Dinky 410 Bedford

Not very many companies took on the job of making a model Bedford CF toy in the 1960s the real van  was selling very well at the dealerships and Bedford had a great van on the road but only Dinky took up the job of making the toy there are no others apart from a cheep 1/64th scale made in Hong Kong van and a 1/82th 00 scale for train layouts so to have this model is great, Dinky were not known for attention to detail but this is a great well made model of a very popular van, It was first sold in 1972 with the Simpson's a store in Canada and in fact it was another two years in 1974 that this was followed by the Danish post model another 9 or 10 were produced until 1979 when Dinky toys closed its doors. there were some preproduction vans with Logos made to tempt people into having a model done these were sent out on a sales drive by dinky and are code one vans. A lot of the vans were pre painted ready for promotions in order to cut out the waiting time if an order came into the factory. The 410 Bedford vans were all sold pre-painted by Dinky when the company closed its doors to a collector/Trader called John Gay who for a number of years produced code two vans for companies all over the world with the Bedford's he had painted by Dinky toys in Liverpool. The John gay models and boxes have become very collectable over the last few years and are much sort after by Dinky collectors all over the world.

The rarest of the rare  I have spoken to a guy at a toy show some time ago with a Belaco T-shirt on

 he worked for the company in the 1974 and told me that they had an option to buy 1000 of this van but in fact only ever got 200 before the promotion ended and never took up the option for the other 800 with Dinky making this van probably one of the shortest run Dinky vans ever made.

The Boxes

John Gay box

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Dinky Pre-pro

Dinky Pre-pro

Dinky Pre-pro

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