Dinky Exhibitions

I found a post on the Irish RTE site about a major exhibition of Dinky Toys (and Corgi it seems). See www.rte.ie/news/2010/1115/dinky.html#article]Dinky Exhibition at the House Museum Medeiros e Almeida Lisbon

Too late, I was in Lisbon some months ago! An impressive collection, with splendid, some scarce, items, of fine quality. Might be the collection of one major collector. Any more backgrounds known? He, or they, should become DTCA members! Kind regards, Jan Werner

I have tried to contact the museum to get some more information but so far I have had no reply. Dave

To continue the Portuguese Theme. There is a superb Toy museum at Sintra about 50 minutes by train north east of Lisbon. If you have a tourist Lisbon Card it covers the train to Sintra and gets a 30% discount at the entrance to the Museum, and also gives free access to the Royal Summer Palace in Sintra which is also well worth visiting. I have added a gallery about this with pictures of it Dinky Toy Collection. We had the pleasure to meet the collector of the Toys, Joo d'Arbus Moreira. He has over his life collected 40,000 toys of which 10,000 to 20,000 are in the Museum which covers 4 floors. There is one cabinet of Dinky Toys which is crammed full: It is not well structured but there's some gems in there and all seem in pretty good condition apart from a repainted 062 Singer Roadster. See Sintra Toy Museum

I wonder if there are any exhibition/gathering planned for the 80th Anniversary of the 'Hornby Modelled Miniatures' - 2013 - or next year's 80th Anniversary of the Dinky Toys name? :unsure: Most friendly, Jacques H.

I am not aware of anything Jacques Dave

A few days ago I took some photographs of attributes to the Dinky Toys Golden Jubilee exhibition in 1983. Although nobody knew the name Dinky Toys in 1933, the organizers no doubt took the birth of the first Hornby Modelled Miniatures vehicles of 1933, to be named Dinky Toys in 1934, as a starting point. The poster, which I bought in Amsterdam in 1983, is framed, but I managed to avoid nasty reflections. It was accompanied by the jubilee mug. I have no pewter jubilee souvenir models as marketed by the London Toy & Model Museum in those days. May be others can show them. Kind regards, Jan

I visited the Dinky Toys Golden Jubilee Exhibition in London in Spring 1983 (an otherwise-eventful trip too, since I had flown from California to arrange postgraduate studies at St Andrews, and met my wife to be during the same two weeks!). In those pre-Internet days, information was so hard to obtain that I was only dimly aware Binns Road had closed down, and I knew nothing of the Solido- and Kidco-produced models that Airfix had commissioned until I saw samples at the Exhibition. I obtained the same poster Jan has, along with the Jubilee mug and another mug that simply has the last Dinky Toys logo in yellow on a blue background. I don't know what box it's in at the moment or I'd photograph that one too. For better or worse, I was not interested in the pewter models, perhaps because (if I remember correctly) they were made to a scale smaller than the actual Dinky Toys. But now, behold what I was able to pick up from the top shelf of a newsagent during the same trip! I have scanned all the pages that mention Dinky including the cover, so sensitive readers be warned. Yes, the men's magazine Mayfair (does it even still exist?) ran an article on the Jubilee Exhibition, with photos including key parts of it including the Spike Milligan signature I remember being impressed by in person.

Johnny----What memories you must have of that trip, even though you were blithely unaware that Meccano was no more at that point. And tied in with meeting your future wife there.....how special was that! Best regards, Terry

I did just locate the other coffee mug that I purchased at the Dinky Golden Jubilee Exhibition in London. In lieu of an original photograph, here's a set of four that was auctioned by Vectis. I believe these yellow-and-blue mugs were originally commissioned by Meccano or Airfix, and the London Toy and Model Museum either had leftover stocks or had obtained more from the original supplier.

yes, Terry, it was a wonderful time ... I could go on about other wonderful things that happened during those two weeks, but they'd be outside the scope of this forum. To this day I remember my state of bliss as I walked to and from the London Toy and Model Museum at 21-23 Craven Hill, and the thought that it no longer exists is rather heartbreaking. I was brought up very much an Anglophile and I am sure that Dinky Toys would never have had the early hold on me that they did if they had come from somewhere else. There also used to be something uniquely wonderful about British toy shops that i at least experienced the tail end of. Re. the demise of Meccano Ltd., a collector friend and I did of course know that Dinky Toys were no longer being produced, and U.S. Airfix had been dumping remaining stocks of the last models at discounted prices through a chain called King Norman's. But my only way to get news from the UK was the Sunday Times, which arrived at my local library by sea weeks late. They did not have an index for the newspaper, so even though I read it as regularly as I could -- I think I did encounter a mention of Airfix having put Binns Road on the market -- there was much about the last days of Dinky I did not learn for many years!

Good evening all I do not know where to post this but decided to do it here. We have a bi-monthly meeting of model collectors in Johannesburg. On the 21st August 2019 we were amased to see a collection of toys and specific Dinky's that I have not seen in real life. Below is pictures that I have taken with my cellphone as I did not have my camera handy. What interest me the most was the pre-war items, Garage and the Box, the airmail car (Very much Original) as well as the calenders on display. Aparently it was available for some time here in South Africa, the calenders that is. These pictures were taken of the collection that Mr Brian Le Gassick (Former member of the Band called The Stuccato's) Some of the pictures: