Antidote

Jack Odell in 1983 created the brand-name Lledo by spelling his last name backwards and re-entered the diecast toy industry. John William Odell commonly called Jack kicked of with the Smiths Leslie and Rodney who were the founders of Lesney Products in the old Pub and Jack joined them with his casting machinery and talents. So Jack was no stranger to the diecast toy trade. Jack's Lledo scale diecast vehicles appeared in 1983 as Models of Days Gone and affordable price encourged their ability to capture a percentage of the market.  Vanguards followed soon after. In the mid 1990's I started to collect some of these model cars only to sell them off and again I wonder if I had did the right thing in downsizing too much of my collection and to only collect commercial trucks and military.

So this Ford Thames Trader Tanker has now joined my indulging growing collection. So what do I think of this recreation of the Ford in 1:64 scale for the price yes it is good likeness. The grill is clearly defined and the interior gleams through the plastic windscreen giving the effect of reality. The wheel hubs are good too. most important difference between the Days Gone and the Vanguards is the wheels on the latter have that little bit of detail I think.

 




Underneath a strip of plastic is used to hold the axles in-place while something called a chassis and running gear is indication it has a diff and tail-shaft. Lots of diecast used in the body and top part of the chassis. Yes good buy for what I had paid for it.



Now I might get the Green Goddess.

These are the only two I kept and I kick myself for selling the VW bettle in the Vanguards series too.

Then there are these Volvo models advertising my favourite chocolate Cadbury's.

I just recieved my first Vanguards 1/64 a few days ago, and it just so happens to also be a Thames Trader!



So why did I wait so long? Well, because I mainly collect 1/43 models so much as a model like this fits the standard Vanguards-box, it doesn't really fit in with the other models.

But I have always wanted to see what the 1/64 were like, detail/quality-wise, only waited for a really, really good offer and it came a short while ago.

And my opinion? Well, I basically agree 100% with mr. Gunner It's quite good with a nice level of detail in visible places. In 1/43 and with that extra detailing this scale would allow, it would have been a knockout, but for the time being, I think I'll stick to the bigger ones, unless really superb offers come along again.

Yes Teebodk (Mr Tee) The Ford Thames bid offer was really the affordable enticement, even at $13.99 seemed reasonable to me.  So the end story price was $20.99 including shipping.

When I started collecting Days Gone in the mid 1990's.  They came in those mail order runs, similar to the Dinky Matchbox and Matchbox Collectible. The difference between the two is with Matchbox Collectibles, a person could select the model that was on offer and send for it. Where with the Lledo, they would send two in a box and if you didn't want them, you had to send them back by mail at your own cost. Otherwise, they would deduct the amount due from the members bank within 30 days. This is why I stopped as I was getting into collecting models of old, that really didn't appeal to me. Yes, I had a few Matchbox Models of Yesterday collected over many years, but tired of them and alas they were sold off too.

What has changed is that eBay and the likes. Toy Collector too has added a lot more interest for me in collecting everything under the sun.  Just to see what they look like and who made them. Now becomes this new paradigm in collecting memories of old and those serious models replicas having real substance called vehicles to compare with. 

I love the old british trucks and the Ford Thames trader being one of them, i've not had any of the smaller scales but did have the commer Carrier and Bedford S type as a set, long since since sold.





Detail looks good and if it's 1:64 I may have to take a closer look

This reproductive advertisement appeared in March 1996 edition of Model Collector and would be about the time I was getting those mail order Lledo's. I see the green VW Beetle was being sold for 3.75 British Pounds not including postage in the same mag.

Note the two different scales of 1:43 and 1:64




 

My two favourite scales

This days gone was bought by my wife at a fair for 50p with its box there were quite a few, about 50 going for the same price in fact the guy who had them offered them to me for £20.00 for the lot he can't get rid of them in fact he gave a couple away to some kids to play with. My wife only got this one because it was green (Don't ask)

Yes ixtis, a lot of them go really cheaply even boxed I bought about 200 of them about 3 years ago for £50 to sell on ebay and struggled to sell most of them for over a year.

I supose from a collectors point of view being cheap means you can aquire large collection of these for little outlay and you never know in years to come they may well be worth something, Budgie was overlooked a few years back now the prices are climbing fast for mint models

Oh, yes, the Lledo Days Gone range... I wasn't collecting when these came out, but I read that collectors critized Lledo even back then, that the mass of models released was simply too big.

Just one look at eBay (especially the UK-version) now, and also the previous comments here tells it all. There ARE indeed far too many models on the market. Ebay sellers list them by the hundreds for absolutely nothing, £0.99 seems to be more or less the norm, and still they don't sell unless postage costs are also extremely low.

I think Lledo did many things wrong, and with all of these factors combined, we have the current situation where the models are practically unsellable.

The number of actual cars modeled was limited, but each one was issued in countless liveries. When choosing the cars to model, Lledo very often followed the beaten track and used cars that 'everybody' else had also made. The models themselves were 'sorta okayish', meaning that they were not really toys, but not superb collectibles either, and the toylike packaging didn't help.

For a collector today, there's no real incentive to buy, because the models offer nothing to go 'wow!' about, and you know that you can find similar, if not better, offers in less than 2 minutes if you decide to get one - and because the prices are already right at the bottom, there's nothing more a seller can do.

The future? Will values rise at some point? Maybe a little, but not by much, I think. The sheer volumes of them in circulation means that supplies are gonna last for a long time, and because they're not used as toys, few will get wrecked, which would help reduce the numbers. I also believe, that many have been stoved away by sellers hoping for better times, so for years to come there will be plenty of old stock to relaunch on the markets at even the slightest hint of a popularity increase.

I've only ever had a couple of them, one of them was a Morris LD150 in Kodak livery, and it was a perfect example of the problem with Lledo: it had more detail than a vintage Corgi (being much newer), but much less than modern manufacturers have to offer. If you want a vintage model, the Lledo is too new and if you want a detailed collectible, the Lledo isn't good enough.

All of this raises one big question, I hope that somebody who was collecting back then can help answer. Who bought these when new? I mean, people must have bought them, right? Or Lledo wouldn't have been churning them out in such massive volumes. Did they sell to collectors? or kids? or both? It was also mentioned that they were sold as some sort of subscription, like Atlas today, but again: were they really THAT popular back then? It seems that whoever bought them, no longer want them, and 99% of what's offered today is still very near mint, which indicates they're either (unsold) old stock or from collectors.

I have just received one in the mail, yes it was cheap but the shipping to Australia almost put me off. The model wasn't packed too well and the inner sleeve didn't make the journey intact.

The other thing Days Gone did was give the models away as a promotional gimmick (which was what most collectors thought should happen) I wanted some film in NZ and found the deal shown in the last photo.

I concentrated on MOY at the time and that's worked out real well  

It's probably easy to criticize Days Gone in hindsight but if you go back to when they started there were no instant research tools available and their opposition was MOY which in Australia had gone to subscription only sales and weren't readily available in shops.

It wasn't clear at the time that they were producing an abundance of models and I think a lot of people collected Days Gone models through frustration with MOY.

The most important factor is that Days Gone were a lot cheaper than those MOY's. As far as I can remember both were available through mail order only here in Australia.

From the extracts of Wikipedia:

Lledo set out to specialise in replicating early Matchbox series styles, particularly the models of Yesteryear range. Ironically Odell and Russel purchased machinery from the Universal Matchbox company who had purchased Matchbox entirety and shipped all the machinery and tooling to Hong Kong.  Odell and Russel then re-shipped the  tooling they had purchased back to Enfield England, where in April 1983 production of the new Days Gone range was launched. Made in England lived once again.

Get this. One of the more popular models was a Ford Model T van, which became the basis for a series of limited edition models for gifts and promotions. These were commonly produced in limited edition number runs of 500 to 1000 models. Although vast numbers of models were produced by Lledo they couldn't complete with those made in China special promotions taking over this niche within the model market. Thus Lledo went bankrupt in 1999 and the naming rights and model range was bought by Corgi. Corgi continued to produce Lledo models in China until 2005 when the remaining models were merged into the Corgi Classic series. The Vanguards range continues today under the banner of Corgi.

Now is the challenge.  Will those new relics produced by Lledo in their thousands if not millions be worth anything in the near future as they continually re-enter the collectors market at affordable prices from disgruntled sellers.

Then there is this one. The 1939 Chevrolet Panel Van Jack Daniels which is said to be worth more than 450 British pounds.

 

Another point to keep in mind is that all the LLedo's I have here are 1/76 scale, which is British OO scale model railroad. So an inexpensive model in a number of liveries would be quite bonus for the model railroad guys. And yes, some of them are worth quite a bit, especially with production runs in the 500 piece range.