Why do you collect "Matchbox"?

[Superfast7]

Back to original topic,

BECAUSE ITS FUN

Happy hunting

[Ozbox]

LIke everyone else here my love affair with Matchboxes started when I was a toddler in the mid-60s and Matchbox cars (but not Dinkies or Corgis - they were too expensive!) were the standard birthday and Christmas present for a little boy.

Mine all went through the usual process of being mangled, pushed through the sand pit, being coloured in, pulled apart and generally reduced to rubble. The boxes were chucked straight in the bin and that was that. But I still loved them. If only I'd treated them more carefully - but, after all, they were only toys.

I can still remember the anticipation of going to the toy shops in the nearest shopping centre and looking at the Matchbox displays - every now and then Mum would cave in and buy me the one I pointed at.

I always wanted more, as there appeared to be endless Matchboxes that I'd never seen - I wished I was the boy in the 1967 Matchbox catalogue - sitting on the floor surrounded by freshly-opened shiny models....

Then Hot Wheels appeared, which were very exciting and different to the traditional Matchboxes (I'm also an avid redline collector). Superfasts soon followed but for some reason they never had the same romance for me that the older RWs had. Maybe it was because I was starting to grow up.

My old worn Matchboxes were then put away in storage and they passed from my direct attention for about 20 years.

Then, in the early 90s, I re-discovered Matchboxes in a toy museum and found that there were still lots of mint boxed examples around, although in those (for me) pre-internet days they could only be found at swap meets and the occasional shop (it was a shop that gave me my first big trawl of mint boxed models - an old man had unloaded his collection of mint boxed models that he'd bought new in the 60s to populate his train set but had never used them - I bought $1,000 of models at about $25 each in one go!).

Now, 20 years further on, I still worship these little blokes - each of them an engineering marvel and miniature time capsule that evokes memories of a more innocent, simple, safer time (although in hindsight the world was probably more dangerous - Cold War anyone?).

So the collection continues to grow, along with the pleasure and satisfaction. But the other thrill of collecting is (as my collector father reminded me the other day - the collecting bug must he hereditary...) the sense of anticipation you have when you enter a dusty old collectables or antiques shop. Will I find a green 5a London bus here? What about a reverse colour 13c Dodge tow truck? Or a hard-to find box? You never know what you'll find - every trip to an old shop is one trip closer to finding that mother lode of "old stock"...

[grillin]

That beautiful stories, I take time to read and translate well to better understand the stories, I think we all have something in common with what one happened to him or feel the matchbox, wherever you are in the world, mine happened on vacation in Asuncion, Paraguay in 1975, knew my followed my parents to buy because it is near where I live .. I was taken to a toy store and there were all of them and of course did not know with which to stay, so I'm obcesionado with more of that decade, however bought the me though this appears damaged, as has its magic.

bye and thank

[ford_a_30]

My earliest Matchbox memory was of an orange with orange interior VW mb#23, probably a code 4. I had received it to basically keep me quiet while my parents and some other folks were setting up a wedding reception. I remember how well it rolled over the smooth wood floor, under feet and out of sight. My Dad had a red VW camper so the choice was perfect. The sailboat label was removed instantly since Dad's didn't have such a decal, mine would not as well.
That should have made me 3 or 4 at the time, and while I got away from collecting Matchbox once I got a real car (that very same VW by the way) once I stumbled back upon a beat up #20 taxi at a swap meet, the feeling I had as a young collector returned and the fire was relit.