“Bring the trash bags,” I told my brother. “We’re on a mission.” We shuffled down the stairs, waded through a maze of boxes and started at the farthest end of the basement.
Would we find treasure? Would we find garbage?
Yes, we would.
Who knew they once put gravy into cans? Salvageable? Not even close. Apparently cans rust through after …
It's far too easy to forget about "Johnny." Good for you on taking time to check in on him.
I spotted my die-cast collection in the attic last night when putting away holiday decorations. Maybe its time to take them out and take a trip back in time.
The other big thing for us while growing up: Tonkas.
We had a ton of them. Credit my ever-doting grandparents, the fact that my dad worked for a major toy distributor, and the fact we often hit garage sales/antique stores.
When my parents sold the house, though, the Tonkas had to go. Just too bulky to ship and save.
But my parents did box up my Hot Wheels. :)
In reply to David S. Wallens :
I am glad I kept my Hess truck collection. My uncle gave one to me every year for Christmas for about 14 years and I somehow kept them all. Some have had a rough life of being played with but as I got older a lot of them still have the boxes and all the parts. They do take up a ton of space though.
It's fun to keep a few cherished pieces around.
In reply to Chris Tropea :
Man, we had Hess trucks. I think those came from my grandma. We didn’t have all of them, but we had a few. (A few = two or three.)
My Hot Wheels story and, really, I should save this for a column. I should get all of the facts from my dad, too, as I was in like grade school at the time.
Well, here’s the TL;DR version.
My dad worked for a company that owned several toy store chains. He worked in the main office, which was paired with a distribution warehouse.
One day, I believe it was during the holidays, there was a gas leak–and the entire top floor of the building, including my dad’s office, was blown to smithereens!
My dad came home with a (large) box of Hot Wheels that had been “smoke damaged.” :)
David S. Wallens said:The other big thing for us while growing up: Tonkas.
One of my regrets is when I was a teenager I gave my Tonka trucks to my nephews, who promptly destroyed them.
Oh that stings. I’m guessing a lot of ours were from the ’60s as we got them from the pre-owned market.
Whatever you do, don't start "collecting." Walk away, quickly. Real cars are bad enough, but my old rationale of "I may not be able to afford the real thing, but for a buck I can take home this super cool diecast" has gotten me to the point that I have a collection that takes up as much space as a real car. And that space is super valuable space where a real car could actually sit: in the garage. Dumb. Now I'm at the point that I just want rid of them, and I'm not sure I've got the dedication to go through the process of selling them for what they're worth. But then again, I can't really afford not to, either.
So, sure, enjoy those small tokens of memories of Johnny, but do not indulge his inklings to add more.
It's great that you found all your old cars! Totally jealous of that silver Firebird, too!!! I will fully endorse and enable purchasing a 1:1 version.
Although I managed to hang onto a lot of my old fleet over the years, many of them went missing as I grew up and moved onto other things in life.
Or so I thought.
About 10 years ago, I was over my parents house, helping them clean up the yard and under their deck. Years ago, my dad built a little storage room under the deck, but weather, moisture and other factors took its toll on the structure, eventually getting to the point where we had to tear it down. After we literally peeled back the walls, it was like going through my entire childhood. There were all sorts of outdoor toys, old bikes, sleds, and more stuffed under there and forgotten. And tucked in the back corner were two rubber bins. I immediately lost my mind.
These bins were my old toy boxes. Holy crap.
My mom had told me that she asked my dad to toss them out years ago. He didn't have the heart to do it, so he stuffed them in the now-collapsed room. Over the years, the bin lids disintegrated and some of them filled with water. But somehow, probably due to some sort of weird electrolysis reaction with ancient 9v batteries in some of the toys, things were remarkably preserved! I drained the water, dried them out, and set out to clean them up.
In there were all of these various action figures, and a lot more. This is just a sampling. Yes, that is a Fisher Price Construx box; had tons of those, too.
I had a Hot Wheels toy hauler carrying case full of stuff that was spared from the water. Lots of great stuff in there.
These two were special. I received them both from Alitalia flight attendants on a trip to Italy in 1989. These kept me occupied the whole time I was there and for years after I got back.
I had a thing for the Porsche 928 as a young kid. I had not one, but two of the Hot Ones 928 because one was for play and the other was to look at. 
My mom recently uncovered a picture of me on vacation in Maine playing with one of these!
I also had a thing for '57 Chevys with engines that stuck through the hood. I still do.
Every one of these was submerged in water for at least 20 years. It's incredible that they are in any recognizable condition!
Looking over my old collection, I was really into short bed stepside trucks, Porsche 911's and 928's, Datsun Z cars, Trans Ams, LM and IMSA-style racecars with big flares, and any sort of car with the engine sticking through the hood. Years later, I'm into all of those same things. I had good taste!
I pre-date Hot Wheels. All my die cast cars were Dinky or Matchbox. The Dinky ones had proper rubber tires. A few years ago we stopped at a large antique store in SE Michigan....I wish I could find a box of my old cars at the prices I saw that day.
Hot wheels came out the year I turned 9. $1.04cdn with tax, and my allowance was a dollar, so I had to scrounge a nickel somewhere.
I played those berkeleyers to death, and don't regret a minute of it, although theres probably a thousand bucks or so in lost value in my investment portfolio now.
It used to piss me off no end when the wheels would break in half. Car was useless then, so I'd use it for pellet gun target practice.
Which then begs the question, how much is a Slavia .177 pellet gun from the 60s worth? Don't have it anymore, either.
I never got into metal diecast. My vice was (and still is BTW) slot cars. The HO scale (1/64) are usually not all that accurate scale-wise, but the 1/32 cars... many of them could be shelf queens, and you can race them. I have about every variant of Group C cars. How many of those could I afford in real life? About 0.001. And I can race mine in my basement.
I had some Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars growing up too.
But what I had the most of was Micro Machines.
My most cherished possession. It's as old as I am. Mom hand painted it blue for me some time when I was 4.
In reply to Appleseed :
Wow, totally remember that one. Had it in orange.
In reply to David S. Wallens :
That's the color. Mom painted blue is best, though.
DeadSkunk (Warren) said:I pre-date Hot Wheels. All my die cast cars were Dinky or Matchbox. The Dinky ones had proper rubber tires. A few years ago we stopped at a large antique store in SE Michigan....I wish I could find a box of my old cars at the prices I saw that day.
Me too, for the most part - most of my collection was Matchbox, but I have half dozen or so of the first Redline Hot Wheels. I got one of those Matchbox suitcases for Christmas one year and filled it up, I still have it with the cars.
I amassed a huge collection in the 70s/early 80s as a kid. One day I gave them all away to my friend who was a few years younger because I thought I had "outgrown" them. What a mistake, I even had Red Lines, not knowing what they were, that my grandpa had given me.
Now I've built up a bit of a collection again, but mostly stuff I like, like obscure rally cars from the 80s and cars I own/used to own. There's a huge diecast car show twice a year in Dayton & I normally go if I don't have plans. Pretty much any new or vintage you want, someone has it. Actually should be coming up in February. (I got tired of looking for the two GR Corolla's, one being a super special hard to find, and found vendors with both back in August.)
In reply to David S. Wallens :
I'm sure have more die-cast cars now as an adult than I ever had as a kid. Some day I'll figure out a better way to keep them rather than just packing them away in plastic bins. Granted, the "WTF am I going to do with these?" thought doesn't stop me from buying more when something interesting catches my eye.
I still have most of my Matchbox and Hotwheels cars, mostly from the late 70's and early 80's. They were sitting around in the attic, doing nothing. A few years ago we had some friends over and their little boys were bored as hell, so I went up to the attic and collected them all and dumped them unceremoniously in a pile in the middle of the floor with some lengths of track so they could build jumps and they played for hours. Since then, all of the 'collection' lives in a drawer in the living room so that any visiting kids can go nuts on them. If they have a favorite car, I'll usually offer to let them take it home with them. I've gotten a lot more joy out of them sharing them with the kids than sitting in a box.
Unlike real cars of the 70s and early 80s, the Matchbox cars were built a lot better back then.
I took this one in on trade:
I had mostly Hot Wheels but also the usual assortment of Matchbox cars. A friend around the corner, though, had Johnny Lightnings–and not the later reissues but the originals.
In reply to stuart in mn :
Same thing happened to most of my old toys: cars, Star Wars, GI Joe...
I don't regret it though. There is far more value in the enjoyment and memories we both got from the hours playing with them than any dollars they might have been worth if I had saved them.
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