Corgi Toys @ 60: The Rocket Age and a Cement Tipper

An odd selection hit the shelves of your local toy shop in September 1959. The Rocket Age Gift Set 6, an ERF Cement Tipper and one of very few Corgi models without wheels, the Decca Airfield Radar Scanner was issued on its own in a box.

I have written at some length about the impressive Rocket Age set so go back and read this article for more information about that. I shall repeat my effort at recreating the wonderful image on the box, though.

The individually boxed radar scanner really did not amass much by way of sales and is now quite sought after in its original packaging simply because there never were many around.

The third item this month was the last outing for an ERF truck, now with a tipping cement section at the back.

Early editions had metal caps on the cement section, replaced by red plastic for the majority of production. It lasted a while, through to 1964, and gets fixed shaped wheels for later editions. I'm not aware of any examples with free spinning wheels although they would have been fitted to other models in the later stages of its production.

Apart from the revised editions of the Bedford C vans, this will be the last new model issued without an interior.

Silverstone and Garage Layout Gift Set Characters

I had intended to write about the many characters who appear in the five packs which were available either separately or several were included with the big Silverstone Race Track and Garage Gift Sets. I was waiting until I had acquired them all but some are hard to find (at a modest price!) so I'll do what I can with what I have rather than delay any longer.

There are five sets of six characters. That would be thirty in all although one chap appears in several places in slightly different clothes or pose!

1501 is  the set of pit mechanics and drivers.

The three missing characters are shown below.

1502 is the set of spectators

I have all of these.

1503 is the set of race track officials.

These are the most difficult to find intact. Most carry a post which gets broken or the paper flags get lost. There is also a broadcaster chap whose aerial usually gets broken. There are two similar-looking chaps holding flags in black leather coats and blue trousers but one has a yellow tie and the other a red tie. Update 30 September 2019 - I now have a complete boxed set with original flags still attached too! So those illustrated above are available now.

1504 is the set of press officials

There are three missing

You may see that this last odd-looking fellow is the one who appears in the garage attendants set below. Or maybe he has a twin.

Update 30 September 2019 - I have now learned from someone with sharper eyes than mine that the ugly chap in the brown leather coat is not actually the same as the ugly chap in the brown leather coat in the garage attendants set after all. Here is the correct ugly chap in a brown leather coat.

You'll see he has both arms free from his body and extended a little. So I do need him and he's not an identical twin.

Here is 1505, the set of garage attendant figures

With the 'twin' who I now see is not an identical twin, my set is complete.

I am not entirely sure which sets came with which Gift Sets. I had originally thought that the Silverstone Set came with all five but those I have seen for sale only have 1501, 1502 and 1503. I can't imagine that 1504 wouldn't have been included, though, as there is a Press Box kit in the big set. So I think it is only 1505 that was not included and, I think, you'll find that in the big Garage Gift Set.

The two chaps in blue overalls in 1505 also came in the box with the 1142 Holmes Wrecker model and the one who looks like he's changing a wheel also appears with some farm conveyor models. Update 30 September 2019 - again I have been advised that the Holmes Wrecker guys are slightly different!

If anyone reading this happens to have duplicates of any of the characters that I'm missing then do let me know. Otherwise I hope these illustrations help collectors figure out which they may need and who fits in where.

Charm on the farm

If you had been looking for a green series II Land Rover then September 1962 would have provided the first opportunity when Corgi issued Gift Set 22. This was a huge set containing lots of farm models and extra bits and pieces. Two items in the early sets were unique: the all yellow flatbed trailer and a mid-green 438 Land Rover with no canopy.

Shown above between the Public Address model and a Series 1 406 it is a pretty similar shade to those two and quite distinct from the deep green that you would have found in a box at the shop later that year.

Indeed, many Gift Set 22s seem to have the deep green model so my guess is that Corgi replaced the mid-green version at some point. The Gift Set did not sell particularly well as it was expensive at 50 shillings. That's almost one and a half Transporter Sets. So, for a number of reasons, the mid-green Land Rover in 438 Series II form is a rare item. Indeed, for a long time I have not been totally convinced that it existed. I had peered at small images on various sites trying to decide whether what appeared a lighter green was, in fact, just the light or even an old 406 that had been put in the set.

This example of the Land Rover is pretty worn, missing a spare wheel and quite a lot of paint. The hook is also missing its tip. The screens are fairly clear, however, and the suspension sound. I tell myself that clean, shiny Land Rovers never look quite right anyway!

The trailer is cheerful. It looks slightly too big behind the Land Rover but it is the same as the other later-issue 101 Platform Trailers issued, having the fixed drawbar and free-spinning shaped wheels.

The search is now on for a slightly better example to be kept in a collection so these will be available to buy soon and the proceeds put towards the next ones. On past form, however, it may be a few years before another of either of these items comes along other than in a Gift Set at a thousand or two pounds (which is what this one is going for!)

This week we have seen gold-plated Corgis on the market for pretty huge sums but it is really sets like this that I prize. Despite what some may think the gold models might fetch, these farm models and similar regular issues have that certain charm and, in my view, are what Corgis are really all about.

Some Suffolk Surprises

Bury St. Edmunds is a quiet town in Suffolk that saw a little excitement yesterday. You may have seen several really nice, boxed models appearing on my site recently and they came from a customer who also gave a pile to some auction people. Auctions can work very well when there are at least two people desperately wanting to buy a particular item and my colleague did well with a few that I had advised he set a high reserve for. 

The one I had predicted would be a star was, indeed, the top price of the day although, to be fair you did get five cars and an extremely scarce box for the money. This is Gift Set 46, a very strange, even to kids at the time, group of sporty looking models described as 'All Winners'.

I have yet to discover just what it was that they 'all won' and I suspect this was just one of Corgi's marketing chaps coming up with a way to move some models they had had hanging around for a while. At £480, the total cost to its new owner would be about £600, including fees and postage, easily beating my £540 estimate.

Quite a big surprise was the price reached by the 270 James Bond car.

One of the earliest of this type, which appeared in several guises over the years and finishing up with plastic wheels and flared wheel arches. It made £460 and that must be due to the packing being the early bubble type. From the pictures (I never saw the actual model) it would appear that the side flaps are missing. For what will add up finally to nearly £600 I would hope they're just folded back! 

The nicest surprise for me was the remarkable £400 paid for A Gift Set 10. 

This does look lovely but had it come my way I would have been happy to sell it for £330, which was the price I had put on it. As it is, the new owner has actually parted company with over £500 by the time he's paid the £88 buyer's premium and some postage. Although you can buy nice reproduction boxes, this set is very difficult to make up. The blue and white Ramblers are not easy to restore and the trailers, with the same two colour finish aren't easy either. So the only sets are usually featuring a pretty scarred Rambler. For some reason the paint on them just fell off if there was a draft under the door, the doors seldom closed evenly and the door trims got lost. So this, in marvellous condition, is, indeed, pretty scarce and probably worth the money.

My favourite when I first saw a list of what might be offered was the Agricultural Gift Set 5. You see so few of these with bits and pieces included that you really would have difficulty finding anywhere else. Those key items are missing here, though. There should be a driver, a farmhand, a dog, four calves, three pigs and two piglets and some more straw card. So £360 is probably about right for that, again bearing in mind that the buyer would have to part company with about £460 in total.

The last major sale from my colleague's collection is the BMC Mini Cooper 333. Packed in the all-important 225 box with a sticker and all looking immaculate, this was the most expensive item in terms of price per pound! At £340, or about £420 including fees etc., someone must have been very keen to own one. The cars are scarce but didn't sell well, even appearing in Transporter sets as Corgi wondered how to get rid of stock with 1966 on it in later years. I have one for sale at just £60. It is the box that makes all the difference.

Three other lots were of particular interest. The iconic gold 261 James Bond Aston Martin made £290, which wasn't as much as I would have thought. There are plenty of these around but they do seem to make good prices and even the £360 total seems a touch low. Maybe the box was not perfect or the instruction sheet and lapel badge were missing. They're pretty important.

Also costing someone about £360 was this 303S Mercedes 300SL. That seemed a huge price and I can only assume it is the cast wheels that have made the difference. They only were fitted quite late in this model's life and the model was withdrawn shortly afterwards. At first glance, I thought they were actually spoked wheels - the see through wire type as on the Buick, James Bond Aston etc. The Corgi Catalogue shows this model with such wire spoked wheels as 'Available Later' (and also on the Competition Aston Martin) and for a long time I searched for these models or even pictures of them. Eventually I gave up on the Aston Martin and reckoned that the cast spoke effect wheels were what were actually issued for the Mercedes. I still look at the front wheel in this picture and my heart skips a beat but I reckon it is just a very clean cast variety.

That is definitely one to look out for, though. The Mercedes is not uncommon and you may well find an example with the scarce wheels at a modest price.

Lastly, I had placed a bid on these two myself as I have been trying to get a bronze Sting Ray for ages. But my maximum was very quickly passed as the bids sailed up to £290, meaning another £360 sale for the pair. The Oldsmobile looks lovely but they are really quite common and there are plenty still in great condition and with nice boxes for around £100. I have several varieties for sale at the moment. This, with cast wheels and no tow bar would seem to be the most common too so the big money, probably getting on for £300 is for the Sting Ray. Again, boxes are not expensive as there are loads with crimson Sting Rays in which can be used. So this bronze model on its own is costing about £250. 

That probably screws my chances of getting one anytime soon!

I understand that there are a few items that my colleague didn't sell at the auction and he has said that I may get these in a while. I am not yet sure what they'll be but I am fairly confident that a Riviera Gift Set 31 will be amongst them - a lovely original set with the earlier, light blue Buick.

I have also decided to make a couple of sets using good reproduction boxes and some replacement characters (but original cars, boats and trailers) so, as winter draws on, we can gaze on some girl surfing on a cardboard sea in December or January.

New photos and now everything* is featured on my site

You may have noticed that my albums haven't been displaying as well as they might. Firstly, they take ages to appear in the first place on my Windows devices - and that includes some pretty fast Windows 10 machines - and secondly, they don't appear at all on most other devices like mobile phones or Chromebooks. Now, when you remember that the albums are created using a Google product (Picasa Web Albums) and many of the devices I am talking about are Google Android ones, you can imagine my frustration! I have waited long enough, though, for this to be resolved as I had hoped it might and set about changing every page.

After what has been a long, long job, I think everyone should now be able to see the images and albums without huge delays and also on virtually any device. I have put a single image on the site page for each items and that links to a Google Photos album.

I just hope people do click the images as there is nothing to tell them! I may have to add something across the whole site one day for that. Another job for another day.

The albums can also show on mobile devices although Google disappointingly give me no control over how the images appear, other than the order. The album title is the catalogue number only. I suppose one day I could add the names too but that's a long job. It does open in a fresh window, though, which means I don't lose people off the site.

My main concern has been to make it fairly easy to keep things up-to-date and the site to stay fairly quick-loading. The photos I take are automatically copied to Google Photos whenever I take them off the camera's memory card and so too are copies I make at rather smaller sizes more appropriate for web use so that's nice. I can then fairly easily add one of the smaller images to the page and add a link to the Google album in one go. That's about as easy as I guess it's going to get. I would have preferred to have albums displaying on the page, using something like an RSS feed to avoid having to add weight to the site pages themselves but I was unable to find any solution that would provide this and not need huge amounts of code being added and edited each time. That is still the better solution but someone somewhere needs to make it simpler to do. I can imagine a little programme that picks up the model number / stock number from the page, finds the relevant album in Google Photos and rattles off the code for those images to be pulled in and displayed on the site page. All I would need to do is to add it to one page and paste it to any others.

Anyway, that's probably only of interest to geeky people so I will move on to the other changes. I have replaced the All Models section (which was a link to an early edition of the site with small images from places like Vectis) and now include images of absolutely everything* in the various sections. There are two additional sections: Corgi Majors and Gift Sets which include items that I am rather unlikely to get as they're outside what I would normally collect but are still of interest to many visitors and, indeed, need to be included somewhere. The Gift Sets also include one or two items that you simply couldn't get on their own - like the old green #406 Land Rover or white #490 VW Breakdown Truck. So they had to be there and when I realised how many there had been I had to have a separate list to fit them all in!

The Corgi Majors are also quite a lot more extensive than I realised, with some items lasting for a long time and others coming and going quite quickly. I now understand much better some of the differences between these - like the Low Loaders and Transporters, for instance.

In due course, I expect I shall separate Farm Machinery, Military items and Circus stuff in the single section they're in at the moment, just to make life easier, and the same needs to be done for the 'Commercial & Others' section although I am none too sure how to compartmentalise these at the moment.

So there remains work to be done but I do hope the changes are appreciated by visitors and make things a bit easier to find. If anything is broken or not quite right, do let me know as checking the whole damn thing isn't easy!

*

I have still managed to avoid dealing with Batman, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Popeye and the Green Hornet. I know that one day I will have to for the sake of completeness. Still others to come first, though, as I find things like Impalas with different interiors more interesting. And a lot cheaper!

A list of Corgi Gift Sets

This was a lot longer than I had thought it would be! It just goes to show that I am still learning, even after all these years! Well, one or two are late Whizzwheel-type sets which I would not have paid any attention to at the time. These are all 1:43 scale. (If I have missed anything then do let me know.)

Some readers may find this useful. I have spent most of the day trying to figure out which Gift Set is which and what the differences were between what looked pretty identical. It all started when I was looking at Gift Set 41 and wondering why it seemed exactly the same as Gift Set 48. If I hadn't been staring at pictures of the actual boxes I would have just put it down to someone making a mistake but, yes, there really were two Transporter sets with different numbers. I think one was for export or mail order but later arrived in the catalogues.

The contents of these I have yet to complete but that's for another day. These are all very expensive as, whilst I am not too concerned for individual models, you do need the box for the Gift Set, and all the bits too! So I have very few of these. I can track any down, though, for anyone looking for something. Even with the reputable sellers, you do still often find sets that have been 'made up' and someone hasn't quite got it right.



There should be a list displayed above that you can scroll through. If not then try this link to my original sheet.