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Hello there,
When I was a kid cars, buses, lorries were everything to me. Subsequently, I now work in the Motor Trade (it had to be). I have over 150 Matchbox (admittedly some of it is the Macau stuff which I know is frowned upon), Matchbox Superkings & Corgi vehicles in my attic - all Play Worn by me with no boxes - and I would love to be able to try and replace them with nicer examples so in effect I end up with two of each. I've had a bit of success but only been at it less than a year and I'm loving it. My question is this, I've seen people refer to items as "code 1, 2, 3", etc, what does this mean?!
Sorry if this is a bit of a Textbook1, Page1, Question 1 of collectors, but I just don't know the answer!
I love this site!!
Regards to all
Mark.

Good Evening, Mark, and welcome to VBD.
The Codes come from a 1980s collectors' magazine called U.K. Matchbox. IIRC, there were originally six codes, but these were quickly rationalised to only three:
- Code 1 is a fully factory-produced model,
- Code 2 is a factory-produced model which has subsequently been modified with the permission of the original manufacturer (e.g. labels added), and
- Code 3 is a model which does not fall into either of the two previous categories. (This is mainly used to denote repaints and restorations.)

Idris wrote:Good Evening, Mark, and welcome to VBD.
The Codes come from a 1980s collectors' magazine called U.K. Matchbox. IIRC, there were originally six codes, but these were quickly rationalised to only three:
- Code 1 is a fully factory-produced model,
- Code 2 is a factory-produced model which has subsequently been modified with the permission of the original manufacturer (e.g. labels added), and
- Code 3 is a model which does not fall into either of the two previous categories. (This is mainly used to denote repaints and restorations.)

That's very helpful, thanks.

Mark