Corgi Catalogues 1958 to 1972

You may have noticed that I have changed the site's home page. That has been necessary because I would like to be easier for collectors to find when they search for Corgi Toys. Google now say that web sites should adjust automatically to match the type of device they are being viewed on. So there need to be different versions for big desktop monitors, large tablets, small tablets and phones held one way or the other. They punish those sites that don't comply with low rankings. It's annoying bvut that's life these days. You can imagine that the coding for all that can be something of a nightmare!

Luckily, there are some nice people out there who not only make templates we can use but they also include code that detects the type of device and makes all the adjustments automatically. It's all quite impressive. I can just about manage to figure out most of it but it isn't that straightforward to transfer data from one place to another. So I found it considerably simpler to make a few new pages with the new style and leave all the rest as it was.

I am really hoping that Google will now start giving me some credit for this, although there are still 1000+ pages that do not comply with their requirements. The chances of me ever changing all of them are extremely thin unless someone out there has a particularly bright idea and some spare free time!

The new home page does enable me to show some nice images in king-size view and each one relates to a different section of the site: British cars, American cars etc.

The new 'latest additions' page works in a similar way, with links on the big picture page to the main site description etc.

While I was at it I decided to make the catalogues more accessible to collectors. These are great sources of information and just lovely to scroll through for hours on end. I still feature them under Lists in the main site but they can now be seen directly from the Corgi Catalogues link on the new home page. I have published nice quality pages from complete catalogues from 1958 all the way through to 1972, which I acquired recently.

I used to offer to supply digital copies of catalogues at a small fee but now you can download images as you wish without charge. A customer did ask me if I could make printed versions of these and I can imagine that they would be very popular. However, with many having 40 or more pages I would have to pay for at least 10 double sided pages. In small quantities they would come out at about £8 and setting up the pages in the right order so that they make a booklet at the end of the day isn't as simple as it sounds at all! So they would have to cost at least £10 and, guess what, that's about the price you can buy originals for if you look around! So, until I can find a cheaper print solution I will leave it to people to print their own if they wish.

Some of the catalogues are American or European versions. Sorry if the prices are confusing but these are the best I have at the moment.

Corgi Toy Catalogue 1963

The front cover has this remarkable colour sketch of what could be any suburban high street except that it has six lanes! Sitting waiting for the schoolboy in dark pink blazer to cross with his corgi dog are a Thames Airborne Camper Van, a Chevrolet Impala and a Jaguar Mk X.

The Thames and Chevrolet are not new models but the Jaguar is, joined by the Citroen Safari and one or two others. Military items now claim just half a page and Chipperfields Circus extends even further now. I think several of the army vehicles have been re-used as Circus vehicles too now.

There are also plenty of commercial bans and lorries still around but overall the catalogue seems quite sparse with so many pages devoted to kits and layout items.

The cover boy is clutching a brown paper parcel which we have to assume is a new Corgi Toy, just bought from the shop nearby. The shop awning bears the name TIES which I have always thought a bit odd. Clearly the artist had something in mind as they're not random strokes just trying to resemble letters. There doesn't appear to be another canvas to the left where perhaps some preceding letters of a name might have been and, in any case, this one extends across the whole width of the shop front. Odd.

Land Rovers 416S and 417S, the RAC and breakdown truck versions, are featured for the first time along with 351S in RAF trim but, intriguingly, 438 is also shown. All marked as #available later'. My guess is that this will make the S editions have quite a short life. I hadn't seen many around and that may explain why.