This casting is special to me because it was one of three Matchbox that I retrieved from my childhood collection to put on display when I became a police officer, firefighter and EMT back in 1991. These 3 started my adult collecting addiction.

As for the Police Patrol, one of my favorites is this pre-production version:



Here are a few fairly rare ones:

Those variations you have are very nice👍 I don’t think I have any Pre- Production models in my collection🤔 However I would like to add some one of these days. Problem is they can get really expensive just for the one die cast but they are really cool looking and very rare😊 Similar story with me as it relates to starting my collection, this was one of my favorite Matchbox Emergency castings when I was younger, and it was easily available for an affordable price. I would collect and play with all of my die cast cars through the 70’s and most if not all of those die cast were all scratched and scuffed up. I have a few from my childhood but they are worn out pretty good. Back then the only Emergency cars I had were Matchbox, Hotwheels, Zylmex police set from the JC Penny, Sears Christmas catalog, and some of the Universal die cast from the TV show Emergency. It was a lot different back then.

I didn't like this casting at first when I started collecting in the mid 90's, mostly because of the oversized rolomatic dome light, but it grew on me as I kept running across interesting variations, now I think it is real neat. Here is my collection of them.

Douglas, I must confess, I felt the same about the light. I never knew there were so many variations of that casting. I did come to like it well after the fact. I wish I had found as many as you have. Wow. Nice collection.

Wow Doug👍👍👍 You have an amazing collection of police cars in the Range Rover #20!! There are a few there I don’t have, and I am always on the hunt for these castings😁 I really like them, but again the one big obstacle is the crazy prices these matchbox Range Rover go for😳😳😳 The Hungarian Matchbox Range Rover police cars are crazy expensive😳😳😳 I would love to have some of them. They came in all different cool colors like, light green, gold, black, red, blue, and I’m sure many more😊😊😊

I have just one police patrol one.

Thanks, your collection is just as great, it looks like we are each missing ones the other has. It looks like the only thing you might be missing of mine is the all orange with police labels, my other orange is the site engineer like you have. My two Paris Dakar ones are only different in that one is metallic paint and the other basic gloss enamel. One you have that I'd like to find one day is the white with small white police label, never seen it before.

I know how these old models just keep going up in price, although I was lucky to find all mine years ago, and the most I think I paid was $8 for one in a box one time, otherwise they were $3-5 each back when I got them, or they were in lots on ebay back when I bought on ebay, in fact the two orange ones and the military police I'm remembering were a small lot from England I got lucky and got for the opening bid, I'm not sure if they're are any lucky deals left on ebay these days, I figure if I ever start hunting for old stuff again online I'll probably experience sticker shock, as the prices have gone up since I was active..

Those are all really great collections, and I'm quite impressed. I don't think I have probably more than one of this casting buried somewhere in a box. If I were to want to start collecting more, I bet it would really set ne back $$$$$ nowdays.