Matchbox Car Fortunes! Buying, Selling & Collecting ⧸ David Harper (Bargain Hunt ⧸ Antiques Roadtrip

If you think Matchbox toy cars are worth pennies, you really need to think again. I'm going to show you how to buy, sell, collect and make money out of these things. And in some cases, I'm talking big money. You might have at home in a drawer a car worth £5,000, a truck worth £10,000. So stick with me here right to the end of this video. It won't take long. I'm going to talk about buying, selling, collecting and making money. A little bit of background information too on Matchbox cars. And if like me, looking at these cars takes you back to happy days, happy childhood memories, it's actually remarkable. It just brings back vivid feelings, even the smells of these things are very distinct and they trigger happy memories. So here is a collection of 154 Matchbox toy cars, trucks, hovercraft and all sorts of things dating from the 1950s right up to the very early 1980s. Now this is not my childhood collection. I really wish it was, I only had a couple of these as a kid. This is a collection I put together in the last five days. This is five purchases, group purchases of Matchbox cars. I kind of lost control bidding and it happened by accident because I was in an auction, an antiques auction, up came a small collection of Matchbox cars and it just took me straight back to childhood. I couldn't control myself and I bought them. I then bought another batch the following day online in an auction and then I went crazy on eBay and bought another three batches. So collectively I've just bought 154 vehicles at a total price of £180, meaning roughly each vehicle owes me £1.80 each. So this is a really interesting experiment. They're going to be sold and I'm going to show you exactly how to value these and so therefore the collection you have at home or the collection you want to go and buy and remember it's not rocket science. Now believe it or believe it not, I have spent hours looking at each individual car and valuing it very quickly, making notes on what they're worth and I've portioned them off here into two sections and that'll make sense in a minute. So it's really easy. You take a car, this Ford Cortina as an example, late 1960s Matchbox series number 25. You simply put exactly what I've just said into eBay. eBay's probably the best place to get an idea of what these things are worth but you've got to remember on eBay some sellers are off their trolleys. They ask stupid money for stupid things but it'll give you an idea and once you've done that if you want to delve a little deeper to get true accurate values then go to specialist Matchbox car selling sites but the great thing with eBay is whatever car you've got it will be there and each of this collection, 154 of these things, each and every one was listed on eBay so it gives you an idea and you might well be really quite surprised here. So a Cortina 1969 with opening doors, very smart indeed. On eBay boxed and in mint condition you know the value of boxes often the boxes are worth more than the cars themselves but unplayed with in mint condition you could very easily pay 200 pounds for that car. In this condition without a box it's worth 20 quid as an individual item so you could put it on eBay for 20 quid and bear in mind it only was £1.80. There's a margin there but to get them at that kind of money you've got to buy in bulk you can't be precious or mucking about you buy them in job lots. Batches of 10, 20, 50 or more so you take the good like this nice little find came in a job lot 1960s Matchbox Ferrari Berlinetta utterly drop dead gorgeous 20 quid easily on eBay again with a good advert to the bad a pink Capri missing its bonnet to the ugly a Matra Rancho. I mean these things were dreadful cars in reality anyway look awful in a model and this particular one was made in China it's later and it's just rotten quality and there they are together. Now remember each one of these models owe me exactly the same amount of money and worth of course varying amounts of money if you were to sell them individually online so now you've got to look at each and every model and put the legwork in research them and price them right and crucially I've mentioned this loads of times but please if you're going to advertise these things individually online then write really good adverts factual friendly and professional take stacks of photos look at them the little works of art photos sell and for goodness sake don't make any spelling mistakes and do your job right do the legwork do the research you might just get lucky there are certain Matchbox models that make extraordinary amounts of money here's a few examples of things to look out for and let's take a real beat up version this is the Ford Mustang number eight again late 1960s in white with a red interior I mean just absolutely gorgeous these things were bigger oh my goodness me anyway in mint condition this thing is remarkably valued at around 500 quid I mean seriously that's what it's worth you've got one in a drawer unplayed with in its box you might get 500 quid and the reason for that is obvious these things were made to be played with by children and they end up like this completely beaten up and buckled but even in this state because it's a sought after model if you wanted to chance your arm you can ask 20 or 30 pounds for this thing so you're getting the idea there's money to be made here if you could be bothered to list all of these vehicles and if you enjoyed doing it and enjoyed handling these things you could do quite well it might take you a week honestly to get 12 pictures of each of these cars and get them listed online and it might take months if not years to sell the lot but the margins are there here's another cracking example and a top tip for the kind of things that you need to look out for so this again late 1960s Mercedes 230 SL I've had these cars before real ones and they are astonishing this is a beaten up one again probably worth 20 quid on eBay but in its box and in mint condition in white with the red interior you're looking at a couple of hundred quid but get this pay attention if you have a Matchbox Mercedes SL in apple green remember that apple green in mint condition you know that car could be worth £5,000 it's just a rarity only a handful of the apple green SLs were made and £5,000 is their worth so get digging now as well as selling these things on places like eBay if you really fancied a bit of a day out you could always rent a stand at an antiques fair or a car boot fair 20 quid 25 quid for the day and have a big day out give them all nice neat descriptions on little cards petition them off into price packets and you know you might do rather well you don't have to then list them online so have a day out take plenty of cash and sell your Matchbox collection if you're wondering how to date these things pretty easy on the base of the cars themselves often they're dated so you'll you will have a copyright date 69 68 1970 you get the idea but if you don't have that then look for size so Matchbox cars were originally marketed simply as Lesney that's the maker that's the the manufacturing company that put these things together from the 1950s onwards so take a look at these tiny little models of trucks and tractors the smaller the little Matchbox car is the earlier it is and if it just says Lesney then it's likely to be from the 1950s if it says Matchbox later into the 60s or 70s and the most valuable of these items are always those made in England and they will be stamped made in England I'm going to come to this cheaper pile of cars in a minute and this lot are cheaper because they're either completely beaten to bits blown up or they were made in Macau or China so this is later Matchbox sent their production abroad and the quality is just not the same and they were heavily manufactured manufactured in much bigger numbers so now on to me and selling this collection so you know I'm not a collector I just love handling things now I'm just going to sell these in the shop I'm going to put them in the window as little lost leaders to make people stop look through the window pop in yes they'll buy a car hopefully big deal what I want them to do is spend thousands of pounds on other things it brings them in or sell me stuff for thousands of pounds either way I don't care so what I'm going to do this side beaten up blown up chewed and stood on made in Macau or China five pounds each that's a lot of fun for a fiver even though bits fall off all the time this side even though I could put these things on eBay at 20 quid some for 40 quid it's a real hassle they'll go in the window at 10 pounds each so they're cheap and cheerful loads of fun and even at only a tenner and only a fiver they might take a very long time but I'm going to turn this collection if I sold every single one of them into 1200 quid now over a very long period of time no doubt I'll probably give a load of these things away but still maybe 800,000 pounds over a long period of time so you can see the numbers stack up the figures are there you can make money out of matchbox cars now if you fancy a quick run out to Barna castle to buy a car anything else or drop something in for auction that's great but please make sure that the shop is open that somebody is there because this I've got to tell you is not a normal shop and it doesn't keep normal shop hours it's an office a studio a showroom filming area and a drop-off point for people to deliver items for auction so it's only open when we're there seeing clients we're filming or anytime by appointment so please do check now what if you're not bothered about making money you just want to be a collector and make an investment that sounds off doesn't it making toys but actually they're very good investments prices for toys like this have just gone ballistic in recent years take as an example this opal diplomat I own this car cost me one pound 80 it's worth on ebay 20 quid I'll sell it for a tenner out of the shop but if you bought this opal diplomat in sea green again this green color in these cars is very very appealing a sea green opal diplomat today is worth five thousand pounds there it is that's the color you're looking for sea green commit that color to memory you probably would have bought an old diplomat in sea green in the 1980s for about 20 quid so they're going they're going in one direction only and that is up and the more you handle these things like anything in the world collectibles antiques and art the more knowledge you gain the easier it is to make money so you know if you walk into a little antique shop and you see an opal diplomat in sea green priced at 30 quid you know you must buy that car because it's worth five grand and it gets even better than that if you had at home a lesney truck that looked a little bit like that but had six wheels with a red crane on the back in absolute mint condition that thing is so rare it is worth well i'll tell you in 2004 the last one i can find sold for $13,000 so today almost 20 years later it's worth substantially more so get your money out of the bank and go buy an absolute bootload of matchbox classic cars and trucks or get searching through those drawers at home and potentially find yourself some treasure happy hunting i'm david hopper until next time cheerio