In 1966 a new range was introduced - GIFTWARE

This page is dedicated to all the Giftware items produced by Lesney over the years. A truly fascinating subject with many items of interest that will both surprise and amaze you at the vast amount of products produced. The most obvious are the Yesteryear cars on such things as ashtrays, pin trays, pipe racks and pen sets etc.. These were sold in numerous gift shops and were very popular as a dad's present on birthdays and at Christmas.

To keep it simple I have divided this section into 3 separate listings, the early painted Yesteryear giftware, the next generation plated Yesteryear items and associated catalogues and finally the other vast range of items deemed as giftware.

Although described as silver or gold plated, neither of these metals were used. The process involved the castings being placed into a rotating drum with a pellet of Aluminium or Aluminum for our US counterparts added and a high electrical charge inputted which effectively vaporized the pellet and coated all the castings with a very thin layer of the metal. This was then coated with a clear lacquer for silver or a tinted one for a gold finish. Some gold finishes can be pale whilst others are a very brassy gold colour. A peculiarity of this side of production was that a lot of models had different coloured plastic components to the normal issued models, the main one being a very bright red similar to the rear tonneau on the Y5 Bentley.

The plated models are very hard to photograph, especially the difference between silver and light or pale gold. They have a great knack of showing up every speck of dust or mark and some are not as bad looking as the picture seems. I have tried my best as an amateur snapper and hope it is worthwhile.

For now enjoy a whole different aspect of collecting 'Lesney' and a far cheaper one as these are still freely available all over.