| Little Wheels Shop | Search | Site Home | Contact | Little Wheels EBay |
 |
 |
 |
| The Lesney Years - 1-75 Range | ||
|
This range was launched in 1953 by the Lesney company and continued until the company went bankrupt in 1982, with production continuing into 1983 under short-lived new ownership of the Lesney brand. Over this time the model numbers were re-used as old models were deleted and new ones added There were some continuing themes like buses, road rollers, bulldozers and fire engines which inherited the same number for a time but there does not appear to be a long term pattern. Below you will see the models which occupied these places in the 1-75 number range over the Lesney years. Each line is in chronological order reading left to right. The letter suffixes (7A, 23B etc. which refer to the sequence of release of the models, are not part of the Matchbox numbering system but seem to be accepted by and are common to most sources & collectors, in later editions of Ramsay's price guide the letter suffixes start again at 'A' in the Superfast section. The big milestone came in 1969 when Mattel launched Hot Wheels range. In response to which Matchbox came up with Superfast which was their own version of the low friction wheels that made Hot Wheels such a success. Prior to this the models had a range of styles of regular wheels on thick mild steel axles. Regular wheels had been initially grey metal, later grey or silver plastic and latterly black plastic. Some models had plastic tyres with plastic disc or metal spoked wheels, but these are not too successful, the tyres are always loose. The models below with regular wheels (i.e. not Superfast) have a peach coloured background. The transitional models, those which began life with regular wheels and were later adapted to Superfast, or spanned the change, have an orange background. The Superfast era models are shown with a blue background. Click on a thumbnail to go to a page about the model showing more pictures. Where I have a number of variations on the model they are shown on the model's own page. This is the fun of collecting Matchboxes, the production seems to have been so chaotic in terms of paint colours, wheel styles, decals etc that the variations are almost infinite. Some of the rare ones are valuable too! |
Update started We are checking the information |
