There’s play value and then there’s financial value. Toys are meant to be cherished and enjoyed by children, but even so miniature die-cast vehicles from at least 20 years ago still seem to be selling for more than the real thing. A boxed set of six Dinky vans went for £35,000 (you could get three real Ford Transits for that and afford short term van insurance cover for almost eight years!). The most sought after models have been fetching two or three times estimated prices at auction.
Dinky began life in 1934 as a Meccano spin-off and was owned by Hornby. The first ranges captured the imagination of a pre-war generation of kids that had never seen quality metal toy cars before. Any chips or blemishes can have a huge impact on price and if you’ve got the original box that can double the value. Corgi Toys first appeared in July 1956, manufactured by Mettoy Playcraft in Wales, as direct competition to Dinky Toys. Corgi’s initial sales gimmick was to include plastic windows and windscreens on all its cars.
The thing they both had in common was the sheer robustness of their build quality. They were all die cast metal, which is probably why they lasted so long and gave as much play value. It’s also probably why most seem to have survived to become valuable as an investment too!
Regrettably, the same cannot be said about today’s, mainly plastic, toy cars. If they were real, you’d be best advised only to get short term car insurance on them as it’s unlikely they would last any longer than 28 days!
The demise of Dinky Toys is another connection with reality as it mirrored the decline of Britain’s motor industry, with the firm folding in 1979. Most manufacture of toy cars nowadays is done in the Far East, in China. They tend not be exact replicas of actual cars you’d see on the streets, but lavish and sometimes outlandish visions with flashing lights or other features deemed to be essential to keep a modern generation of kids interested.
Do they have the same play value as their predecessors? Probably, although the child’s world in which they must now compete for attention is very different from the one 30 years ago. Will they have the same financial value? Unlikely, because they are probably not going to survive anywhere near as intact as their chunkier forerunners. However, if they give the same amount of pleasure as those crude but beautifully made Dinky toys, does how much they are worth to a collector really matter?
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