Matchbox 42c; Iron Fairy Crane

Iron Fairy is a great name for a crane - it was, and I think is again, a genuine maker of cranes in the UK, eventually becoming part of Jones before going bankrupt. More recently it seems that there have been attempts to revive the brand. This is one of the rugged two-axle mobile cranes they made in the fifties and sixties. Matchbox made this model of it fairly briefly in 1969 and 1970.

It was released in 1969 in red with a yellow boom and black plastic regular wheels, the following year it was converted to Superfast and then deleted in the same year. There are two versions which attract a premium, firstly on the regular wheels version the early releases had the lower pin for the hydraulic ram mounted high, these are hard to find and are quite expensive. With the Superfast ones look for Superfast wheels on the red/yellow model from the regular wheels era. Orange rather than orange-red bodywork will get a small premium.