Customer Reviews

Matchbox: The Official 50th Anniversary Commemorative Edition

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This book has incredible details about the business of Matchbox, its incarnations over the years, and its related companies. The production quality of the book itself is top-notch (for example, the photos jump right out at you), but there are some features that detract from what could have been the definitive coffee-table book on the subject.
There are some notable errors in the photo captions, and some photos are re-run on the same or neighboring pages. The book identifies "rare" color schemes for the models, but inaccuracies makes one wonder about the credibility of those assessments (examples of glaring errors: reversing the identifications of the Iso Grifo and the Ford GT, or showing regular wheel vehicles from the mid-1960s under the caption of "Superfast" vehicles, which did not come around until 1969). At times the photos are shown on page after page with no real connection to each other. In that respect, the book lacks basic organization of the photo content (although the informative articles are arranged chronologically).
This is not a price guide, nor is it a comprehensive listing of the multitude of Matchbox products over the 50 years covered by the book.
I suspect the typical customers of this high-end book will be devout Matchbox collectors. They may not perceive this as the valuable half-century compilation the publishers had probably hoped for.

This book definitely helped me to increase my knowledge of collecting, the value of my collection, and the pure pleasure of seeing so many of these items since my childhood days. This was by far the best purchase for personal annd collecting purposes. I highly recommend this book for avid collectors and for people who just enjoy Matchbox products.

This is not a price guide, so if you're buying it to see everything ever produced by Matchbox over its initial 50 years then you will be disappointed. There are no prices at all in here either which is good as even the ones in price guides are never very accurate anyway. Saying that though, this does have a substantially large range of photographs of various vehicles and to be honest I've found more vehicles in here that I'm interested in than are listed in Warman's Matchbox Field Guide: Values and Identification and other price guides, books which I found very disappointing and not worth buying as they also severely lacked anything close to a comprehensive list. The bonus of the vehicles shown in this book is that the photos are clearer and bigger than in those price guides and the vehicles are all in new condition when photographed.

The market who this book would primarily appeal to is families where grandparents can get together with their own and subsequent next generation kids (grand) to reminisce and talk about their childhoods and the difference in the vehicles they all played with.

This is book is sponsored by Mattel so other than not being critical of Mattel, obviously access was given to their products and contacts (collectors) to get pictures of new condition vehicles. Downside with the images is that most have no description and although the chapters are in chronological year order you have no idea what they or the series they were from are actually called if looking for them. For example I found some really cool Looney Tunes one in here including one with Bugs going through the windshield (after obviously forgetting to buckle up) which only after sifting through various Looney Tune listings on e-bay discovered fall under the Pro Racers series). So although it is easy to find the answers it would have been nice if when putting in the photos the publishers had bothered to do this.

There is a lot of information on Lesney (company who started Matchbox) and the various owners of throughout the years. Since Matchbox has been owned by the same parent companies who at one stage also owned their competitors (Mattel at the time of publication owned Hot Wheels and Matchbox) you get to also learn a little bit on Corgi and all the other main diecast car companies (with the exception of Johnny Lightning) as well. Another great thing is that this book covers the global reach of Matchbox and does not just talk about either the USA or the UK as most price guides and competitor books do.

I'm no huge collector or knowledge holder of Matchbox but I did notice a few mistakes in here, such as one of the few pictures with a description lists a car as Victorian Ronald McDonald's House, when the vehicle has a picture of the map of South Australia on the side. I would find this hard to believe as these two bordering states of Australia are huge rivals but if this is legit than why no story with the explanation? More likely it is a mistake not picked up in the American staffed editing room.

Other than these few mistakes though, this is a very nice and interesting book to read. I've learnt quite a lot about the favourite toy of my childhood and found a few vehicles that I will look for as a mild collector. Easily the best of any Matchbox book for either of those two requirements that I've come across.