Values of original keyrings

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When we first started this small business almost 15 years ago original vintage keyrings for classic vehicles were not generally valuable items but over the last 4 or 5 years original keyrings and original keyfob badges for many makes of classic vehicles have become very valuable .

Original unrestored genuine vintage keyrings in very good or mint condition for most makes of vehicle are now collector’s items and can be relatively valuable – particularly to the owner of one of the vehicles in question.

Our prices reflect the cost of taking the keyring or badge into stock ( now very considerable in the case of many keyrings and badges ) together with the time taken to carry out any remounting and then photographing and listing each keyring separately with a detailed description – a very time consuming job for just one man .

Not to mention the overheads of running a business like this with UK taxation, insurance, credit card & paypal fees, accountancy and the cost of maintaining the website and shop .

Genuine original vintage unrestored keyrings will generally have the original maker’s name on the back of the badge ( i.e. CUD, Craftsman, Manhattan Windsor, Melsom Products, Sculthorp, Caxton of Kew, Gale Melville etc or will usually have ‘Made in England‘ marked on the back of the badge .

Any keyring with a badge with a plain unmarked back may not be a genuine original vintage item- although there are exceptions of course .

Similarly the backs of the leather keyfobs of genuine original vintage keyrings are often gold embossed ‘Made in England’ , ‘Genuine Leather’, ‘Morocco Leather’ etc.

The badges and keyfobs of many of the main original manufacturers ( eg Manhattan Windsor & Melsom Products Ltd ) are relatively easy to identify but complications can arise where a manufacturer has gone out of business and their stock of badges or leather keyfobs have then been purchased by another manufacturer .

It is not unknown to find a Melsom Products badge mounted onto a Manhattan Windsor leather keyfob or even a badge without any identification mounted onto a keyfob which would be associated with a particular manufacturer !

A genuine original vintage keyfob badge with a maker’s name may have been remounted onto a new leather keyfob ( which will be unlikely to be gold embossed on the back ) – in this case the keyring is classed as having been restored and is no longer a genuine original vintage keyring .

The splitrings fitted to genuine vintage keyrings were often slimmer than those in general use today and commonly had a bevel edge rather than being simply round in cross section . You are most unlikely to find a flat splitring fitted to a vintage keyring .

Customers often ask for a suitable keyring to use with a car produced in the 1930s, 1940s or early 1950s .

Car keyrings did not actually come into general use until the late 1950s – they hadn’t been ‘invented’ until then .

What often happened in practice is that the owner of a pre- mid 1950s car ( provided that it had an ignition key – as many didn’t ) would have bought a keyring to use with the car in the late 1950s or 1960s when car keyrings had become available.

So a keyring which had been made after the car had been built could still be regarded as being correct for that car .