'The Stolen Motorcycle' storyette is now complete

 

Royale's Original Catalogue Thumbnail

I have finished adding this set to the Archive

View The Stolen Motorcycle index page

Royale Catalogue (May 1958)

The only proper Royale Catalogue the Archive has discovered is the 1960 compilation of the 10 individual quarterly Lists which had been published up to that date. Many of the early sets had been deleted from the catalogue by that time and the first five lists had been condensed into a new List 'A', so information about those early years is incomplete.

However, in May 1958 (about 6 months after Royale's launch) the full page advertisement shown below was printed in 'Adonis' No 4 showing many of the models on their roster at that point.

Royale Advertisment in Adonis No 4 (May 1958)

It says a lot for Clavering's confidence and marketing knowledge that Royale were splashing out on full page ads so early in their existence. The catalogue price was  4 shillings, which is about £4 at today's prices.

There are 19 models named on these two pages as follows:

	Left Hand Sheet				Right Hand Sheet
Top Row	Don Avard	Don Avard		Don Avard	Artur Robin	Michael Bambin		Ricky Alboni
2nd Row	Terry Finch	Mohamed el Zole?		Ian Oliver	Mercer	Sandy MacCrea		Richard Robinson
3rd Row	David Trood		Pat Brooks		Muller		David Wales
4th Row	John Dawe?	Les White		Charles Kassapian(?)	Allan	Charles Kassapian		Lee

I am not confident of models named with a question mark

You can see some of the names more clearly in the original, unenhanced image

The man named 'Mercer' is not known from other sources (sadly), nor is 'Allan', nor 'Muller' (although his ship's wheel appears in a well-known picture of Mike Chisholm).There is another image of 'Lee' but the magazine did not give his full name. 

A separate source, also from May 1958, an advertisement in 'Tomorrow's Man', states that Royale had 30 models on their books at that point, so this ad identifies two thirds of their roster. The missing 11 probably included Tibor Urgay, John Skilling, Fred Collins, Ted Gutteridge, Frank Wheeler and Henri Barjac who are also associated with the early existence of Royale