I'll play. But it'll be long. Entertaining at least, I promise.
If I really go backwards, and I mean like when I was three, I've liked cars ever since. I could tell you what every car on the street was when I was 4. And I loved toy cars. I still have some of the very early plastic cars my parents bought me. Of course, diecasts were also pretty much an every day thing for me, I remember dad coming from work at night and giving me diecast Yatmings.
Going from there, I cannot remember ANY moment of my childhood in that I did not have diecasts around me. There were othe toys of course -I never got a videogame system until the SNES and I never was a sports kid, so my early childhood was all toys- but the die cast cars remained a constant. I remember some awesome days when many, MANY (big family) cousins got together in faimly reunions, and each would bring a bunch of cars and play for hours, sometimes days, with the few sets we had.
One of those cousins lived two blocks away and also had a bunch of cars, and from him I first got the notion of collecting. He is the oldest of all the cousins of my generation, so he stopped playing with them when I still did, but instead of stopping buying cars he kept on going and made a display using bricks and some spare window glass my uncle had lying around, and put them all there. It looked awesome. Soon I wanted to do the same but I didn't have the space, nor a display, and my cars were very played with. Still, the seed had been planted, and I realized that, for the cars to look good, they had to be taken care of.
So subsequently, the cars I bought were played, yes, but I took a LOT of care of them. I took care of not chipping the paint (no more crashing games), and to more or less maintain the chrome on the wheels and the tampos. And I still have a few from that era that survived pretty damn well. Then came more money and more and more cars, mainly bought from the supermarket. It was like that for years and years.
Then came like the big boom. I attended an exposition on the 45 years of Hot Wheels put on by the Hot Wheels Mexico Club. I was in awe. I could not believe that such strong collections could exist in Mexico.I registered on the forum and started sucking up all the knowledge I could gather about hot wheels and other makers. And I keep on doing so to this very day. I'm currently still learning to ID Mexico-made HWs.
With this also came my entrance to the world of vintage stuff. From the guys at the club I learned where all the old good stuff was selling and I started attending flea markets that I was previously unaware of, many of which I still frequent, sometimes thrice a week. It has been a snowball from that moment... lets say, about 6 or 7 years ago, to freaking now... I just spent about $400 dollars on e-bay on these things, got two older ones yesterday off the usual flea market, and bought today several new Matchboxes at Wal Mart.
My story with diecasts is practically a lifelong affair, and it also comes from my love of cars. I'm no completists, I just collect what I like. As someone said, it's a freaking poison. But man how I enjoy it. And yes, I'll post pics when everything arrives. Expect lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of 'em.
God, I hate the scalpers! Thanks for the info though. 👍
