Lesney originally made the 400m (15 & three quarter inches) Coronation coach in 1951 as a souvenir for the 1951 Festival of Britain but because of the Korean war and the embargo placed on zinc it was shelved almost immediately.
In 1952 the King died and soon after the embargo on zinc was lifted so knowing there would be a coronation soon the coach went back into production, after a few hundred were made it was realised that the coach had two figures sitting inside and during the coronation the queen would be alone in the real coach so the dies were quickly altered to remove the King. (although the lower half of his legs were still in the coach)
The coach itself was made from die cast mazac and was either silver plated, gold plated or more commonly gold painted.
The horses were made in slush cast lead by Benbros simply because Lesney did not want lead in their factory as just a small amount of lead contamination to the zinc would make the metal unusable as it would crumble, The horses were painted off white with red blankets, gold saddles and black harness, the hooves, tails and manes were painted grey and a gold coloured chain was attached to each side, The riders were given black hats and boots, red tunics and flesh coloured hands and faces. The drawbar was usually painted white but examples have been seen in gold or unpainted metal.
It was packed in a red two piece box which had the coach illustrated on a white label glued to the top, Toy wholesalers Morris & Stone shipped a batch of coaches to the USA and these have a small "Morris & Stone (London) LTD" label stuck over the Lesney name on the box label.
Although it was a Lesney product it is not one of the most desirable of the early toys and with the advent of the internet many have come to light so prices for this one are down when compared to what they were a few years ago. The success of the large coronation coach prompted Lesney to scale down the model to become the the next early toy - the wonderfully successful small coronation coach.
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