1

Your cart is empty.

Little Wheels

We sell collectable pre-owned and vintage model vehicles

16 Mar

Nice Old Packard

Posted by Andrew Wood in Matchbox, Models of Yesteryear, Packard
0 Comments

 Packard Landaulet by Matchbox Models of Yesteryear Y-11/2 1964-1972

One of the many nice things about my job is reliving great childhood moments. I was given one of these in about 1964-5 and still remember being awestruck at how shiny it was, that deep, lustrous maroon & black paint. I really liked it then and I still do now.

Matchbox obviously liked it too as they kept it in the range from 1964 to 1972 and unusually for Models of Yesteryear they kept the colour the same throughout. You might see it in cream but that was from a special boxed set of super-detailed models released in 1984 as a one-off called the Connoisseur Collection.

There were some changes during the production run, the steering wheel started out metal and was changed to plastic, the spare wheel holder began with four prongs and later had three and there are also a number of variations to the baseplate casting. You will also see variations in the plating on the floor/firewall casting and the radiator although this was down to breakdowns on the plating machine in the factory rather than deliberate policy. One of the fascinations with Matchbox collecting is the variations caused by chaotic manufacturing.

This is a really nice example, with all the features of an early release, good plating and a D3 type box putting it firmly in the first years of production. Click to open on Little Wheels

14 Mar

Where do all the buses go?

Posted by Andrew Wood in Bus, Coach, Public Transport, Tramcar
0 Comments

I track very carefully what is sold at Little Wheels, what type & make of model and where it goes. We shipped more than 10,000 models in 2013 and a more than a quarter of those were buses, trams & coaches.

That's an awful lot of public transport vehicles, who buys them?

About half of them go to collectors in the UK, the rest go around the world to 50 different countries so far. Unsurprisingly given the reference to place on the destination blinds of the buses, countries where there are large ex-pat British communities are high on the list, Canada & Australia mainly, although the USA accounts for more than those two put together. Mind you that statistic is skewed by a single collector in New Jersey who has single handedly bought more than half the buses I have sent to the US. Over 300 at the last count. He really likes buses.

Where else? Well, there is a strong bus collecting community in Brazil and also Mexico, both of which surprise me a little, not sure why.

However when I send a 1950s AEC RT to Thailand, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Vietnam or Chile I'm really curious about where they end up and who is buying them.

 

13 Mar

Skodas are cool

Posted by Andrew Wood in Czech Republic, Kaden, Skoda
1 Comments

It is not so many years since you could make the joke about how do you double the value of a Skoda? The answer being, you fill up the petrol tank. These days they are reliable, modern & competent.


There's a range of really good diecast models of them too, coming from the Czech Republic made by Kaden, this is the Fabia. It is for sale in Little Wheels shop here: http://bit.ly/1gs71yJ


I'll be adding more including the legendary (for all the wrong reasons) Estelle in the next few days.

12 Mar

Models of Yesteryear - are they coming back?

Posted by Andrew Wood in Collecting as an investment, Diecast models, Fowler, Little Wheels, Models of Yesteryear, Thomas
0 Comments

There was a period in the 80s & 90s when diecast collectables were very much on trend as an investment as well as a hobby to build value over the years. Old Dinky toys were selling for significant amounts of money, a Foden 8 wheel truck with chains made over £12,000. So lots of people went out and bought new diecasts to put in the loft to mature and become very valuable in 20-30 years or so.

The obvious choice at the time were Matchbox Models of Yesteryear. They were cheap and plentiful and there was a fashion at the time for everything 20s & 30s - remember The Sting, Great Gatsby etc?

So many Models of Yesteryear were carefully salted away that the collector market became over-supplied with very good boxed examples and over the last few years values plummeted. A couple of years ago I was dumping good, boxed items at toy fairs at two for £5.

Towards the end of last year I noticed a change. I'd always done well with the early yellow box MOYs and the much later highly detailed series such as the fire engines and Beers of the World trucks. The problem had been with straw, woodgrain & maroon boxes from the 70s & 80s.  

These items have now started to gain some traction, a lot of it coming from Eastern Europe & Russia, although. now it is becoming more general and I'm pleased that these models, for which I've always had a great affection are being appreciated once again. As a child I owned and loved a blue Thomas Flyabout and I still have my battered old Fowler Showman's engine, treasured members of my toy box in the early 60s.

As I was adding more MOYs to the on-line shop this morning I was surprised to see that I had got over 70 of them currently on sale - a year ago this would have been few or none. The woodgrain & straw boxes are still a bit slow but maroon boxes and the 1960s pink & yellow window boxes have really become popular once again.

I'm glad to see a well-deserved return to popularity of an old favourite.




Liquid error (layout/theme line 394): Could not find asset snippets/sh_sbve-theme-snippet.liquid