Customer Reviews

Matchbox Toys: Revised, with Updated Price Guide

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If you are buying this book as a pricing guide for Matchbox, plan to spend some time. There is no aphabetical or numerical listings, therefore making it necessary to search for a certain Matchbox by thumbing through the many pages of pictures.

One of the very first books about MB cars (perhaps the only MB book prior is the Maurice Hammond book from 1969), I purchased this back in 1990 (my copy is dated 1983) on a whim and it inadvertantly (sic) triggered my MB collecting habit. As a previous reveiwer stated, the guide contains excellent photography (some photos are slightly over exposed however) with the size of the cars larger and easier to veiw than the Charlie Mack MB guides which followed a few years later. While not a good variation guide (as in the Mack guides and books) this book does line up at least one mint example of most if not all Lesney MB. The book was published during the Lesney to Universal transition and some of the 1983 lineup is presented. The price guide is fairly useless but dont purchase this book for that. In my mind this is the book that started the MB collecting trend, is very well done and ahead of its time.

Whilst certainly no comprehensive guide, (this was published in 2000 so obviously there won't be any cars from after that but important to note it actually only covers cars made up to June 1982) it still has more photographs than most of its competitors. I picked this up just to see the selection of Matchbox Toys (mostly cars) which came on the market since Lesney Products first produced them back in 1947. I was actually surprised that a book that is half the height of an A4 sheet of paper and only a little bit wider actually has more cars pictured inside it than some of the so called encyclopedias out there. It achieves this by photographing multiple cars on glass shelves fitting a lot more to a page than the encyclopedias do. This is also much handier and easy to carry then those tall heavy books as well which is an important factor if you are taking it with you as you search garage sales, flea markets and second hand dealers and want to know for sure the one being sold is the same as the one in the picture. The price guide at the end couldn't be easier to use you simply look up the page number and corresponding row to know the average price the item was going for back in 2000.

I found it quite interesting that some items like a police bike that has just been repainted for three different countries police force - British, German and US (LAPD) is much more expensive with the German police force paint being that it is exactly the same motorbike and rider (although granted it does look the best of the three).

This book also gives a bit of history of Lesney Products and some of the lines of Matchbox cars which was quite interesting. It also outlines the history of other toys the company made as well as the changes the company made to maximise survival when Hot Wheels entered the marketplace.

There may well be more better guides out there than this one and certainly more up to date ones but if its the older cars your after then you'll find most of them photographed in here. This guide also shows Matchbox cars from different countries something other guides seem to forget Matchbox cars are sold in. Not a bad book, if you can get it for a cheap price give it a look.