had the same poor level of sales! And it would have been Christmas 1959 as they were withdrawn from production in 1961 and unlikely to have been on the shelves at Christmas 1960.

The boxes arrived this morning and are pleasantly fresh-looking boxes of the early solid type lid that sits on a yellow thick card bottom. The lower packing pieces are present but the top pieces have gone. Each has instructions for operation printed on the side of the box and they seem to work as they should with the delightfully intricate and detailed mechanisms which Corgi did so well in those times.

These will both be available in my store soon but won't be cheap - and I hope the table helps to explain why.

This table shows the complete set of data available from Marcel van Cleemput's Great Book of Corgi and related papers. There are significant omissions, though, most notably many of the short-lived Whizzwheels models from 1972-73, the 349 Mini 'Mostest' and others for which data appears to have been lost. Some, like the 412 Bedford Ambulance in MkII form, don't even get a mention. It still makes interesting reading.