Vintage Model Cars
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...
When Slot Cars Were Kings of the Arcades
By Maribeth Keane and Brad Quinn — Growing up in postwar Europe, there wasn’t much money around, so you had to make your own amusements. I’d look at the toys in a toy store, go home and draw, and then build what I had seen out of cardboard and construction paper. Then, in 1957, I saw a new Scalextric slot car racing set. It came out in late summer and was in French department stores by Christmas. The track was a figure eight and it came with little push-button controllers for the cars. Suddenly you could actually race...
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...
A Concord Coach in Miniature
By Edward Hungerford — The desire to have a model of an old-time Wells Fargo coach for my own collection of the railroads and other means of transportation at Pittsford, New York, came as a swift inspiration, rather than a long thought-out dream. For had I not been advertising manager of Wells Fargo & Co.; the first and last and only advertising manager that that distinguished old-time concern had possessed? I had stayed with it until it went out of active business here in the United States — in the...
NASCAR Model Cars, from AMT to Revell
By Maribeth Keane — I started my site in about 1990 and my original thought was to feature NASCAR models. It’s like an online model show. I specialized in NASCAR so that seemed the way to go. It’s worked out pretty well. I’m still adding new people to the site. I try to update it monthly. I’ve got well over 200 different modelers represented now, and there’s probably 2,000 models on there. It’s global. I get a lot of interest from Europe, some from Asia and Japan, a lot from Australia, and of course the bulk of...
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)...