by johnbeugels » Mon Jun 02, 2014 11:40 am
Hello Mark,
The book has no lists of how many boxes were made. This only could be detected from Meccano factory records. However they don't exist anymore.
Despite this on many boxed sets and tradeboxes produced in England there were data printed. From 1938 all boxes had these data with a few exceptions. On the box you can find for example BW 11823 10M 5-40, BW is code for producer of box, 10M is 10.000 boxes made, 5-40 is May 1940.
On some boxes before 1938 there are also codes but many don't have.
Lucky the sets 60 all have codes, you can find these at the label at side bottom left. Example 1/534/5, May 1934, made 5.000. I have many No 60 boxes and from the codes, in 1934 75.000 sets were made. Untill 1940 total 125.000 but probably more.
I don't have a Autogiro tradebox in my collection but have seen two. Very early boxes were made from pale violet paper, soon followed by the well known yellow boxes. On these early boxes there are no date codes printed. I have some in my collection, a 60a and 60 d tradebox for six. Later tradeboxes had data codes as had all the individual boxes.
So I cannot tell you how many Autogiro tradeboxes were made.
Box No 66 is a rare one and also hard to find. I have one with date code BW11823 10M 5-40. The Army Co-operation Autogiro can be found in silver and grey, both with RAF roundels. Not to be confused with a French silver Autogire without roundels. The French models can easily be recognized by the fact that there is a injection mark at outside right of the model.
Meccano France did not print data on the boxes so it is unknown how many were made.
I am still compiling with a friend a database with all the date codes on boxes so numbers are always welcome.
John.