Matchbox is my favourite brand of diecast models. My first diecast cars were Matchbox. My earliest memories were of Matchbox vehicles. On my first birthday cake I had a Matchbox Car. My earliest memory is being on a train holding onto a Matchbox Racing Car Transporter (K-5), I would have been about 3 years old. I also had a Pickfords Removal van from the regular 1-75 range, which my parents would occasionally fill with Smarties. Between 1969 and 1970, Matchbox switched production form standard wheels to Superfast wheels to counter the competition from Hot Wheels, which had been introduced onto the market in 1968.

Here is a selection of my collection, I probably have another hundred packed away in boxes. As you can see a mix of styles, different conditions from mint and boxed to rather wrecked, different ages from the sixties to date, some Yesteryear at the back and all treasured by me.

Lesney began making diecast toys after the Second World War in England. Their main focus was on the Matchbox 1-75 series was so named because there were always 75 different vehicles in the line, each packaged in a small box designed to look like those used for matches. These toys became so popular that “Matchbox” was widely used as a generic term for any diecast toy car, regardless of who the actual manufacturer was.



Matchbox are not to a strict scale but are around 1:64, measuring 3 inches long. In addition to the 1-75 range there are King Size models and Models of Yesteryear.

My oldest Matchbox car is an Austin A55 Cambridge manufactured in the early sixties, pictured above with Meter Made, a model produced since 2015.