New arrivals

on the 17th July. DavidT

Here's a list of pre and post war trade boxes with their code numbers

Yes, that is the list I found on this site and its brilliant. The information is now my check list. I have transferred the information to excel spreadsheet and can now add to the information as I desire. Am curious as to how this information was accumulated, was it through auctions over the years or collectors over the years or was it some sort of official document? Who ever did it thank you, it answered many of my questions. DavidT

One of the questions that I am trying establish to answer to, is order in which the different coloured boxes appeared and was there some logic to the different coloured boxes use, ie export? There are the yellow boxes, Salmon coloured, beige, and the blue that the planes and some gift boxes came in. Some have the code date but only seems to commence in 1938. Some of the gift sets I have the boxes to have the mottled type paper but some have a different finish. DavidT

Hi David Your collecting habits sound a lot like mine, just on a much bigger scale. I too like all the products of the Meccano factory although I have a rough cutoff point of 1965. I have 'O' and 'OO' gauge railway items but again limited to clockwork in 'O' gauge, and 3-rail in 'OO' gauge. The thing I don't collect is Meccano itself. I recently obtained my first trade box, for the 29f/280 Observation Coach, and am intending to restore a complete boxful from my generally battered examples to go in it. I'm trying to imgine how many Dinkys you must have if your boxes are even 60% full. :-o I hope you'll be showing us some of your choicer examples. The adding of photos is a bit daunting at first but you'll get the hang of it. Just remember that the photo file mustn't be too big. I'm happy to see you posting and look forward to more. John

Hi Jacques I think David may be referring to the pdf that can be found below. /publications/box-numbers-trade-and-set-boxes

John, Thank you for the link, I checked this list, it is about the same as mine. I also made a list with the different types of boxes, here is a sample of this list. 883 900

That list was compiled by John Beugels and myself over about ten years. Either pictures of examples would show up at auction or they were discovered in collections. Not many unknown trades have turned up recently but I need to update the info probably. I think the last one was the prewar 25h Fire Engine A2107. Dinky trade boxes went through an evolution from when they were Modelled Miniatures - trackside Hornby Series train accessories (that's what the A stands for in the code). So we can see that a trade box for 22a Sports Coupe is the immediate ancestor of boxes like 23 Racing Car. In 1935 such decadence abruptly finished with the arrival plain orange boxes, printed only on one edge but continuing with the checker border design. Soon the address was added to one long edge, then the colour returned to yellow. In 1938 trades became a shoebox with thin lids printed on every edge - one of the long sides would include a batch production number and date code under the address and we have list of those somewhere too. Austerity finally set in for the prewar trades as they became rather alike with the immediate post war brown boxes with a yellow label. [img]/images / sites / default / files / u199 / 2391_l.jpg [/img]

DavidT There are different types of boxes, the blue aircraft boxes are not tradeboxes, the gift sets are not tradeboxes either.Tradeboxes are only those containing 3, 6 or 12 identical models in the same or different colours.I have found 15 different types of tradeboxes (not including the French ones) as shown in my post # 1412 above. The list was compiled mainly from the Dinky Toys Encyclopdia but also from various web sites : TMT, DTCA, ebay, Vectis, QDT etc... , also from many collectors whom I thank and books. There is no official list of tradeboxes from Meccano Ltd. The Dinky Toys aircraft may have been run by a different department at Binns Road, their boxes are different fromthose of the land & amp;sea vehicles,they are almost the only ones to have the dateand quantity reference.

Here is a nice new arrival that I actually had room for !

Jonathan Very niceand in very good condition too.I can now see why adding to your collection shouldnt be a problem ! Best regards,Terry

That ' s really a great find,the Belgian Touring Secours / Touring Wegenhulp version of the AA Motor Cycle Patrol !