Country Images Magazine North January 2018 | Page 34

Derbyshire
Antiques & Collectibles
by Maxwell Craven
DINKY TOY
AIRCRAFT
Last month I penned a few lines about the
enduring and collectible die cast model motor
vehicles produced by Meccano Limited under the
Dinky imprimatur. This I threatened to follow up
with an article about the die cast model aircraft
the fi rm also made from the 1930s.
I was given my fi rst example as a Christmas present from an aunt - of which
in those days I had Bertie Woosteris h quantities – in the shape of a model
73c Vickers Viking, a rather portly looking twin engined medium airliner.
I had just been taken to see (and had been enthralled by) a fi lm called Th e
Night my Number Came up, about an aircraft or similar size, (actually a
Douglas DC3) getting lost and crashing onto a Himalayan mountain valley,
so the dear old Viking had to go through a good few re-enactments with its
nine year old owner.
Th e other attraction, as I got older, was that before the war, Dinky produced
models of types that were virtually extinct, even in the 1950s, and which
I deemed much more worthy of acquisition than a modern (then!) boxed
734 Supermarine Swift (about £20/25 with box) or 70a Avro York (about
£15-20 unboxed). My interest was quickened when, in 1954 we moved to a
house not so very far from Croydon airport, then used exclusively for club
fl ying and where numerous pre-war types could be spotted pottering across
the sky from our garden. My fi rst pre-war acquisition was a nice blue 62k
Airspeed Envoy - modelled on the King’s personal transport (about £350
retail in box, but £40-50 unboxed and played with, like mine), and things
continued, via pocket money and visits to junk shops, until I was sent away
to school at ten and fi nally nose-dived (if you will forgive the pun) when I
transferred schools at thirteen.
My most prized possession was a Dinky model 63a/b Mayo Composite
– essentially an Empire fl ying boat called Maia which carried a small mail
carrying fl oatplane called Mercury on its back, and which in real life took off
from its host when the latter had to stop for re-fuelling. Being long deleted
by Dinky, I found the bottom part second hand but had to wait eighteen
months before a rather strange general store in Tain, in the far North of
Scotland (where we were staying with friends), astoundingly happened to
have Mercury, new, and left unbought on an obscure shelf for twenty years! I
have no idea how it became parted from its other half, as both came together
in a blue box.
Th e whole thing boxed would set you back £350-450 today, and even
without box, like mine, £80-120. Yet one autumn day a year or so later
I couldn’t fi nd it, and hunted high and low for this prized possession,
including every inch of our fairly large garden; my mother thought I’d
developed an unhealthy interest in horticulture! Some years later it emerged
that mama, who each year sent toys to the local orphanage, had found it in
34 | CountryImagesMagazine.co.uk
an unlikely place, assumed whilst I was away at school, that I had tired of it,
and consigned it to the orphans. One I particularly loved was the DH 91
Albatross, a pre-war wooden four-engined airliner of great beauty which I
had never seen in the fl esh (none survived the war) and managed to acquire
in blue, along with a DH88 Comet racer in silver.
Th e series began in 1934 and ran through the war to some extent, some of
the military types being dubbed ‘two seat fi ghter’ and ‘heavy bomber’ to
confuse enemy spies. A Messerschmitt 110, masquerading as ‘twin engine
fi ghter’ with props missing went through a general sale at Bamfords for
£10 recently. My model 62a Spitfi re was boxed and sold specially to raise
money for the wartime Spitfi re fund – not to be confused with a much
more authentic looking Spitfi re which was issued as a revival in the later
1970s. By the time I got mine (having been born a little too late) there was
no box - not that I’d have kept it! Th e last models were issued around 1973
with no. 731, a Jaguar fi ghter with – unheard of in a Dinky – a retractable
undercarriage (mint in box about £40).
Th e most expensive examples which I have come across include an Avro
Vulcan estimated at £500-700 and a pre-war model 60e Dewoitine D.500
open cockpit fi ghter (one of the range only sold in France) good condition
but no box, a snip at £600. Coming closer to our times, even a 1960s Sud
Caravelle in Air France livery is likely to set you back £120.
Buying in auction would be the best bet for anyone intending to collect