RD Marmande/Manou models

I have been collecting the 1/43rd hand carved wood models made by Raymond Daffure under the RD Marmande (Marmande is the city he was from) and RD Manou (Manou is a shop in Le Mans that sold them) for many years. The price of the models back in the 60s was about $5.

The man would make any car to order, plus others were just "available". He did over 20,000 of these hand made models; everything from coachbuilt Cadillacs, to virtually every car than ran at Le Mans. They are a bit crude, but extremely charming. I have probibly had some 1500 of them through my hands in the last 25 years.

Daffure died circa 1970, but the models didn't start becoming collectable until the 80s. The last time I was in France (1987), they were about 100 Frf, or about $15.

Well, I just returned from a week in Paris, and was only able to find one in the entire Paris flea market section (at Scherperil, a toy dealer that has been there for 30+ years)...and the price was...150 euros, or almost $200!!