"Your Source for Quality Military and Civilian Diecast Since 2000"
CR Grace Collectibles, LLC 45 Vincent Road..Cedar Grove, NJ 07009 973-837-0489 email sales@crgrace.com
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Welcome to the retired and used Corgi, Britains, Dinky, Britains, Solido Verem Diecast Information Page
We purchase and sell retired and used Corgi, Britains, Dinky and Solido Verem Diecast
Why spend time and money selling your collection on ebay when you can get top dollar from us.CR Grace Collectibles, LLC purchases and sells retired and used Dinky, Britains, Solido and Verem Diecast. Please contact us by email regarding your collection (include in your description..model, paint condition, rust if any). We are looking for good to excellent condition items. Based on your description we will grade the items and give you an anticipated purchase price. Upon arrival and appraisal we will confirm the price and send you payment via Paypal or company check. If we cannot agree upon an acceptable price we will ship the item back to you at no charge. We only accept shipments sent via Fed Ex shipping...be sure to insure the items for their full dollar amount. Do not ship your items to us without prior authorization from us...we will not accept shipments without prior authorization.
Short History on Dinky *ref.Wikpedia
The first significant releases from Dinky Toys after production had resumed in the late 1940s were the 40 series of vehicles, which were all British Saloons. These were very much the opening chapter of the 'golden age' of Dinky Toys and represented far greater accuracy than their pre-war counterparts. They became very popular and today are often considered to be the quintissential Dinky Toys models, heralding a new post-war era. The 40 series cars were manufactured from better quality alloy meaning that the survival rate is higher and although originally sold from trade packs of six, they were re-coloured in two-tone paintwork and renumbered in 1954 becoming some of the first models sold with their own unique box.
By the early 1950s Dinky Toys had become very popular in the United Kingdom and it seemed that all boys (and some adults) had collections. Their dual role as toy and model had no peers at the time. Most of the models were in a scale of approximately 1:48, which blended in with O scale railway sets, but many buses and lorries were scaled down further so that they were around 4inches long. In 1954 the Dinky Toys range was reorganized and cars were now sold in individual boxes and there were no series of models differentiated by a letter, each model having its own unique catalogue number. The Dinky Toys range became more sophisticated throughout the 1950s but due to the lack of any real competition development of the models was perhaps slower than it could have been. That was until July 1956 when Mettoy introduced a rival line of models under the Corgi brand name. The most obvious difference was the addition of clear plastic 'glazing', and the new range was sold with the slogan 'The Ones With Windows'. Once Meccano Ltd had direct competition they were able to respond by updating their Dinky Toys range accordingly and the models from both companies rapidly became more and more sophisticated featuring working suspension, 'fingertip steering' and detailed interiors.A rival third range of model cars also appeared in 1959 called "Spot on" which were manufactured in Northern Ireland and produced by Tri-ang, a division of Line Brothers. This range were kept to one scale, 1:42, and were comparatively more expensive, never managing to sell as many units as Corgi and Dinky. In 1964 Tri-ang took over the parent Meccano company (which included Hornby trains as well as Meccano itself) and since Dinky Toys were more popular than Spot-On, the latter were phased out in 1967, although a few cars originally designed for Spot-On were madein Hong Kong and marketed as Dinky Toys. However from this point Dinky used the 1:42 scale for many of the English made cars and trucks, although the French factory stuck to the more common 1:43 scale, which was already popular in Europe.
In the late 1960s a new competitor entered the U.K. model car market. This was Hot Wheels from U.S. toymaker Mattel. Their low-friction axles gave them play value that Dinky and the other major British brands including Corgi and Matchbox could not match. Each manufacturer responded with its own version of this innovation - Dinky's name for its wheel/axle assembly was "Speedwheels". The company continued to make some wonderful models, with all four doors opening (a first in British toy cars), retractable radio aerials (another first), Speedwheels, high quality metallic paint, and jewelled headlights. However, these models were expensive to manufacture and the price could only be kept down if the quantities were sufficiently high enough. Changing fashions in the toy industry, international competition and the switch to cheap labour in lower wage countries meant that the British made Dinky Toys days were numbered, and after attempts at simplifying the products as a means of saving costs, the famous Binns Road factory in Liverpool finally closed its doors in November 1979. Corgi Toys managed to struggle on until 1983. Thus ended the dominant era of British-made die-cast toy models.
The Dinky trade-name was a valuable one, and changed hands many times before ending up as part Matchbox International Ltd. in the late '80s. This seemed to be a logical and perhaps synergistic development, uniting two of the most valuable and venerated names in the British and world die-cast model car market under one roof. Matchbox began issuing model cars of the 1950s through the 'Dinky Collection' in the late 1980s, but these were models intentionally designed for adult collectors. The models were attractive and honoured the tradition of the Dinky name in terms of both quality and scale, and were popular with collectors for the short time that they were available, before production stopped after only a few years. The 'Dinky Collection' then became absorbed into the themed series offered by Matchbox Collectibles Inc, owned by US giants Mattel, who have shown little interest in or understanding of the Dinky brand preferring nowadays to rebadge normal Matchbox models as Dinky for some editions of their models in certain markets, or to reissue 1:43 models from the Matchbox era. No new "dedicated" Dinky castings have been created in the Mattel era since Matchbox Collectibles was shut down in 2000.
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