I had 4 younger brothers....nothing survived.

I showed the friction powered beetle a few days ago, and the green colored mate back when I could still get on Swifty's from last spring (not sure what I did with that pic...)


I know it isn't a car, but I do remember playing with them waaaaaay back in the stone age.

The first vehicle I remember was a Tootsietoy Scenicruiser bus, like this but mine had more paint as I remember:



I also have fond memories of a Policeman on a motorcycle, made of semi-hard rubber. Possibly Tomte Laerdahl or the other American maker whose name is slipping my mind right now. I don't have a copy but I've seen images from time to time.

These were all left behind at my Great Grandmother's house when we moved out to LA before I turned 4.

After that I recall an Airport Fuel Tanker so big I could ride on it, and I did. The front wheels would turn if you tipped the cab. I've since ID'd it as made by Parks Plastics. Had two other large trucks as well, near as I can tell one was Smith Miller armored car, which it turns out was a bank giveaway promo. The other I'm a bit less certain, but I think it was a Marx canvas back military troop carrier.

Right about the time I turned 7 I got my first Hot Wheel, a gold Deora...and the rest as they say, is history.

I still have most of my childhood cars. All of them are heavily playworn but their sentimental value is priceless.

I don't know what was my first car but looking at the oldest pics of me I can see Matchbox Hovercraft and Pininfarina BMC 1800 in gold color. BMC broke to pieces but the Hovercraft i still have.

I've been trying to replace those cars that have gone missing or broken along the way and tried to find nicer examples of those I have.

Great reads Thanks for posting.

Remembering back to early 1979 when the TV show Dukes of Hazzard was introduced.
Being about 10 years old at the time the show quickly became my favorite, already loved
the 69 Charger by then too because my Dad had owned two of them. And of course Daisy Duke.
Interestingly enough, later that year Hot Wheels introduced the Dixie Challenger. This was certainly
a "Generic Lee" and I knew it then although it was close enough.It wasnt until 1981 that Ertl secured the
rights to replicate the actual General Lee. By then I was becoming a teenager and was loosing interest
in collecting. By 1982, Hot Wheels had to scale back their copy cat and changed the flag on the roof to a U shape.



Eric

when i was a kid there were not many cars.we played with toy soldiers and whatever we found to amuse ourselves.

My first Matchbox was the Ford Atkinson grit spreader. Now that I got that out of the way, let me share a StOrY (all TrUe). My dad liked the Matchbox M.O.Y. so a few of them followed us home. One of them was the 1913 Cadillac. When I was getting back into collecting in my mid 20s, I discovered the Cadillac was missing. Highly unusual! Also missing was the Binz ambulance (made up for that loss many times since then - probably have 10 or so with variations - military, reversed base text, etc.). In any event, on December 25, 2003, my sister mysteriously just happened to present me with a mint 1913 Cadillac in the box. Out of all the possible things, why would she select that particular model? I didn't ask any questions. The Binz ambulance remains at large. Onward through the fog.

Great stories. The line between my "childhood" and "adult" collection is quite blurred as I never really stopped collecting...I just stopped playing with the cars at some point. Mostly But it was around the year 2000 (I was 11) that I started to adopt a collecter mindset. I was still playing with the cars at that point, but that year I tried to get all of the First Editions and kept them carded. To this day I have over 20 cars that I would consider are from my "childhood"...cars that I know I have had for 20+ years and have some play/improper storage wear. I probably have a couple dozen more from that era, but I'm not sure if I preserved them well or replaced them years later. I'll stick to those ~20 cars for this thread.

First off, these 3 are by far the most playworn I still have.



On the left we have a Matchbox Mack MR rescue truck. This truck has poseable floodlights on the roof that got used quite a bit and to this day still function very well. Those lights helped illuminate many a 1/64 auto accident decades ago!

In the middle is a Maisto Ford F series that is heavily modified for off-road racing. And, as you can see, it got to do plenty of that. This one was no garage queen. This piece may be the only one in my collection that has a straight up broken part (I typically try to only purchase mint condition models these days). There is also still dirt caked in some of the wheels spokes and tire treads, but the rest of the model is fairly clean.

And on the right is a Matchbox Rover Sterling. This one is actually the first die-cast I ever remember playing with. I don't specifically remember dunking it, but the rusting axles are evidence that this one might have played the part of a submarine at some point.

My most valued "ULTIMATE COLLECTION" started in 1959...






Ads and articles cut from magazines...

Liking the reads.


Jedi so cool that you didnt stray away during the child / adult transition years.


A guy I have known locally for over 20 years received a 1968 Sweet 16 Hot Wheels store display for Christmas
when he was a kid. His Dad knew the store manager at the time and was able to acquire it. The kicker is that he
still has it today never opened in the original packaging!

One of my earliest diecast memories was having a Matchbox Flying Bug.
Although a bit car-toony it was still appealing.



Eric

The VW with the Red Baron grows on you.

Ah yes the Hot Wheels Red Baron. Produced and reproduced many times through the years.
Yeah the shiny helmet does grow on ya. Some day would like to see a white interior version in person.



The Paddy Wagon was also produced in large numbers and had one of those too.



Eric

This one was pretty consistently my fastest one down the track for a number of years. Of course it sustained its fair share of accidents and curves pretty signficiantly to the right when you roll it these days, so its racing days are probably over.

lots of great stories that make for good reading.

At the time of this photo it had been a handful of years since I played with my cars, but when the time came that I decided to move out of moms house and go to Florida I was afraid my childhood cars would be given away or lost somehow, so I asked mom if it was fine to pack and store them in the attic until I got settled somewhere someday, so this was a photo I had taken of them laid out on the living room floor with the box I was to pack them in out of sight of the camera, probably taken within the same week I was to move down here.

There were more than what you see in this photo, but these were just the ones I thought to be mine alone, though they all got boxed up, my younger brother may beg to differ with a few of them, but hey, he had already been gone for a couple years serving in the marines, and I believe stationed overseas by this time, and he never loved them like I did anyway, but regardless I knew what was mine, even if he doesn't remember. Lol




Some years later Christmas 1995 I finally retreived my cars on my annual visit, within a month or so I built this diplay case for them that you see on top of the chest. It housed these cars for awhile, and hoped to somehow find some I remembered from childhood, but nolonger had, I made it with a mirrored back and quite a number of glass shelves, which I have somewhere. The foam you see inside is just protecting the glass parts.



And then through a tip from mom I discovered collectors guides, along with realizing other people actually collected them too, plus discovering there were still like new examples of those old cars to hunt for, but it was those persuasive collectors guides with those colorful pictures of miniature cars that got me to discover that I wanted them all, And Now Look What I'm Dealing With, And This Picture Isn't All Of Them I Have To Deal With Either !

.


Unfortunately that display case I built has sat empty for the last 7 years or more, but I do want to repopulate it with my childhood cars again.

Darn....I was gonna post some of my childhood Matchbox, but I seem to have lost the ability to post my photos here. The three former functional methods (using this platform's image buttons) return errors I'm not familiar with. Neither the little "image" icon above, nor the "Upload" buttons below, will accept my image files from Photobucket. Anyone have a clue why?