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Who would have thought that Matchboxes could be hard to come by in England?
However, I find it increasingly difficult.

What are your sources?

A discount general merchandise store in the USA, Dollar General, seems very efficient at keeping fresh stock on their pegs.

Through the grapevine I believe stores like Tesco, Aldi and Lidl retail modern Matchbox but with the Covid-19 situation I do not go out now to the areas where they are, only to my work and back.

Ghosthunter.

I haven't found any at Aldi and Lidl around here in years.
Tesco and ASDA have them occasionally, but the assortment is patchy to say the least.

I work in a hobby come collectors shop and we don't have access to Matchbox items and the only few Hot Wheels we have come directly from the US via the owner of the shop.

If we were being asked for Matchbox I expect our suppliers could get them as they do with most of the other current toy and model brands in the retail market place.

Ghosthunter.

Could the lack of Matchbox models be a ploy of Mattel to make it diffulcult
for for the UK so that they hope we will buy their Hot Wheels.

I posted a question with regards the new Power Grabs range on the same subject
mainly as they are being sold as model in picture box and no blister.

Hot Wheels aren't exactly commonplace either and one would think that they rather complement, not compete with each other.

In the UK at the moment only Tesco stores have an official channel through Mattel to sell them. I am still hopeful that more stores will, but Tesco is currently your only option. Other discount stores randomly get an assortment in through other means but I have not heard of any of them getting any recently.

Tesco currently sell singles at £1.25 (currently up to batch C 2020, other countries batch E, batch F just starting to arrive), 5-packs at £5 (the first 5 packs and one of the Top Gun Maverick packs) and 9-packs at £8 (jumping from Chevy Brockwood exclusives to Datsun 510 Rally exclusives (with my name on that one) at the moment, skipping the Porsche 911GT3 exclusives). They also have a construction playset which was £30 but is now on a £15 half price sale away from the regular section.

I hope this helps.

When Mattel purchased Matchbox i think that they then hoped that having control they would
be able to control who bought which product by making Matchbox less easier to come by hence
you cannot find Matchbox so easily.
You can find at toyfairs traders selling tables full of recently released Hot Wheels but not Matchbox why ?

Errr...no toy fairs this year.