I found the raddest car collection … in my parents’ basement

I collect Hot Wheels, but I have rules:

Only cars that cost ~$1.00.  None of the fancy, higher-priced ones.

99% of them are sports cars or sports-racing cars from the 1960s to the early 1990s.

Reasonable colors, no crazy paint jobs or crazy stickers, and I try to avoid black.

Wheels must be reasonable, not too large.

This keeps the collection in check.  I only buy maybe 3-5 a year.

This year I scored a Porsche 904 and a Jaguar Mk1 race car, both of which happen to be living at my desk right now.

darkbuddha said:

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.

Interestingly enough, as a kid I was a huge collector: baseball cards, comics, die-casts. As I've grown older, I'm far more selective in what I purchase. These die-casts, though, deserve a spot on my wall. They do bring me joy.

My home office is a shrine to my old toys. I passed down a ton of my Hot Wheels for my kids to play with, but certain ones are on my shelves. They all have a story.

In reply to stuart in mn :

I didn't know it was possible to destroy a Tonka truck.

Warlock said:

In reply to stuart in mn :

I didn't know it was possible to destroy a Tonka truck.

If your nephew leaves it in the driveway behind his dad's pickup truck, it's pretty easy.

I went back to my mother's one day looking for the old suitcase full of my old hot wheels, legos, and Star Wars figures.   After pulling everything out of the basement without success, she finally remembered she gave it away.  I was disappointed.

She gave it to a family friend who was going to, then still Communist, Czechoslovakia where my family emigrated from.    They were giving all of it to a young boy she knew.  The toys that you couldn't couldn't buy there or would've been very expensive. I found it hard to be mad.  I hope that kid became a car nut and an engineer.

J.A.

Me too. Me too. I can relate on all points. Especially since the Mets won the World Series during my senior year of high school. But Hojo and Nails were my favorites.

I have a number of diecast from that time period. And a number of Stomper 4x4s to go with.

z31maniac said:

I had some Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars growing up too.

But what I had the most of was Micro Machines. 

Loved Micro Machines.

I'm sure there are some of those floating around my parents' basement. I might find them on my next journey through time down there.

Growing up my brother had a collection of these I can only describe as insane. It was his hyper fixation for a good 5 years of his life when he was little and of course it was the age where, for every special occasion, relatives and my parents would gift him Hot Wheels or Matchbox cars. Since then my family has moved to a different country and now I wonder what lucky person bought them all at the their selling house garage sale.

David S. Wallens said:

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.)

I have a ton of Hess trucks. We'll tackle that another time. They are timeless, but I'll admit that plastic doesn't hold up well over time, at least the ones I found in the basement.

Did any of you get the mini exacts in 1:87 scale? I have about 15 of those. They were meant for HO train layouts