Two early box inserts

 

With no new releases in November, I thought I would have a closer look at a couple of leaflets that you may not see very often. These two were included in the box with models in the first two or three years.

The first one doesn't have any date or print reference but I think it may well have been the first leaflet, included from the launch as it features just those July 1956 models. It also refers to a pink slip, with which you could apply for membership of what was termed the Corgi Car Club and get the C.C.C. Certificate.

The Mechanical editions are all listed with the price 1/3d higher than the normal issue in every case. For those no familiar with British currency prior to 1971, we had pounds, shillings and pence. The pounds are as they always have been but were split into 20 shillings and a shilling was split into 12 pennies. The accepted form of display of a price was like 2/9, representing 2 shillings and 9 pence. An exact number of 2 shillings would be shown as 2/-, hence the 4/- shown for several models.

On your old boxes you may also see the price shown as 2/9d. Here the 'd' standards for the Latin denarius. Our old currency is often referred to as £sd which originally would have been librae, solidi and denarii although we only talked of pounds, shillings and pence.

One thing I noticed was the excellent quality of the artwork on these leaflets, especially this first.

The next is a leaflet printed in late 1957 and presumably included in boxes from early 1958.

This is interesting in that it includes the Pony Trailer which the Great Book of Corgi says this was issued in January 1958, but not the Platform Trailer, supposedly issued at the same time.

The Mechanical models are now just mentioned in a panel with rather less prominence than before and we are now encouraged to join the Corgi Model Club!

This leaflet has slightly less-detailed artwork but still very attractive illustrations and this lovely shade of blue for the Citröen caught my eye.

Corgi Model Club: another 300SL and a catalogue of errors

 The Corgi Model Club's second issue of #303S Mercedes-Benz 300SL Roadster has arrived. My first thought on opening the box was that the Club must have used, as a guide to colour, an old example that had been lying around next to an ashtray or having spent its life in a pub, with a colour that I would describe as pale tobacco stain.

I rushed to dig out my original and put them side by side. Whilst the reissue is a bit creamier or browner, I have to admit that it's not as far out as I initially reckoned. Indeed, looking at my car in my hand it looks quite 'white'. Place it on my desk and it's cream! I tried to take some photos to show the difference but they don't really show much at all!

The Club do make quite a big thig about this 'white livery'. though. Putting aside my feeling that 'livery' isn't really the right word here, they make some mistakes in the Certificate in this respect. First of all they write about this being the 1963 model. No, a driver was added to the model in 1963 but there had been an off-white edition with yellow interior since 1961. Admittedly the free-spinning wheels will have been fitted later but they came before the driver. They write that this 'was only produced in white' but, no, there continued to be the blue model (which the Club themselves have produced, and with a driver!) and there are silver / gold mirror finish models still available much later (as you'll find these with wire or cast wheels from 1965/66). They write about this model being issued in white and off-white as if they were separate issues but there really was just the one 'sort of white' just having the usual spread of shades as with most colours in the old days.

The Certificate also rambles on about the 'S' suffix being dropped between 1964 and 1965. It wasn't. That's a mistake in the little red booklet, supplied with the Great Book of Corgi, from where, I suspect, they copied some of the data without checking.

[Note the 'spoked hubs'! I did eventually find the Mercedes-Benz but have never seen the Aston Martin]

The errors don't stop there this month, I'm afraid, because this model was accompanied by a nice little catalogue, setting out the Club's currently available models with illustrations and descriptions reminiscent in many ways of the original old Corgi Toy catalogues from the mid 1960s. Nice as it looks, it is nonetheless filled with mistakes which I'll detail at the end of this article.

Back to the Mercedes-Benz, here are some photos.

It is a very well-finished model, as, of course was the earlier blue one. I do feel it looks considerably more attractive in this colour. I believe the driver was originally the same chap as drove the #215S Ford Thunderbird, later losing his legs and becoming Roger Moore as 'The Saint' in a Volvo in 1965. 

This is a nice reproduction and perfectly adequate as a space-filler until you find a nice original. White examples are not particularly scarce (unlike the sister #304S in white) but still command quite high prices. Cheaper ones will invariably have a cracked or broken windscreen, a missing driver and/or damaged transfer. The suspension, rock-hard on these as they featured Corgi's first concept, involving a second piece of tin which was pretty much indestructible, is never a problem. Indeed, many sellers do not realise they have a #303S and advertise their model as a 303!

Corgi Catalogues and how to get pleasantly lost in my Corgi Toys websites

 Because I am familiar with all the bits and pieces lying around on my websites I have not appreciated how confusing some parts may be to visitors so I need to do something about this. First of all, I have two areas called 'Catalogue' or 'Catalogues' which need to be distinguished rather better. If I need to consult a Corgi Catalogue, one of the little books or leaflets issued in the past, then I know that I can click on the link word Catalogue in the text of the home page of corgi.toys, which is where I usually start. (If you start elsewhere there are explanations further down this page.)

I can also click the image that has the text Catalogue beneath it.

These don't take you to the old Corgi Catalogues just yet - another click or two is required. This is a bit more obvious with an illustration of the 1967-8 Corgi Catalogue and that word Catalogues below

Click on that image and finally you're getting closer, on a page titled 'Catalogues' no less.

This page is not very pretty but does have links to various years for which I have original Corgi Catalogues and have made images available to view. So clicking on 1972, for example, takes you to a page usefully entitled 1972 and with the 1972 Corgi Catalogue pages displayed.

Unfortunately, the pages are not all that big and you might want to look a little more closely at some. The individual pages don't have links but if you click on the title, 1972 in this case, you will be whisked off to yet another website where I did upload decent size images.

So, finally, you can have a good read without needing a magnifying glass.

You could also have gone straight to a particular year's Corgi Catalogue by clicking on 'Catalogues' in the menu that should appear on the page with links to various groups of Corgis and lists, which looks a bit like this.

The menu features 'Catalogues' as its second item at present.

That's probably the simplest, but less obvious, method to get to a a particular year's Corgi Catalogue.

That is all very laborious, though, and hasn't changed since 2014 when I first got the catalogues. At that time I reviewed them all in this blog. So you could also find some catalogue pictures and comments about the quite interesting content that I wrote many years ago by clicking on the word catalogue in that mass of words here, usually on the right when viewed on a monitor.

Another starting point for many people may be corgi-toys.net, an address that I obtained in 2013 when I started and a long time before corgi.toys would have even worked. I was rather more sensible in those days, it seems, and actually listed Corgi Catalogues in the menu. 

Click on this and it takes you to yet another 'Catalogue' page!

The page starts by showing the 1972 Corgi Catalogue but there is a list of years to the left (on a normal monitor, not sure how it appears on a phone) and clicking on any of these will take you to the year in question.

These images are much bigger and seem to be on a totally different set of pages to either of the others mentioned above!

Going 'Home' from this last site will take you to corgi-toys.net. That is an older site but it seems reasonably OK for now and the links take you to the right places. There is no obvious way, however, to get back to corgi.toys if that's where you started. So I have a fair bit of work to do to try and tidy all this up.

Lastly, you may also find some of the old articles have links to a very ancient website I made when I started all this over ten years ago.

It does still look nice but the software I used simply couldn't handle the huge number of pages I had accumulated and it could take up to 30 minutes to make some minor change! Everything also had to be stored locally on a drive here in the office as well as online whereas now, whilst I have back-up copies of images locally, everything else is online and edited online, thanks to Google. Using Google also keeps the sites working within acceptable limits for the different devices people use nowadays to view web content. Whereas once upon a time everyone would be staring at a small, often slightly flickering screen of 640 by 480 pixels now my pages probably appear in all shapes and sizes on smartphones large and small, tablets this or that way and even tv screens.

I make no promises and certainly no New Year's Resolution to this effect but I shall certainly think about making a search for the main areas you need to access less of a Magical Mystery Tour.

The 1959 Corgi Catalogue revisited

It was nearly 8 years ago when I last looked at this catalogue. As a very nice example has just arrived I thought I would review it again. 

The first thing that strikes me is the style of wheel on the BRM or Vanwall. The criss-cross cast wheel is only seen on a few of the 150 or 152 models and I think these will have come from Gift Set 5. Note the transporter, too. A blue cab pulling the yellow carrier section. More about that later.

Inside you'll see that the two-tone versions of the first range of saloons have arrived but the Mechanical versions are also featured! 

There is a whole half-page of American cars with some interesting colours for the 220 Chevrolet and 219 Plymouth. The colours on the rest of these first pages are pretty accurate so one is tempted to assume that the artist was drawing actual models and somewhere we may one day find the production samples in the colours shown. Maybe this is a nice project for one of you expert restorers!

Models with suspension make their first appearance too. This catalogue is dated September 1959 so they are each shown as available slightly later.

Sports and racing cars on page 4 and the Hillman Husky, now in two-tone, plus some utility vehicles. Note the RAC Land Rover with headboard. It took me a while to conclude that this had been the first version but its appearance here tends to confirm matters.

Page 6 still has the cream 102 Pony Trailer and the Massey Ferguson Tractor, Trailer and the magnificent Combine Harvester are the first farm machinery to appear.

Page 9 has the 1100 Carrimore Low-loader No.1, showing a yellow can and blue loader section. This yellow cab often gets attached to the yellow Transporter rear section and some try to convince me that it was issued as all yellow but all that I have encountered have been a different shade of yellow. I'm pretty sure that kids will have swapped cabs around and, indeed, that they will have been swapped again over the years between then and now! You won't see many yellow or blue cabs pulling the Mobilgas tanker, however! That's wouldn't have looked right.

The 404 Bedford Dormobile is interesting, shown here in the two-tone colours that the Mark II editions would have been issued in (although the half-and-half colouring is now very scarce, most being just pale yellow with a pale blue roof!) and which, according to the Great Book of Corgi, had been available since February 1959! My guess is that the artist was provided with a repainted Mark I Bedford and that the issue of the Mark II was a little later than Marcel's book recalled!

More Bedford cabs here - and we have 1104 described as Low-loader No.2 with a pale grey or possibly cream cab which I haven't seen on the real model anywhere. The Transporter section has silver tracks - does anyone know about models without the silver tracks - as has been found on several examples being pulled by a metallic crimson cab but not on the normal red or blue cab editions?

Four whole pages of military models and equipment! Although it took up over 25% of this catalogue, sales were not great and Corgi's efforts were largely unprofitable in this area. Nevertheless, they are much admired and sought after now! Superbly detailed models which must have required considerable engineering skill and attention and which now command very high prices if you are lucky enough to find the items in good condition.

Note that there are no models yet available, at the time this catalogue was printed, with small-size wheels, the tyres shown on page 15 being for normal use, a chunkier size that suited Land Rovers and some other commercial vehicles and the larger diameter for the Major models.

There is also the advertisement of the first accessory pack - containing number plates, tax discs and other bits and pieces which are often still to be found firmly affixed today on models we find!

The back page promotes the imminent issue of Gift Set 8. At 27/6d this was just one penny (1/240th of a pound in those days) cheaper than buying the items individually. 

The first attempt at reviewing this catalogue in May 2014 is here.