Franklin Mint Precision Models

Franklin Mint Precision Models were made by the Franklin Mint, originally a private mint founded by Joseph Segel in 1964 in Wawa, Pennsylvania. The company is now owned by a private equity firm headquartered in Midtown Manhattan New York City and Exton, Pennsylvania. Besides diecast automobiles, the Franklin Mint manufactured and marketed coins, jewelry, dolls, sculpture and other collectibles.

In 1983, after Warner Communications had purchased the Franklin Mint, the company entered the die-cast diecast vehicle market introducing a 1935 Mercedes Benz 500K Roadster. In the following years, Franklin Mint produced more than 600 different issues of motorcycles, trucks and tractors besides automobiles (Johnson 1998:78-79; JSS Diecast 2012). Marketing of all vehicles was almost exclusively through mail order catalogs.

Vehicles - often called 'Franklin Mint Precision Models' - usually cost between $75 and $150 and were meant as adult collectibles. (Johnson 1998:78-79). Over time, models were often made available in several different paint schemes (Doty 2007a, 87-88). Models were made in China, usually in batches of between 1,000 and 5,000 pieces (Doty 2003a, 88). The normal scale produced was 1:24, but models were also issued in 1:43, 1:18 and even a very large 1:8 for the 1885 Daimnler Single Track Reitwagen and the 1886 Mercedes Motorwagen (Johnson 1998:78:79; Flickr Reitwagen. 2012).

Collectible authors such as Randall Olson (2007:7,85) and Dana Johnson (1998) recognized Franklin Mint as one of the first commercial companies to sell diecast vehicles aimed at collectors. Models ranged from post-war selections such as the 1948 Tucker or the 1961 Ford Country Squire wagon with realistic rendering of vinyl wood siding (Doty 2007b, 86-87), to newer model choices such as a complete and detailed 1975 Corvette (Doty 2002, 87-88).

Franklin's execution, however, was not always the best. In the 1980s and 1990s, care and trucks were well proportioned and had interesting features, but models were a bit too heavy on details that could have been rendered more delicately or accurately. Chrome spears along the sides of 1950s cars, for example, were sometimes too thick and unrealistically embedded in grooves in the diecast body. At times, door panels did not line up well or seemed slightly bloated as seen in the Checker taxi (Doty 2000, p. 88). The body shape is not bad, but appears slightly 'inflated'.

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