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Hi All
here a silver and black Hispano Prepro.Cheers Mathias.

Mathias,
make sure to look into some hidden edges of the car - if there's a hint of blue anywhere, it is a sunfaded car.
Most the ones that are shown as being one of the prepros are not, as just a very few were made for photo and trade fair display purposes!

Kay

Hi . I'm new to this board but I have been collecting Matchbox from the late seventies . Most of my models are 1970 and older.
A lot of the so called prepros were actually models painted by employees for their friends or for fun. A good friend who lived in Seattle had several of them and not one was a prepro. He even had a cord which was done to match the colours of the real Cord in his garage. The same person had sent them all. I know of one collector who toured the production plant and as he was leaving he was asked what his favorite car was and what colour would he prefer.When he left Jack O'dell handed him the model. .. Don

Depends on what one classes a prepro as -

I would only consider a genuine prepro if model has either an incomplete date / Y number or significant casting changes to the model. Anything else is purely a colour trial or a Friday Lunchtime model which is what you describe.

Certain colour trials are very well known and I would consider the one made by Jack as a code 4 model probably and would be a genuine Lesney product, given as a gift, which was often the case with certain visitors to the plant. Then there were models created especially to be given as spot prizes at Lesney functions ie: the Y4 Shand mason in gold plated form.

As for all the others like the Capt.Morgan van in a huge amount of different colours or standard models with different decals from another standard issue model - I wouldn't pay you 'tuppence' for them but seems a lot like them and probably ordered at the factory gates as many were.

Welcome to the forum Don,
About 10 years ago I met an east London model/toy shop owner at a toyfair, He had a few Yesteryears with unusual coloured plastics etc, I asked how he came by these models and he told me that they were unofficially made by Lesney staff at one of their factories and were delivered to his shop on a staff bus as that was the easiest way to smuggle them out of the factory, At one time he had thousands of them and he still owned a couple of hundred.

Moyboy wrote:Depends on what one classes a prepro as -

I would only consider a genuine prepro if model has either an incomplete date / Y number or significant casting changes to the model. Anything else is purely a colour trial or a Friday Lunchtime model.

I agree entirely. The rubbish that is described as preproduction by auction houses beggars belief.