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Summary: An antiques expert shows you the basics for collecting matchbox cars, including details and what to look for, in this free video on antiques.
Views: 569 | Tags: baseball, cards, collecting, cars, mantle, condition, hotwheels, sizzlers, matchbox, topps, mickey, grade, mint, corvette, antique collecting, card collecting
About the Expert
Jan Braunstein Jan Braunstein owns and operates the Antique Avenue antiques store in Pomona, California. Her mother also owned an antiques store. She is a certified antique ... read more
You know, remember we we're talking about Red Lines and how cool they were and how the Red Line guys we're just nuts? I actually like Red Lines too, they're very fun. But there's another collectible type of die-cast car. And a matter of fact; there's many many copies of die-cast cars. But what we have here is a set called Matchbox cars, and those started earlier. They were started in London, England and they were called "Lesney Matchbox". Here we have some samples of Matchbox Cars. It is a collectible, it's not as high demand as the Matchbox Red Lines are, but they have phenomenal assortments. They're hard to figure because on the bottoms. Some of them have numbers and some don't. But most of them have the name of the car on the top. I think this is a bus, a Petrol bus, which would be a double decker from England. And we didn't talk too much about condition. Let me go over a little bit about condition. When you look at your die-cast cars, you want to make sure that they're very clean; there's no flaking on the enamel, that the wheels are nice and tight. Now, the older ones of these die-cast cars, this is interesting to note, that they had gray wheels, so that or the older. Now, remember what I said Expert Villagers, what did I tell you about the boxes? Keep them! Because if you have these original-die cast Lesney cars, Matchboxes, in their little match boxes (that's why they called them that) they're worth a lot more. So I would say these are more modern Matchbox cars. This one is a little bit older, but they make them modern so the newer, more commemorative editions are worth maybe $5 or $10 a piece, because they still make them. But the older ones something like this, the older version, maybe $20 or $30 in good condition, so look for those, they're very collectible.