This hobby evolved out of me constantly on the hunt to buy Hot Wheels toys for my little nephews to teach them about cars. After a while I decided to keep some for myself especially since Mattel has been coming out with some fantastic tiny representations of real production and race cars on 1:64 scale. I’m not going to lie I’ve had a few cars here and there growing up but not in the hundreds like I do now… and looking back Hot Wheels and Matchbox only recently started selling super realistic modern GT3 race cars that I love in addition to other circuit and rally racecar variants as well as their civilian counterparts. I love it. It does make me a little nostalgic looking at the wall thinking about Motorsport during the pandemic.
Before my current Hot Wheels hobby I spent my high school and college years collecting Automotive literature. I loved the fancy brochures various luxury marques like BMW, Lexus and Mercedes-Benz produced about their model line up. I collected hundreds of them from the US and abroad over the years. One friend from Germany brought a whole suitcase of hardbound books for me that Mercedes printed for the European market. But when I lived in Australia my mother claimed that the collection got flooded when a pipe in the house burst (a story I never believed)… long story short, it was all gone by the time I returned to the US a year later. I fear similar fate may face my Hot Wheels collection though at least with die casts the card will be ruined but actual metal cars can be given to children or sold. With the amount of money I have spent over the last few years it’s not something I even want to think about now.
View a spotter guide of my growing collection (using stock photos of each vehicle) by Race Car Brand here or by Racing Era here.