Diecast Model Cars
1951 Maserati GP, Low Miles, Needs Paint
By Ben Marks — People are always telling us about their collections. Some even send us links to Web pages they’ve built. Naturally we encourage them to post their stuff on Show & Tell, but every once in a while a collection stops us in our tracks. "Mint-condition cars don’t have the same kind of soul.” That’s what happened when we heard from Michael Spengler, a German photographer who is hoping to publish a book devoted to his collection of diecast and metal toy racing cars. Spengler has almost 300...
Japan's Best Postwar Export? Tinplate Cars
By Maribeth Keane and Brad Quinn — I used to have a huge collection of diecast 1/43rd-scale Dinky Toys, Corgi Toys, and things like that. I had so many that it got to the point where the collection was no longer interesting to me. So, in 1990, I sold all of it to a Los Angeles-based collector of Dinky Toys. With the money, my wife and I decided to start investing in tinplate toys. I bought a lot of them, sold some, and continued to upgrade. Over the past 20 years, we’ve built a substantial collection. Most of the pieces in...
Dave Rasmussen Knows Show Rods
By Maribeth Keane and Brad Quinn — I got interested in show rods as a boy in the late 1960s. We all built models back then. There was no Nintendo and only three or four TV channels. So kids did a lot of active stuff—playing outside—as well as doing things with their hands. Building models was primarily a male activity. I don’t think too many girls did it. It had a heavy post-World War II influence, with models of planes, ships, tanks, armor, and things like that. From the ’50s on there were also a lot of neat cars because the...
Collecting Toy Cars, from Diecast Chevys to Lithographed Tin
By Maribeth Keane — Ron Sturgeon: I had an automotive repair shop in about 1976 and spent a lot of time repairing Mercedes. About 1979 I decided to start collecting Mercedes toy cars. I was young and naïve and thought I could own every Mercedes model ever made. I’m still very interested in Mercedes, and that is the bulk of my collection, but I’m into a lot of things these days, more quality and very rare models. This is an important tip, to be more discriminating in stead of buying the cheapest. The higher...
Toy Cars, A Healthy Addiction
By Paul Chenard — I’ve been collecting vintage toys since 1982. I started slowly and methodically, partly for lack of information, mostly for lack of finances. I used to collect any metal transportation toy that I found interesting, anything that caught my eye (and that I could afford). In the late 80s, a Canadian-made Chime tin wind-up racecar toy from about 1935 came into my collection and suddenly, I had to find more racecar toys. I slowly traded away my other toys to acquire more metal (tin and diecast)...