Vintage & Antique Toy Cars / Automobiles

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Have you ever wondered what vintage toy cars might be available in other countries?

This page is for collectors of old toy cars & automobiles who want to instantly see comprehensive listings of vintage & antique toy cars for sale via Ebay in USA, Canada, Europe & Australia.

Click an image to start your search in the country of your choice......

USA	UK	GERMANY	FRANCE	ITALY	CANADA	AUSTRALIA

Finding the Toy Cars / Automobiles You Want on Ebay

Whilst there are quite a few individual toy cars worth a lot of money, serious collectors understand the value in any antique or vintage toy car in mint condition. These toys, especially with original boxes, are limited in number, so finding high quality, rare items on eBay is a matter of regularly checking around the different country locations on our website until you are lucky enough to be there at the right time to make a successful bid.

Influences on Toy Car Manufacturers

Television & Film

From late 50's onwards TV & Movies started to have an influence on the toy industry with youngsters wanting to have replicas of the vehicles used in their favorite TV programs or films like Batman, Knight Rider, Bullit, Dukes of Hazzard, James Bond, Starsky & Hutch, Smokey & The Bandit, The Love Bug, Back To The Future, Mad Max, The Green Hornet & many more.

Knight Rider Voice Car

Starsky & Hutch Collectors Car

Hot Wheels Batmobile

Herbie, The Love Bug from Hot Wheels

Bullit Ford Mustang Fastback

The Black Beauty Toy Car from The Green Man

Matchbox Camaro - Smokey & The Bandit

General Lee Dodge Charger from The Dukes of Hazzard

Vintage Toy Car Manufacturers

The list is endless with many scale model cars being produced all over the world. The premier manufacturers are / were mainly based in USA, Europe & Japan. Below are some examples of some of the most popular for collectors.

For a comprehensive history of toy / model cars look at this Wikipedia entry.

Matchbox

Founded in the United Kingdom in 1953, Matchbox has become world renowned for creating both realistic die-cast and plastic scaled models of a number of different vehicle types ranging from classic racing cars to army jeeps. Matchbox toy cars are known for their fine detail and are popular with both young children to adult collectors. In spite of introducing other products over the years, they are still known mainly for their precise replicas of cars through the ages.

Vintage Mercedes Car Matchbox Toy

Dinky Toys

Another famous company who first started their die cast miniature vehicles in 1934 from the Meccano factory located in Liverpool, England. The first vehicles were made from lead and included a racing car, tractor, delivery van, truck, sports car & a tank. Initially the vehicles were not particularly accurate representations of their subects, but did always have rubber tires. Dinky toy vehicles soon caught the attention of young people & the company went from strength to strength over the next three decades, but finally succumbed to intense competition & closed its doors in 1979.

Dinky Toys Mini Cooper

Tomica

Tomica is the brand name of Takara Tomy Co. of Japan and have been manufacturing a range of die cast toy vehicles since 1970. For the first four years they produced exclusively Japanese vehicles, but then progressed to 'foreign' makes in competition with Matchbox. There was a range of 110 vehicles commonly known as 'Tomy Pocket Cars' constantly available, the less popular models being dropped to make way for new ones. In the early 1980's the company faced a financial crisis & were forced to limit production of this range to eighty models.

Tomica Tomy Bajaj / Daihatsu Midget

Gama

A German company who produced traditional tinplate mechanical toys since before WW1. With the advent of WW2 Germany they produced many military vehicles including tanks, one of their most popular was the die-cast Army DKW Schwimmwagen. It wasn't until the 60's that they included plastic injection for making their products, this allowed them to put a lot more detail into the finished product. In the 1970's they brought out a range of die cast vehicles branded as Mini-Mods which are now very collectible.

Gama Toy Cadillac

Hot Wheels by Mattel

It was the late 1960's when kids first started playing with these 2" cars manufactured by Mattel, now both children & adults are going crazy to buy them. There is an adult living in Washington who has a collection worth over $400,000 & one car, a chromed Ford Thunderbird, is worth $13,000 alone!!

Mike Strauss, who organizes Hot Wheel swap meets said that at one recent meeting, over $2 million worth of toy cars changed hands, including a $168,000 collection sold by a man to help pay for his divorce.

Mattel say that they have produced over 4 billion model cars since 1968.

Hot Wheels 2011 Vintage Racing Collection Coming - autoevolution

Corgi

Mettoy Playcraft Ltd introduced the Corgi Toys range of vehicles in 1956, they were soon to become the largest manufacturer of die cast vehicles in the world. Great detail & innovations such as clear plastic windows proved to be a great hit & in the first year alone 2.75 million toy vehicles were sold. This robbed Dinky of a great deal of the market, but Corgi Toys fortunes were to temporarily held up due to a massive fire which destroyed their Swansea factory. Revival of the company was greatly helped by the James Bond Aston Martin DB5 & the 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' models.

Click image for more information & current range of models