Model Car Collection

One of my big hobbies is collecting model cars. The biggest part of the collection are these 1/25th-scale Promotional Models.

My dad started this collection in 1948, which is the year plastic Promo cars were first made. He grew it into a great collection, and kept most of the original boxes for them. There were some missing cars in the collection, however, and once I got old enough to know what it was all about, we set out to fill in the holes. I think it is a great hobby for both of us! We have thousands of these cars today.

Promotional Models are usually plastic 1/25th-scale models that were given away or sold at a new car dealership. The were meant as a selling tool to show off different new car styles and colors. Most of them ended up in the hands of kids, who played with them or stuck firecrackers in them. Some people are serious collectors of them, however, and they are neat little bits of history. Also, it's pretty cool to think that a model of a '60 DeSoto was actually made in 1960 and survives still today!

Here are a couple of little subset collections. The cars on the left are newer Franklin/Danbury Mint diecasts. There were some cars they were making that no one else was, so we bought a few of them. On the right are primarily Brooklyn models. They're smaller, but like $100 a pop, so you have to really want the car to buy one!

When my wife and I were looking at houses, we found this house with glass-enclosed cabinets built into an entire wall of the living room. My wife wanted to live in this area of town, and i wanted the cabinets for models, so we were both happy. There are some pace car and Corvette promotionals, along with several 50's toy cars in these cases.

I'm really into racing, and it turns out that my wife likes Jeff Gordon, so we were able to make up this collection of Jeff Gordon die cast cars. It's spilling out of two cases now, so it's getting out of hand, but there is some neat stuff in there and it's fun for me that we can do a car thing together!

I also like to build plastic 1/25th-scale model kits. I've done this since I was a pretty little kid. Those boxes do take up a lot of room, though!

And naturally, the bigger die casts are starting to show up now. They're so big that we can't find room to display most of them, but there are a few out anyway!