Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / From Toy Cars to Timeless Stories: Patrick Strong’s Journey with Model Citizen Diecast

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From Toy Cars to Timeless Stories: Patrick Strong’s Journey with Model Citizen Diecast · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from
• 0:04
  all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors,
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  designers, and everything in between.
• 0:11
  Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder.
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  How did they get that job or become that person?
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  The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
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  Scale models are an important storytelling device.
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  They give us a visual representation of what matters to us.
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  Models allow us to display the stories that forge our passion.
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  Maybe you want a model on your desk of the car you drove on your first date.
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  Or maybe you want to fill a display case with a model of every
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  car that's ever won at Le Mans.
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  Model Citizen diecast seeks to educate and inform enthusiasts about the stories
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  behind the models, both to help new collectors grow in their appreciation
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  and to build a greater sense of community among veterans in the hobby.
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  Patrick Strong has been a collector and dealer of fine scale model
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  cars for over 30 years and hand selects each model that he carries
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  to reflect his demand for precision detailing and for compelling stories.
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  And with that, let's welcome Patrick to BreakFix.
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  Thank you, Eric.
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  Thank you, Don.
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  I really appreciate the opportunity to be on with you to talk about models
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  and whatever else comes down the pipe.
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  Well, thank you.
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  And joining us tonight is one of our regular co hosts on BreakFix, Don
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  Wieberg from Garage Style Magazine.
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  So welcome back, Don.
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  Thank you.
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  Thank you.
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  Glad to be here.
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  Thanks for having me again, Eric.
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  Can I just say one thing really quick?
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  Speaking of Don, when I was deciding to start Model Citizen as a business,
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  I wanted to believe that there was a continuing demand for great quality model
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  cars, not just for model car collectors, but for car enthusiasts in general, who
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  wanted to use these model cars as part of their broader storytelling concept.
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  And one of the sources of inspiration for me when I started was none
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  other than Garage Style Magazine.
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  I would see it on the newsstand and I would see what these guys were
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  doing with their garage mahals.
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  And seeing, you know, not just the fabulous cars they had, but the garage
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  art, seeing that was part of the calculus that made me really think that Model
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  Citizen could work as a viable business.
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  And there's one article in particular Don shared with me, which is
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  actually available digitally now from one of the earlier issues of the
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  magazine that inspired me to change the way I display my collection.
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  Don, do you want to talk about the jewel box a little bit?
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  You know, it was funny because as we climbed on, I thought to
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  myself, Oh, I should have pulled out that magazine so you could see
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  it because he was on the cover.
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  It's on the website.
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  You can search for it.
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  Yeah, we, we had a cover garage.
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  It was called the jewel box and it was literally called that because it think of
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  a shoe box and just make it really, really big and give it two walls of glass and
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  two walls of concrete on one of the walls.
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  Very, very similar to what Eric has constructed behind him.
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  He had this black and glass display case, and it was all 118 scale cars.
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  And the guy was a mega collector.
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  They were high end Porsche, high end Ferrari.
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  That was his big ticket thing.
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  And he was one of those guys who, when they were bringing out a new
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  Porsche, Porsche called him and said, so we have this car coming out.
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  You know, you want one, send me a check.
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  And he would.
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  To that end, my theory has been proven correct.
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  Guys like that do love these models and they do acquire them alongside the people
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  who are like hardcore model collectors.
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  So to Garage Style Magazine, I say thank you for the inspiration.
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  Thank you.
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  Now I'm glad we could help.
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  Like all good Brake Fix stories, There's a superhero origin.
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  And this one apparently starts 30 some years ago, right, Patrick?
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  So tell us about the who, what, when, and where of you and how all this came to be.
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  But more importantly, you're still playing with model cars after all these years.
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  Absolutely.
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  At the tender age of 48 years old, I am hopelessly addicted
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  to model cars and toy cars.
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  And I really don't see that changing as the Science has yet to come up with
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  a cure for this particular addiction.
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  All we can do is feed it.
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  Like most car enthusiasts, I started out at a very early age playing with toy cars.
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  I grew up in the late 70s and through the mid 80s.
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  And so for me, that was Hot Wheels, Matchbox and the adjacent diecast brands.
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  I don't know where my perspective on cars and the way to appreciate them came from.
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  I wasn't from a family that was particularly enthusiastic about cars.
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  They were just something that found me.
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  But somehow, at a very early age, I adopted a collector's
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  mentality toward cars.
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  I took very good care of my Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, where
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  you would see a lot of kids, you know, throwing them around, wrecking
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  them, racing them across the floor.
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  I was very deliberate in the way I played with them and took
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  care of them and stored them.
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  I never played with them rough.
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  I wasn't the guy who took them outside and let them roll down the sidewalk
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  to see how fast and far they would go.
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  No, no, no, no, no, no.
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  They never went outside.
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  They very, very rarely outside.
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  Oh, I never took mine outside.
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  Horror of horrors.
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  Never.
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  Because then you get dirt in the axles and the tires and the wheels don't roll.
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  Now, if I played with mine, it would usually on my bed.
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  I'd sit there and push them around on my bed or something or a couch, you know.
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  And of course they got beat up.
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  I was four.
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  Still, I took that curator's perspective toward my toys.
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  So it's funny you mentioned that because I have a similar story in the sense that
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  I was given about four or five years old as a hand me down, one of those soft,
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  almost lunch pail matchbox carry cases.
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  Sure.
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  Without the grids inside to keep the car separated.
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  It belonged to one of my cousins.
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  But in that were a bunch of really old, the 60s and 70s Hot Wheels,
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  some of them red lines, but they were beat six ways from Sunday.
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  But that was my little treasure trove at four or five years old.
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  And like you, I'm like, wow, this is really cool.
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  I got all these cars, you know, it was a lot of maybe 30 of them or so.
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  And that sparked a passion inside of me as well.
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  For the listeners who don't get to see this, Don is waving cars
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  and cases around in front of us.
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  Somebody talked about the slow closing box of storage and I thought, oh my
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  God, we moved just about two years ago from LA to Dallas and we're
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  still slightly living out of boxes.
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  But what's been really, really fun for me is when I moved out of my parents
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  house into my first apartment, a lot of my stuff ended up in a storage facility.
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  It was all childhood stuff.
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  Literally what I keep holding here is an old Hot Wheels tire and it used to
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  have a hubcap in the center and the hubcap had been missing for a century.
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  So yeah, I've been having a ball going through my childhood toys.
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  So I would have been very jealous of you even as a kid, because somewhere
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  into the mix came literature.
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  I became aware that there were Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars for me at that
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  time that existed before I did.
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  And that these things were no longer available.
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  And by the way, they were of some really cool cars.
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  Maybe it was one of those collector books that they gave out from time to time.
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  And I saw that these things had existed before, but I knew kids who like
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  you had inherited an older brother or an older relatives collection.
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  And they had all these great things.
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  I didn't have an older brother or older cousins.
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  And so it was pretty much just, Hey, 1975 forward.
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  The other piece of literature that I think is very relevant to my evolution
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  as a model car enthusiast and eventual dealer was road and track magazine.
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  Back in those days.
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  This is the only thing I can think of as the genesis for my awareness.
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  Of and passion for higher detailed scale model cars, listeners of a
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  certain age might remember that back then road and track had a semi
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  regular feature called cars in scale.
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  They would feature larger scale cars from a variety of exotic
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  manufacturers from all over the world.
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  Things from mass market 43rd scale cars like Solido.
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  All the way up through Handbuilt cars from the British white metal companies of
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  the day, and then these new larger scale cars that were starting to come to market.
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  That clued me into the fact that there were these other things, and
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  as a collector mindset kid, it's like, I need to acquire these things.
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  So there were a couple of fateful occurrences that happened along the way.
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  One was that I won a rigged art contest when I was five years old,
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  and I know that it was rigged because I've seen my artistic ability.
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  It was definitely rigged.
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  The grand prize was something like a 10 gift certificate to the
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  upscale toy store in Dallas, where I lived when I was a little kid.
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  And I knew exactly what I was going to get before I even walked in the door.
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  I went right to the section where they had the 136 scale Corgi models that
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  perhaps a lot of us had back then.
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  And I selected, I couldn't believe my good fortune.
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  It was a Jaguar XJS.
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  The most beautiful, most luxurious GT car on the planet at the time.
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  Candy, apple red.
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  I just, I had to have it.
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  And I still have that car in my collection.
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  So that was my first, what I would call better diecast model car,
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  even though in the grand scheme of things, those corgis were.
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  Nice toys.
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  They were still toys.
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  Fast forward a few years.
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  The other piece of literature that was important to my villain origin story was
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  a thing called the Sharper Image Catalog.
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  Sharper image for those who might be too young to remember this.
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  was the gadget store par excellence.
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  They sold all manner of useless to semi useful crap.
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  I think they might have been the first retailer in America
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  to offer a massage chair.
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  Or you remember those orbs that had like the bolts of light in
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  them and you put your fingers on?
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  Yeah, they had those too.
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  And all kinds of like personal massagers and all this goofy stuff.
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  And among the things you could order from the sharper image catalog were these
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  wonderful one 18 scale, which is about 10 inches long is one 18 scale cars made
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  by this Italian company called Borago.
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  They focused at that time on the great classics.
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  You could get an alpha AC, a Ferrari, two 50 GTO, a Bugatti type 59.
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  And as someone who was already at, you know, at age eight, nine, it was
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  already really into automotive history.
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  I thought those were just the greatest thing I'd ever seen by this time.
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  My family had moved to El Paso, Texas, which is quite literally a desert in
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  the world of die cast car collecting at the higher end of the scale.
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  Couldn't find these things.
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  There took the family vacation to Southern California, walked into
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  the right store and there it was the two 50 GTO Borago that started
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  my really good die cast collection.
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  And never stopped after that.
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  That's a name that was well known at the time, right?
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  An Italian model car manufacturer.
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  And what's funny about that is I've mentioned on previous episodes, my
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  history in the car world and how my grandparents came over here after the
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  war, and my grandfather was a chauffeur and my dad and all this kind of stuff.
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  As my grandparents would travel back and forth, Middley to the U S especially
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  during the holidays, it was like, well, we got to bring something for the grandkids.
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  We've got to bring them a toy.
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  And my grandfather, knowing I had an affinity for cars,
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  cause I took after my dad.
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  He gave me Borago models directly from Italy.
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  They would just bring them over in their suitcases, which were a fraction
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  of the cost compared to importing them in the U S I still have those cars 30
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  plus years later, but that's what got me addicted to one 18th scale cars.
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  And kind of like you, I started with a Ferrari two 50 pontoon fender car,
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  and that was my very first Borago.
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  And then it just kind of escalated from there.
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  I even remember going to Italy on trips and hand carrying back.
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  Models in particular paint colors that we couldn't get in
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  the U S and I still have those.
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  I'm very proud of them in my collection, but one 18th has always
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  been a sweet spot, but we'll talk more about that as we go along.
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  Yeah.
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  Patrick, I got to tell you the, uh, the Quintas you sold me ended up
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  being hand carried onto the airplane.
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  It almost got me into a fight with a stewardess because she wanted me to
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  put it in the cargo hold above my head.
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  And I just kind of gave her that look like, I don't know, it'll be fine.
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  It'll be fine.
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  We put it right above you.
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  I'm like, can it have like the whole thing to itself?
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  Believe it or not, she made it happen.
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  There was one piece of luggage in there and the Lamborghini box.
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  I thought that's the way it's got to be handled.
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  I love that.
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  She did that for you, but I would be more concerned about that one piece of luggage
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  becoming a projectile taking the box.
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  I asked her, you know, is that bag going to slide?
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  Can we put the Lamborghini somewhere else?
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  Do you have somewhere else we can put it?
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  And she said, there's a hump in there.
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  So in the event, something moves that luggage, if it hits it.
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  And he said, sir, I handled that piece of luggage.
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  It's overweight, so it shouldn't move.
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  Like, okay, well, we'll see.
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  Whatever will be will be.
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  But yeah, I'm going to tell Patrick about you.
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  Well, shout out to the understanding stewardess.
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  Southwest Airlines for the win.
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  Said no one ever.
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  What are your thoughts on keeping the boxes?
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  Keep them?
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  Ditch them?
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  What do you do with them?
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  There's a spicy, hot take coming right after this.
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  If you're buying it to display loose anyway, and if the box is already
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  thrashed, why bother keeping it?
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  Unless there is like the need to move at some future point.
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  If you know that you are kind of the end of the line for it, chuck that box.
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  If it's damaged, don't worry about it.
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  I had a heartbreak.
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  That kind of had a bit of a happy ending.
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  When I was 12 years old, I started collecting Hot Wheels cars from
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  a very serious adult perspective.
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  I kind of put one 18 to the side one because they were, we
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  couldn't find them where I lived.
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  And I just really went all in on Hot Wheels.
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  I had kind of an adult collector, Sven Golley, who taught me
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  about what this was like.
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  Just to put this in perspective, this was 1987.
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  At that time, there were probably no more than a few hundred.
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  Serious Hot Wheels collectors in the U.
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  S.
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  It just wasn't really the hobby that it is today.
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  And the first vintage Hot Wheels car that I bought was a custom Camaro blue.
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  Not one of the rare colors, it's a common color, but it was mint in the box.
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  That was a keystone piece in my collection for decades.
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  I grew up, I got married.
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  It went in storage in the garage, a pipe burst in the garage, and the blister
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  card was destroyed by the water damage.
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  And I was sad about that for a minute.
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  You know, here was this item that had somehow made it.
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  From some retail peg in 1968 to my dumb little 12 year old hands in
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  1987 and it continued on and it just stayed like that for a long time.
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  So I grieved for that little piece of cardboard for a little while, but
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  then I said, well, that's ruined.
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  Let's free the piece.
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  So I opened that up and I threw the damaged mildewed card away.
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  And now I have this beautiful mint condition, gorgeous glowing
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  spectra flame blue Hot Wheels Redline Camaro in my collection.
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  And I love it just as much now as I did when it was in the card.
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  Which brings me to my spicy hot take.
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  I would say keep them, but not for the reason that you might be
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  thinking, because you're probably going to have to move them someday.
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  And that's fair.
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  Don, I'm sure you know all too well, you just did this.
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  I've done it many times in my life, moving and handling.
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  Loose models.
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  It's risky.
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  You will invariably break off a rearview mirror.
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  You will invariably see an antenna go missing that you won't even realize
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  it until you take the thing out of the Rubbermaid to put the thing in.
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  You can wrap them as nicely as you can.
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  You're still gonna get some damage.
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  So for that reason, I say keep the box if you have the storage space to
• 15:14
  retain them and if you have some way to catalog them, whether you're keeping a
• 15:19
  spreadsheet or whether you're just writing on this card on the side of a tub, just
• 15:22
  so you know where these things are.
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  If you can afford the space, I say keep the box.
• 15:27
  You hit on something that I think is a common thread for
• 15:30
  every die cast collector.
• 15:32
  We all seem to start with that stocking stuffer or that first 164th Matchbox or
• 15:38
  Hot Wheels or Schuko or Corgi, Majorette, whatever brand was available at the time.
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  So I think we all have that in common.
• 15:46
  Is that really the gateway drug into this market?
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  Are those what used to be the 94 cent Matchbox cars?
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  I wish they were still 94 cents.
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  I think they're buck 18 now.
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  But for the vast majority of us, it is.
• 15:58
  Every once in a while, I will run across some well-meaning, well-healed
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  grandparent who wants to spend a hundred, $150 on a mini champs or, uh,
• 16:09
  auto art model for four year old Timmy.
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  I'm like, no, no, you really don't wanna do this.
• 16:14
  I would be happy to take your money, but the kid's just gonna wreck it.
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  And it's, and what I figured out, the thing that gets through is
• 16:20
  telling them, It's going to stop being fun after it breaks and that
• 16:24
  tends to be the big dissuader.
• 16:26
  But I think for the rest of us mere mortals, absolutely that
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  first hot wheels car or first inherited bucket of hot wheels cars
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  is the thing that gets us going.
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  And I think from there we begin to sort ourselves into different alleys
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  of Or maybe this is just a generational thing or a regional thing about what
• 16:45
  type of cars really appeal to us.
• 16:47
  The nice thing about your mass market 64 scale cars is there's so much variety.
• 16:51
  You can kind of experiment with all of it and see what really sticks.
• 16:54
  For me, it was European exotics more than anything.
• 16:58
  Of course, back then there wasn't a lot of variety, for example, in Japanese
• 17:02
  cars, in the mass market diecast brands.
• 17:05
  So I think it must've been about the first time the big two matchbox
• 17:08
  and Hot Wheels brought out Japanese cars was well into the seventies.
• 17:13
  By the end of the eighties, that had become a little bit more ubiquitous.
• 17:15
  Funny you brought up the Japanese stuff.
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  I was the only one of my friends who had this Toyota.
• 17:20
  And at first they were kind of making fun of me for having a little Toyota.
• 17:23
  And then a lot of the guys were like, where'd you get that car?
• 17:25
  Where'd you get that car, man?
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  Cause I want one of those cars.
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  I'm like, yeah, see, they're fun because nobody else has them.
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  Hence some part of the fun of collecting is getting something nobody else has.
• 17:34
  Mention the Europeans and the Japanese coming into the Hot Wheels and
• 17:38
  Matchbox scene, as I kind of stretched back, at least my memory cells.
• 17:43
  I think Volkswagen was there almost from the beginning, right?
• 17:45
  There was always a Beetle or a type two bus, or even the first
• 17:49
  generation GTIs in the seventies and the eighties and things like that.
• 17:52
  But yeah, you're right.
• 17:53
  The Japanese didn't come into it until much later with
• 17:55
  Toyota's and some Honda civics.
• 17:57
  The bigger debate and maybe a pit stop question is matchbox versus hot wheel.
• 18:01
  Where do you find yourself?
• 18:02
  Which camp are you in?
• 18:03
  I hate camping.
• 18:06
  I love all my children equally.
• 18:07
  Um, I don't really have a favorite between the two.
• 18:11
  I think that if we kind of boil it down to just those two as your big
• 18:15
  best known names in 64th scale, but we'll come back to that Hot Wheels
• 18:20
  has always been fairly consistent.
• 18:23
  If we're talking about the main lines and not talking about the premium
• 18:26
  things that kind of got introduced.
• 18:27
  Over the decades, we're talking about the main lines.
• 18:29
  Hot wheels was always fairly consistent about the nature of
• 18:33
  the subjects that they selected.
• 18:35
  They always had a pretty good balance of real cars tuned up and kind of
• 18:39
  a hot rod style, the California custom style or whatever came after.
• 18:42
  And then their original designs, or as I will derisively call them, the generic
• 18:47
  unlicensed cars, and then they would add in this import, this race car, et cetera.
• 18:52
  But they always stayed pretty consistent about that, even though the quality
• 18:56
  of the cars has really improved over the years in terms of the detail
• 18:59
  that you get out of a main line.
• 19:01
  Hot Wheels car now is phenomenal.
• 19:03
  I can't believe how good, like I finally got my hands on, they
• 19:07
  just put out an Alpha GT V6.
• 19:09
  I finally got my hands on one because they are just scalped
• 19:12
  to high heaven out here in LA.
• 19:13
  I finally got one and I'm blown away by it.
• 19:15
  It's 1.
• 19:15
  18 and it is wonderful.
• 19:18
  Matchbox.
• 19:19
  Has had more of a roller coaster existence when I was a little kid to me, there
• 19:26
  was a clear difference in quality.
• 19:28
  Matchbox cars were much better than hot wheels cars.
• 19:30
  They were more realistic.
• 19:31
  They had a better chonky or hand feel to them more frequently.
• 19:37
  Would they have opening parts?
• 19:38
  And for me, the subject matter was more compelling.
• 19:41
  They were doing the cars that I was interested in.
• 19:44
  More accurately, for example, if there was a one to one comparison,
• 19:49
  the Matchbox car was always better.
• 19:50
  Think Ferrari 308.
• 19:52
  Think Porsche 928.
• 19:53
  The Matchbox car was always better.
• 19:55
  Matchbox's problem was that after 30 years in business, until they were
• 20:00
  acquired eventually by Mattel, they never stopped having money problems.
• 20:03
  They went into receivership in 1982, and they went through a variety of
• 20:08
  owners, and Tyco owned them at one point.
• 20:10
  And the quality became very erratic starting in the early nineties from
• 20:14
  the late seventies to around 1990.
• 20:17
  I would say it was just a golden era for matchbox cars.
• 20:20
  The castings were beautiful.
• 20:21
  The quality was beautiful.
• 20:23
  The subject matter was compelling, even in what you would call a normal everyday
• 20:28
  car, like they did a great Renault 11, remember the old Rover Sterling.
• 20:32
  They did.
• 20:32
  Fabulous casting of that.
• 20:34
  And then they went broke again, and they really veered off into the toy lane.
• 20:39
  Terrible, gaudy paint schemes.
• 20:42
  Awful, awful wheels applied to normal cars, which was kind of strange.
• 20:46
  But at the same time in the early 90s, then they introduced the world
• 20:49
  class series, which were the big wide body cars with gummy tires and
• 20:54
  chrome windows and pearlescent paints.
• 20:57
  Well, where did these come from all of a sudden?
• 20:58
  And perhaps there, we see the seeds of the mass market premium car.
• 21:03
  I have a case full of them on consignment from someone here in town.
• 21:10
  The word I would best use to describe those world class cars now is unsellable.
• 21:15
  I don't know why, maybe it's that they are premium for their era,
• 21:19
  but it hasn't translated well.
• 21:20
  I think they're cool, but.
• 21:22
  No one else does the real question of Matchbox versus Hot Wheels.
• 21:25
  My real answer would be, what about Tomica?
• 21:28
  What about Majorette?
• 21:29
  What about this entire galaxy of other wonderful brands that were a little
• 21:35
  more obscure in the United States until the advent of the internet.
• 21:39
  And of course, now we have the explosion of really premium 164 scale brands.
• 21:45
  Think mini GT spark models has their sparky line of one
• 21:49
  64 tarmac works in Oh, 64.
• 21:52
  And these things are just incredible.
• 21:55
  M2 M2 I think was one of the early ones to get that kicked off.
• 21:58
  For me, it comes down to subject matter and M2 hasn't done a ton of
• 22:02
  stuff that I'm really into, but I do respect that, you know, what they did
• 22:05
  to kind of raise the stakes in one 64.
• 22:08
  Growing up, they all knew, okay, Don likes cars, so he's going
• 22:11
  to go buy toy cars, you know.
• 22:12
  Today, maybe it's the company I keep.
• 22:15
  I see collections of diecast.
• 22:17
  I mean, they're just everywhere.
• 22:19
  Is it the availability?
• 22:20
  It seems like everybody today is a collector.
• 22:23
  There was a perfect storm in the mid 1990s.
• 22:27
  Three things happened.
• 22:28
  Number one, Mattel introduced the treasure hunts line in Hot Wheels cars.
• 22:32
  All of a sudden there was an explicitly limited edition.
• 22:37
  I mean, they make 10, 000 of something.
• 22:39
  How limited is it really?
• 22:40
  But there was an explicitly on purpose, limited edition
• 22:44
  thing that was hard to find.
• 22:45
  Once you introduce the concept of a treasure hunt, literally.
• 22:50
  To try to find these things, then you've sparked that.
• 22:53
  I got to have it thing.
• 22:55
  It's like Wonka's golden ticket, actually.
• 22:57
  Exactly like that.
• 22:59
  So that was thing.
• 22:59
  Number one thing.
• 23:00
  Number two was beanie babies.
• 23:04
  Beanie babies come along the mid to late.
• 23:06
  90s.
• 23:07
  I myself was never into Beanie Babies, and I hate to do this because I abhor sexism
• 23:12
  in all of its forms, but I think we have to bow to the reality that 97 percent or
• 23:17
  so of die cast cars are bought by men.
• 23:20
  I don't know what the percentage of Beanie Baby collectors were that were men,
• 23:24
  but I'm thinking it was somewhat lower.
• 23:26
  It was a non negative number.
• 23:28
  Yeah, it is a non negative number.
• 23:30
  If you're getting taken around to these shops with someone who's
• 23:32
  collecting something, I think there might be something in you that wants
• 23:35
  to get in on the fun of collecting and acquiring something, but the
• 23:39
  princess Diana England's rose beanie baby makes you rest in peace.
• 23:43
  Isn't really doing it for you, but here's a 68 Corvette.
• 23:47
  That might be doing it for you.
• 23:48
  And so all of a sudden you've got two collectors in the household and
• 23:51
  you've got this demand coming up.
• 23:53
  Obviously the third factor would be the internet.
• 23:55
  The connectivity that it brought to everyone who had a dial
• 23:58
  up modem in the late 1990s.
• 24:00
  eBay came along in 97 or 98 and it's an apocryphal story that Beanie Babies built.
• 24:07
  eBay.
• 24:07
  I think somebody says like 10 percent of all the transactions in eBay's
• 24:10
  first year were beanie babies.
• 24:12
  I don't know if that's true or not.
• 24:14
  But the point there is that all of a sudden there was truly an
• 24:18
  international marketplace that didn't involve looking at classifieds
• 24:21
  in the back of toy shop biweekly.
• 24:23
  You didn't have to rely on the next toy swap meet that was coming to your town.
• 24:28
  You didn't have to get the Hot Wheels Collector Club newsletter.
• 24:31
  All of a sudden it was All there just for the price of a dial up
• 24:34
  connection, you could go and see it.
• 24:36
  So I think those three things, Mattel, Hot Wheels, introducing treasure
• 24:39
  hunts, the halo effect of Beanie Babies and the advent of the internet.
• 24:44
  I think that's why everybody collects Zycast now.
• 24:46
  So it's not necessarily people who love cars.
• 24:48
  It's literally just people got sucked into collecting something.
• 24:51
  No, I think it's mostly car enthusiasts who got sucked into collecting.
• 24:54
  Otherwise you got a bunch of people like me who collected baseball
• 24:57
  cards, who were not into it.
• 24:59
  And I do think that that absolutely was it.
• 25:01
  thing.
• 25:01
  I think that for a time, there were people who were going out there
• 25:03
  collecting hot wheels specifically because it was a thing to collect.
• 25:09
  I think those people are all gone now.
• 25:10
  I think that they found they were stuck with a lot of worthless stuff.
• 25:13
  I think they've been called out and just the car enthusiasts are left.
• 25:17
  And as you mentioned, Mattel, the parent company of Hot Wheels and Barbie and a lot
• 25:21
  of other brands now also owns Matchbox.
• 25:23
  And if you wander down the aisles of your local Walmart or Target, where you'll
• 25:27
  find Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, I've noticed a huge separation in quality.
• 25:32
  Matchbox is now sort of the second rate, the older cast, you know, they had some
• 25:36
  leftovers, more utilitarian, lots of fire trucks and Jeeps and off roaders.
• 25:42
  And it's like a whole different, almost.
• 25:43
  Feel to it than the classic matchbox.
• 25:46
  But to your point, Hot Wheels has elevated the brand.
• 25:48
  They started to introduce first, those premium cars, the Boulevard cars.
• 25:52
  Then they had the Forza cars.
• 25:54
  Then they had for us in the furious series.
• 25:56
  Like there's all these new limited production runs that they're doing.
• 26:00
  And now they're doing these box sets, which are really, really cool.
• 26:03
  So now you take that 94 cents car, which became a buck 18 to somewhere
• 26:07
  around four 97, all the way up to 25 for like three or four cars.
• 26:13
  How has that shaken up the one 64 market with Hot Wheels trying
• 26:17
  to introduce something at almost every selling plane in the game?
• 26:20
  We've seen it before with Hot Wheels.
• 26:22
  In fact, throughout Hot Wheels, entire history, going back to 1968, when the
• 26:27
  brand launched, they have with varying levels of success, tried to branch
• 26:32
  out from that mainline dollar ish.
• 26:35
  Car in the late sixties, early seventies, they tried to get
• 26:40
  into the one 43 business.
• 26:42
  And there's kind of a long story behind that.
• 26:44
  I won't bore you or your listeners with it, but it's
• 26:46
  actually tied to Borago Mattel.
• 26:49
  Seeing that there was a market for one 43rd scale cars, which had
• 26:53
  been a thing since the 1930s, they wanted to get into that business.
• 26:57
  So they bought an Italian company.
• 26:59
  Run by the Bassana family and they launched their grand Toros line, which I
• 27:04
  think only lasted a year or two, but it wasn't a hit in the U S and they shuttered
• 27:07
  it where that ties into bigger scale cars is that Mario Bassana took all the money
• 27:12
  he got from Mattel relaunched his toy company, focusing on larger scale cars,
• 27:18
  which he predicted were going to be a big hit, particularly with American customers.
• 27:21
  And that was Borago.
• 27:24
  So Mattel was inadvertently responsible for the launch of Borago.
• 27:27
  But anyway, back to your point in the late nineties, Mattel was kind of riding high.
• 27:33
  They had bought Matchbox, I think in 1997 or 1998.
• 27:36
  I think more significantly for branching out, they had somehow secured
• 27:41
  an exclusive license from Ferrari.
• 27:43
  To make scale model Ferraris at anything below like the premium price point, the
• 27:48
  handbill, the BBRs of the world, we're still going to get to keep making licensed
• 27:51
  Ferraris, but in the mass market die cast, Ferrari became the only game in town.
• 27:55
  So Mattel started making one 18 scale Ferrari, one 43rd scale Ferrari
• 28:00
  with varying levels of success.
• 28:02
  They lost that deal and I don't.
• 28:04
  Think too many people were that sad about it, if I'm honest, but some of
• 28:07
  the cars they made were quite nice.
• 28:08
  What we would think about as the premium cars.
• 28:10
  Now they started making those box sets around that time.
• 28:13
  You could get, for example, the first Jay Leno set came out around 1998 or 1999.
• 28:19
  And they had a low rider set.
• 28:20
  That was great.
• 28:21
  I think that had three cars in it.
• 28:23
  Mattel, they've managed to use their considerable resources to try a lot
• 28:28
  of different things in die cast.
• 28:30
  And some of them have worked and some of them have created
• 28:32
  this really great legacy.
• 28:33
  Of the premium cars.
• 28:34
  And some of them have been largely lost to history like grand Toros.
• 28:38
  Oh, I'm a sucker for those new truck and trailer sets where it's like you buy the
• 28:43
  race hauler and the race car altogether, full livery, the whole nine years.
• 28:47
  They just released the alpha one 55 TI with the race truck
• 28:50
  that goes along with it.
• 28:51
  It's absolutely gorgeous.
• 28:52
  I mean, I've got a bunch of, especially rally inspired stuff from the eighties.
• 28:55
  As soon as I see that it's gone, it's in my basket, it's in my shopping cart.
• 28:59
  It's coming home.
• 29:00
  Have you managed to score the new group B set?
• 29:02
  They have that has the metric.
• 29:04
  I think the launch 037, I think that's in there.
• 29:07
  I have them all separately, but not together.
• 29:09
  And I'm still trying to get ahold of the IMSA, GTO, ITU, Hurley,
• 29:13
  Haywood, hunch took Audi 90.
• 29:15
  So that's on my list.
• 29:16
  What I've learned is what makes it very difficult.
• 29:18
  Like you mentioned GTV six in LA.
• 29:20
  We haven't seen those yet here on the East coast.
• 29:23
  So there's this rumor, this legend that Mattel distributes cars.
• 29:27
  to different parts of the U S and different parts of the world, not only
• 29:31
  different cars in cast, but different liveries of the same car that are
• 29:35
  only available in certain regions.
• 29:37
  Is that fact or is that fiction?
• 29:38
  As far as the U S market goes, I don't think that's true.
• 29:42
  I don't know that for a fact, but I think that that is just more a
• 29:47
  case of demand for this versus that in different parts of the country.
• 29:52
  And also frankly, high levels of scalper activity from one region to another.
• 29:57
  A few years ago, the hottest Hot Wheels casting was the Datsun Bluebird 510 wagon.
• 30:03
  And you couldn't find them in any variant anywhere in Los Angeles, because
• 30:07
  anytime they would hit the shelf, well, they've never hit the shelves.
• 30:09
  They were being understocked by less than scrupulous retail store employees.
• 30:14
  And they were either going out the back door to their buddy, or they
• 30:16
  were just going home with them.
• 30:18
  When they did hit the stores, they were just gone instantly.
• 30:20
  It was a miracle if you could catch one.
• 30:22
  On the other hand, I would go to visit my father in Oklahoma.
• 30:25
  No problem.
• 30:26
  There's a whole rack of them at Target.
• 30:27
  I think it just comes down to regional demand.
• 30:29
  As far as rest of world is concerned.
• 30:32
  I don't know if it's like this anymore.
• 30:33
  I've been out of Hot Wheels and Matchbox professionally for a long time.
• 30:38
  I've moved on to larger scale cars, but I do know that there were rest of
• 30:41
  world models that were not available in the United States, a couple of
• 30:44
  examples that come to mind back in the late eighties, early nineties
• 30:48
  Matchbox made a Skoda 130 rally car.
• 30:51
  That was a rest of world model.
• 30:53
  Wasn't available here in the U S they also did like an Opel cadet GSI.
• 30:57
  That would have been something that you couldn't get here.
• 30:59
  Hot wheels did a Peugeot 405.
• 31:01
  That was a rest of world car.
• 31:02
  Couldn't get that here.
• 31:03
  I have one.
• 31:04
  I sold mine a billion years ago.
• 31:06
  Never got that Skoda.
• 31:07
  I'd like to get one of those.
• 31:08
  Anyway, it doesn't make sense to me.
• 31:09
  Just trying to think about this from a manufacturing and distribution
• 31:12
  perspective to segment off the U S region by region on such a high volume
• 31:18
  product, like mainline hot wheels cars.
• 31:20
  I think it's just down to, you can't find them at your local because
• 31:24
  the last guy got there first.
• 31:26
  I don't think any of us have mentioned Franklin mint and Patrick, I wanted
• 31:30
  to get your Thoughts on that?
• 31:31
  I know when we were growing up, Franklin Mint was sort of the,
• 31:34
  wow, you've got a Franklin mint and the detail was absolutely
• 31:37
  exquisite on some of those cars.
• 31:39
  Where are they today and what's the collector standpoint on those?
• 31:43
  Your mileage may vary, but I think that.
• 31:47
  Demand for Franklin Mint models roughly approximates the American collector
• 31:54
  car market for real cars at large.
• 31:57
  You have an older generation of people for whom a certain type of car was
• 32:02
  meaningful to them, whether that was a pre war classic or post war tail fin
• 32:07
  cars, American muscle, what have you.
• 32:09
  And the generation that appreciated those cars for the most part.
• 32:13
  is aging out of the hobby, to put it very politely.
• 32:17
  So goes the real car, so goes the model car.
• 32:20
  Franklin Mint models simply have fallen out of favor.
• 32:23
  Those are a 124 scale car.
• 32:25
  124 scale seems to be a scale that is rapidly declining in interest.
• 32:31
  I think that became the scale that those were made in because That goes back
• 32:35
  to kit building from the fifties and sixties, the American model kit makers,
• 32:39
  your monogram, Ravel, AMT, MPC, that was the scale that they focused on.
• 32:44
  And I think that with a nostalgia for that in mind, Franklin and Danbury, they
• 32:50
  tooled for that scale and they made their Duesenbergs and they made their Packards
• 32:53
  and they made their try five Chevys.
• 32:55
  I know that there are some of us, myself included, who really like pre war cars.
• 32:59
  Uh, ask me my favorite car in the world and I'll tell you it's a 2.
• 33:01
  9 liter Alfa.
• 33:02
  But for the most part, it's just that the subject matter has fallen out of favor
• 33:06
  and the scale has fallen out of favor.
• 33:08
  And I field inquiries all the time from people, and it's usually older guys.
• 33:12
  Hey, are you buying Franklin Mint models?
• 33:13
  And I just have to very gently tell them, no, I'm sorry.
• 33:16
  That's just not something that has any interest in me.
• 33:18
  Patrick, we talked during your origin story about 118 scale cars a little
• 33:21
  bit, and I said we'd come back to it.
• 33:22
  We're going to.
• 33:23
  Like you, I made the switch to the 10 inch cars and I still enjoy them.
• 33:27
  Anytime I see, especially certain brands liveries of certain eras of
• 33:31
  racing, especially IMSA and rallying, things like that, they generally come
• 33:34
  home with me much to my wife's chagrin and become part of my collection.
• 33:38
  I love the 10 inch cars.
• 33:40
  I think it's.
• 33:40
  Good value for money, especially in the casting and the quality and
• 33:43
  the paints and detail and all that.
• 33:45
  But there was this huge shift about 15 years ago where people gave up on
• 33:49
  one 18 scale cars, and it was very difficult to get them because they
• 33:53
  moved to one 40 thirds and for me, I couldn't give up the one 18th world and
• 33:58
  it's having a Renaissance right now.
• 33:59
  We'll talk about that, but why the shift to one 43rd and why
• 34:02
  are one 43rd so expensive and people just went nuts over it?
• 34:06
  Is it a storage thing?
• 34:07
  Because you can put so many more in the same space.
• 34:10
  I think that the actual shift was toward 118 in the 1980s, rather
• 34:14
  than the other way around, because 143 is the foundational scale of
• 34:19
  collector grade scale model cars.
• 34:21
  Our concept of being model car collectors started around the same
• 34:27
  time as the concept of actual car collecting really in the 1950s.
• 34:31
  We think, if you think about it, there really wasn't such a thing as a.
• 34:35
  Unintentional car collector until the 1950s, until after World War II.
• 34:39
  Also don't forget the cars have only been around since the turn of
• 34:42
  the 20th century, which is when the first toy cars started appearing.
• 34:45
  143 took hold in the 1930s.
• 34:48
  The thing that really kind of set the template for that scale.
• 34:51
  It was the Meccano company is one of the big three that kind of drove these cars.
• 34:57
  They started making 143rd scale road vehicles as train set accessories.
• 35:04
  They didn't set out to start making toy cars.
• 35:07
  They set out to start making accessories for their train sets.
• 35:09
  I'm bad at trains.
• 35:10
  I think it corresponds to O gauge, but the cars became unexpectedly
• 35:15
  popular unto themselves.
• 35:16
  People just started buying these cars exclusive from the sets.
• 35:20
  And so McConnell said, Hey, we've got a hit on our hands with these things.
• 35:24
  We should start selling them separately.
• 35:25
  Okay.
• 35:25
  Yeah.
• 35:26
  But what are we going to call our line of these dinky little cars?
• 35:29
  Dinky.
• 35:29
  So Dinky became in the 1930s, one of the first companies that started doing
• 35:34
  these better quality scale model cars.
• 35:37
  And they were scaled that way to correspond to these train sets.
• 35:40
  The other big company from that era that was informative toward
• 35:44
  the whole industry was Solido.
• 35:46
  They were the first company that really focused on making detailed models
• 35:51
  of actual cars with features that we would come to expect over the years,
• 35:55
  functional suspensions, jeweled headlamps, opening parts from the 19 thirties.
• 36:01
  And then, of course, we had the production interruption of World War Two.
• 36:03
  But when production resumed after the war.
• 36:06
  By the 1950s, people were ready to start collecting these things.
• 36:09
  And one 43 was really kind of the only game in town for that.
• 36:12
  So by the time we get through the mid 1970s, obviously we've had the birth
• 36:18
  of 64 scale as, as a big thing with matchbox and then with hot wheels.
• 36:21
  But they were toys.
• 36:22
  They weren't really considered except by a very few tightly knit pack of nerds.
• 36:27
  Matchbox cars weren't really collected like that.
• 36:29
  One 43 was collected by adults, which I think is why Mattel
• 36:32
  wanted to get in that business.
• 36:33
  It wasn't until the late seventies and Mario Bassana brought along Barrago.
• 36:38
  There were a few companies making bigger scale cars.
• 36:40
  Schuko had some cars.
• 36:42
  I think there were a couple of still made a couple, but it was
• 36:44
  really Barrago that kind of broke.
• 36:45
  And he was right in guessing that the U S market would be
• 36:48
  the one because we're Americans.
• 36:49
  We like big, big detail.
• 36:51
  We'll see that we'll see in parts.
• 36:53
  That's what we had.
• 36:55
  Another die cast retailer who used to be in business a long time ago,
• 36:59
  told me that he believed that the real ground zero for appreciation
• 37:04
  of one 18 scale cars in America was the TV show home improvement because
• 37:08
  Tim, the tool man made it acceptable to display these cars in your home.
• 37:13
  And he had this ever rotating selection of one 18 scale cars.
• 37:17
  I have a funny story about him.
• 37:18
  I'll tell you later.
• 37:18
  So there was that shift to one 18.
• 37:21
  So all of this back to your question, Eric, about why the shift
• 37:24
  toward one 43, it's a shift back to one 43, but it is happening.
• 37:28
  You're not wrong.
• 37:29
  It has started in the early two thousands where you would go to shows
• 37:33
  or you would go to stores and you're like, where are all the one 18th gone?
• 37:36
  Why is it all one 43rd super detailed, but you look at the price and it's like.
• 37:41
  Okay.
• 37:41
  1 43rd scale car is five inches and a 1 18 scales, 10 85 bucks.
• 37:46
  Let's just say at the time in the early two thousands for a 1 43rd, it hurt
• 37:49
  me because it was like, man, I could get a 1 18 scale car for 125, 200.
• 37:53
  I remember when auto art pushed the bar and they started selling cars at over 200.
• 37:59
  And you're like.
• 38:00
  Are they really that good?
• 38:01
  And they were by all accounts for me as a one 18th scale collector, I pumped
• 38:06
  the brakes and I said, this is it.
• 38:08
  I guess I'm done because I'm not going to start all over again.
• 38:11
  And there are models available in one 33rd that I'm still like, why can't
• 38:15
  I have this as an 18th scale car?
• 38:17
  One of the major differences other than the size between the two scales.
• 38:20
  Is the variety of subject matter because they are less expensive to make, you'll
• 38:27
  always get more one 43rd scale variety.
• 38:29
  And also because the back catalog is so deep again, going back to
• 38:32
  the 1930s, you had the explosion of Italian makers in the 60s.
• 38:36
  And then by late 80s, you had Paul's model art, many champs coming on the scene.
• 38:40
  Plus, and I think this is where you're getting the idea about the
• 38:43
  expensive one 43rd scale cars.
• 38:46
  Starting in the seventies, you had the very high end hand built white metal and
• 38:51
  resin kits, and then the ones that were built by master builders, those are the
• 38:55
  things that would have been selling for 150, 200 back then, or maybe a little
• 39:00
  less, maybe 85, but also in the nineties, many champs, one 43rd scale model,
• 39:04
  which were great, those were 25 or 30.
• 39:06
  So there were really good ones out there.
• 39:08
  And then Kyosho did a line back then in the late nineties, that was.
• 39:12
  They did a Shelby Cobra Daytona coupe in one 43rd scale.
• 39:14
  That was just fantastic.
• 39:16
  And they were 25 bucks.
• 39:18
  The thing that is making it come back.
• 39:20
  One 18 scale is a shift to resin production, simple matter of economics.
• 39:25
  It costs around.
• 39:27
  250 to 300, 000 some years ago, it might be up to about half a million now to tool
• 39:33
  up a one 18 scale die cast metal bodied cars, something that has opening parts.
• 39:37
  Those tools don't really wear out, which is a good thing because to recover your
• 39:40
  tooling costs, you're going to have to make a lot and sell a lot of models.
• 39:44
  If you are a company that is making one 18 scale cars in die cast metal, and you've
• 39:48
  just invested half a million dollars in tooling, you have to be making a product
• 39:53
  that you are confident is going to sell a lot so that you can recover your costs.
• 39:56
  Enter the resin caster, a resin cast for the same scale.
• 40:00
  A one 18 scale car is maybe 5, 000 because of the economics
• 40:05
  of the production of them.
• 40:06
  You can make much riskier choices with the subject matter.
• 40:10
  You can get into the weeds on some of the really exotic rally cars and
• 40:15
  small volume cars that few people have heard of or would be interested in.
• 40:19
  The trade off there is that those resin tools wear out after
• 40:23
  just a few thousand pieces.
• 40:25
  If you get three or four, 5, 000 units out of a cast, if you've done
• 40:28
  well, it's kind of a wash in that way.
• 40:30
  You can't make as many, but you don't have to make as many.
• 40:33
  But I think that the variety of subject matter that's offered by resin 118
• 40:37
  scale cars makes the scale more viable.
• 40:39
  The other thing that you kind of hinted at is the space.
• 40:42
  Very few of us have the real estate resources to store.
• 40:47
  Thousands and thousands of 118 scale cars.
• 40:50
  A piece of advice that I like to give to people who are just
• 40:52
  starting their collections is to consider their space very carefully.
• 40:56
  If they are thinking that they want to collect in a uniform scale, which
• 40:59
  I do not, by the way, my home office display case, it's a mix of 1843 and 64.
• 41:04
  For me, it's more about the subject matter than the uniformity of scale.
• 41:08
  But some people want them all to be the same size.
• 41:12
  I completely understand that there's just no way around it.
• 41:14
  43rd scale cars take up way less space.
• 41:17
  And so for a new collector, I think they're worth a look.
• 41:20
  On the other hand, one 18 scale, you can see it from across the room.
• 41:23
  I know that the listeners can't see this, but Eric, I'm looking over your
• 41:26
  shoulder at your really nice collection of one 18 scale cars, and you have some
• 41:31
  wonderful pieces in there that I can see clearly from here, they look great.
• 41:35
  So they have a lot of eye appeal.
• 41:37
  That's really hard to deny.
• 41:38
  And I'm glad you went there, Patrick, because this is the segue into the
• 41:41
  next section of why Don's here.
• 41:43
  We're going to talk about collecting and collectors and buying these things new,
• 41:47
  used and at auction and things like that.
• 41:49
  And so you've sprung us into motion here to talk about the first time
• 41:52
  buyer, and I'm glad you brought up the diversification of size.
• 41:56
  Now, Unlike me, who I'm a diehard one 18th guy.
• 41:59
  I have a couple of one 40 thirds here and there.
• 42:01
  I do have a nice size collection that Don has seen in my garage of one 64th.
• 42:06
  I have these mirror display cases, and it's just part of the ambience of being
• 42:09
  in the garage where I don't want to have these 10 inchers in the way, because they
• 42:13
  take up more space, but in my office, it works, I'm all for diversifying.
• 42:16
  But I do think that if you're thinking about long term investment, you
• 42:20
  do need to maybe stick to brands.
• 42:23
  Sizes or even let's say collections of cars, you know, certain eras, whether
• 42:28
  it's rally, whether it's IMSA, whether it's prototypes, if that's what you're
• 42:31
  into, I think there's a longer term game if you want to make a profit off of this.
• 42:35
  So let's dive into that part of the conversation a little bit more.
• 42:38
  My advice to people who are considering how to best purchase and
• 42:44
  collect model cars with an eye on future investment appreciation is.
• 42:49
  Don't period don't do that.
• 42:52
  My personal story in that goes like this after we moved to Michigan when I was
• 42:57
  a kid and I found myself surrounded by people who were very, very focused on
• 43:02
  sports, I figured as a collector that what I really needed to do to make some
• 43:06
  money was start collecting baseball cards because that was the thing back then.
• 43:10
  I am not a baseball fan.
• 43:11
  I've never been a baseball fan.
• 43:13
  I don't have anything against it.
• 43:14
  It just isn't my thing.
• 43:16
  So there I was trying to buy baseball cards with an eye on future appreciation.
• 43:21
  Guess what?
• 43:22
  I never sold one of and is still sitting unappreciated and of no value
• 43:27
  in a tub somewhere in my garage.
• 43:29
  All the baseball cards that I bought.
• 43:30
  The strongest piece of advice I could give to anyone starting a model car collection
• 43:35
  is do it because you like the cars.
• 43:37
  Because the chances are you're gonna get stuck with them.
• 43:39
  If you take that as your starting point, are there better financial decisions
• 43:43
  that you can make with your collection?
• 43:44
  Absolutely there are.
• 43:45
  And I'll get to those, but I would say focus relentlessly and only on what
• 43:50
  you like without trying to worry about what the next guy is going to like.
• 43:54
  On my way back from Rennsport reunion, I stopped off and bought a small collection,
• 43:58
  a very small collection of cars.
• 44:00
  And I probably paid 30 cents on the dollar to what they
• 44:04
  were purchased for originally.
• 44:06
  Thankfully, the guy was not sad about that.
• 44:07
  He understands how the reselling game works and he just has no use for
• 44:11
  them anymore as an older gentleman.
• 44:12
  And he just wanted to move them on to the next person, but he bought
• 44:15
  these things and lost money on them.
• 44:17
  But he really enjoyed having them.
• 44:19
  And the collection that I bought really reflects his interesting taste.
• 44:22
  So that's my spiciest take on the investment angle of it.
• 44:25
  Having said that there are decisions that you can make that might help you.
• 44:29
  If you are in a position where you want or need to sell, the best thing
• 44:33
  there is, is focus on quality brands.
• 44:35
  If you are interested in trying to preserve your investment, you really
• 44:37
  do want to look at the higher end models, and this is not to denigrate
• 44:42
  what I would call entry level cars.
• 44:44
  I sell some entry level model cars myself, and you can get really nice, well
• 44:48
  detailed things these days for 30 or 35.
• 44:51
  But if you really want to possibly get a return on your investment,
• 44:55
  beyond just the enjoyment of having it, which is all you should be doing.
• 44:58
  If you want to get that return, focus on the higher end brands.
• 45:02
  We've mentioned auto art a couple of times.
• 45:04
  A lot of auto art models have appreciated pretty substantially in value from
• 45:08
  their original retail price point.
• 45:10
  I think there are some that are trading for low four figures at this point.
• 45:13
  The ones that are trading for low four figures also happen to be some of the ones
• 45:17
  that have the best detail, the highest.
• 45:19
  Part content, something like scale model cars that are designed to be collectible.
• 45:24
  You have a pretty high survivor rate.
• 45:25
  It's not like old matchbox cars or hot wheels cars where they were designed
• 45:28
  to be toys and they become valuable because they get called because
• 45:33
  finding really nice ones is hard.
• 45:35
  They got played with.
• 45:35
  It's not hard to find good condition, old high end die cast.
• 45:39
  Cause they all got well kept for the most part.
• 45:42
  Focusing on quality products that have high part counts, high detail.
• 45:48
  If it is something that was made in lower volume, that never hurts.
• 45:51
  But beyond that, I'd say just focus on what makes you happy
• 45:54
  to have, because you're probably going to get stuck with it.
• 45:57
  How do you ascertain the value of one of these cars?
• 45:59
  A lot of my cars, like you and like Eric, and I'm sure a lot
• 46:03
  of the listeners we have here.
• 46:04
  Those cars I moved from California, I kid you not.
• 46:07
  Some of them I bought when I was six years old.
• 46:10
  They have been with me the majority of my life.
• 46:12
  And those, I still have the boxes for it.
• 46:14
  Cause my mother was the one who said, hold on to the boxes.
• 46:17
  That's where the value is.
• 46:19
  Well, as you said, it wasn't so much value because I'm not the one
• 46:21
  who's going to be selling these.
• 46:22
  It's going to be whoever survives me when I die.
• 46:25
  They're going to be the ones stuck trying to divest all these
• 46:27
  cars, but I do have the boxes.
• 46:29
  Like you said, they came in really handy.
• 46:31
  When we had to move, you know, you wrapped them up in a really nice bubble
• 46:34
  wrap and then some paper towel, put them in the box and we're good to go.
• 46:38
  But how would one ascertain the value of some of these cards?
• 46:42
  Where do you go?
• 46:42
  It's not like you can call Kelly Blue Book.
• 46:44
  You can, it's just called eBay.
• 46:46
  It feels like the laziest.
• 46:48
  thing in the world, but it's actually really quite useful going on eBay
• 46:52
  and looking at sold transactions.
• 46:54
  You don't want to look at the ones that are still active where you have
• 46:57
  somebody asking some price for something.
• 46:59
  You want to go and look and see what the actual transaction was.
• 47:03
  I like to think of the eBay sort by sold items as like the
• 47:07
  sports car market magazine.
• 47:09
  of die cast collecting.
• 47:11
  You can go and see the actual results and see what somebody actually paid for that.
• 47:15
  It's a good guideline.
• 47:16
  Obviously adjustments need to be made for the individual condition of what you have.
• 47:21
  Sometimes finding the exact item that you have can be challenging, especially if
• 47:26
  it's something old or rare, but it's at least a good jumping off point for trying
• 47:30
  to establish a, an approximate value.
• 47:32
  So I think there is a caveat to the investment discussion and that's.
• 47:37
  backed in the world of one 64th and my rule of thumb that I learned from hot
• 47:41
  wheels and matchbox collectors was if nothing else you buy three one to sell
• 47:46
  one to store and one to play with usually those guys will turn right around like
• 47:50
  you said you know they're looking for those dots and 510 station wagons I have a
• 47:52
  couple myself and they'll turn around and immediately sell them for 3x or 5x that
• 47:57
  94 cents or a dollar so they list them out there for three bucks five bucks that's
• 48:01
  Three to 500 percent profit, or you go to some of these shows and it's like, well,
• 48:05
  what I can buy a premium for that price.
• 48:07
  You know, I think there's a lot of guys wheeling and dealing in
• 48:11
  one 64th, but you don't see that in one 40 thirds and one 18th.
• 48:15
  I mean, the guys that I work with here on the East coast.
• 48:18
  I go to them and I say, Hey, I'm looking for this car because I'm trying to
• 48:20
  complete this part of my collection.
• 48:22
  I'm looking specifically for this model or this livery.
• 48:25
  And they're like, yep, I can get it.
• 48:26
  Or this company makes it, and this is what it's going to cost.
• 48:28
  It's not the same open marketplace.
• 48:31
  Like it is with the one 64th.
• 48:32
  The reason for that is very obvious to get three hot wheels.
• 48:35
  Cars is 4 to get three spark one 43rd scale cars.
• 48:39
  Now it's going to be 300.
• 48:41
  Exactly.
• 48:42
  As we dive deeper in this collection discussion, one of the things that
• 48:45
  you're known for is curating what you sell on Model Citizen Diecast.
• 48:49
  So I wonder, you know, you said you diversify sizes even in your
• 48:52
  own personal collection, but what are your rules in what you select
• 48:56
  and what you want to resell?
• 48:57
  There are three factors that go into my decision making on what I'm going
• 49:03
  to stock at modelcitizendiecast.
• 49:04
  com.
• 49:05
  The biggest one by far is my taste.
• 49:08
  There is a galaxy of model cars out there.
• 49:10
  For everyone, if you are one of those people who still collects NASCAR
• 49:13
  models in 2023, there are a lot of places you can go to get that.
• 49:16
  If I don't get it, if I don't understand it, if I don't care about
• 49:20
  it, I don't know how to sell it.
• 49:22
  Right at the top of the show, you led with model cars as a storytelling device.
• 49:27
  That's the ethos that I live with this.
• 49:30
  This car tells a particular story, whether it is the story of a particular
• 49:34
  race, whether it is the story of a particular moment in time, that's
• 49:38
  one of the major appeals to me.
• 49:39
  So first and foremost, I have to consider, do I care about this car?
• 49:43
  If I don't, I'm less likely to sell it because I don't know how, however.
• 49:48
  I have to pay attention to what's popular to just because I love something doesn't
• 49:51
  mean someone else will and I've got a lot of stuff in inventory that I will probably
• 49:55
  never sell because I thought it was gonna be awesome because I think it's awesome.
• 49:58
  No one else does.
• 49:59
  I do have to take into account whether or not I think there is some
• 50:03
  other weirdo like me out there who likes this one particular thing.
• 50:07
  And the third, Factor that goes into it is the quality of the model,
• 50:11
  just because a model company whose products I carry makes a model does not
• 50:16
  necessarily mean that I will stock it.
• 50:18
  I have rejected over the eight years that I've had this business, hundreds of
• 50:22
  models from companies like Ottawa, where I'll give you a great example of Ottawa.
• 50:26
  They made a metal bodied Jaguar E Type, Roadster and Dix Ted Coupe.
• 50:31
  And that's an evergreen car.
• 50:33
  Everybody loves E Types.
• 50:34
  They are timeless.
• 50:36
  Auto Art's model was almost perfect.
• 50:39
  I mean, so much detail under the bonnet, the way the interior was crafted.
• 50:42
  It was magnificent, but they got the scale of the wheels wrong, and they
• 50:47
  got the shape of the wheels wrong.
• 50:50
  They did not look accurate at all.
• 50:52
  And when I looked at that model, All I could see were the
• 50:55
  wheels and how wrong they were.
• 50:58
  Would anybody else have cared as much about that as I did?
• 51:01
  Maybe, maybe not.
• 51:02
  But I do know that at the price point those models were, both wholesale
• 51:05
  and retail, I couldn't justify it.
• 51:07
  So I never stocked them.
• 51:08
  Not just quality, not just how well made it is, but accuracy.
• 51:12
  It has to look right.
• 51:13
  And I think the reason for that is because, except for a very fortunate
• 51:17
  few people who are living the garage style magazine life and are parking
• 51:22
  their model collections next to their fabulous collections of real cars
• 51:25
  for the rest of us, they are stand ins these are stand ins for the cars
• 51:29
  we would like to own in real life to that end, they need to be accurate.
• 51:33
  They need to look as much like the real thing as possible, because
• 51:36
  sadly for most of us, that's as close as we're going to get.
• 51:39
  And that's okay.
• 51:40
  You know, we're not all wealthy.
• 51:41
  We're not all going to be wealthy.
• 51:42
  Let us have a really nice, accurate model car.
• 51:45
  Eric, I'll give you an example.
• 51:47
  Looking over your shoulder, you've got that DTM BMW M3 E30, which
• 51:51
  I think is an auto art model.
• 51:52
  But look at it.
• 51:53
  Look how perfect it looks.
• 51:55
  It's almost a shrink ray situation.
• 51:58
  I happen to know on those specific cars, one of the things they did to achieve
• 52:01
  the accuracy was at the Ottawa factory, after they cast the body, they hand
• 52:07
  ground using a hand tool, the wheel arch opening so that they could get that DTM
• 52:12
  wheel fitment really tight under there.
• 52:14
  That's the kind of thing that really I geek out about, about
• 52:17
  how good some of these things are.
• 52:18
  So those are the three factors for me.
• 52:20
  Do I want it?
• 52:21
  Is it popular?
• 52:22
  Is it detailed and accurate in quality?
• 52:24
  What are, let's say, the top three, top four, in your opinion, of the
• 52:29
  highest detail, the highest level of construction quality of the DICAT world?
• 52:33
  What would you put them as?
• 52:34
  Autowart has been my yardstick for a long time in terms of evaluating
• 52:39
  whether or not something is quality.
• 52:40
  They took a lot of flack.
• 52:41
  When they shifted to plastic body models or composite, as they call
• 52:46
  it, what it really is, is ABS.
• 52:47
  Basically they are model cars made out of car bumper cover material.
• 52:52
  There are a lot of people who equated metal body with quality.
• 52:56
  I think that's a bit unfair after they.
• 52:58
  Had a few poor first efforts.
• 53:01
  Auto art's done a really nice job with their plastic body cars
• 53:04
  in terms of level of detail you get at the 200, 250 price point.
• 53:08
  They're still pretty great after all these years.
• 53:11
  Well, if we're talking about mass market, as opposed to hand built.
• 53:15
  Very limited volume, one off things.
• 53:17
  I always go back to CMC, a German company, though they manufacture in China
• 53:22
  like pretty much everyone else does.
• 53:23
  CMC, focusing on a somewhat narrow band of subject matter, has just made just
• 53:29
  the most heartbreakingly beautiful 118 scale cars for the last 25 ish years.
• 53:34
  They focus mostly on vintage German and Italian race cars.
• 53:38
  But here again, here's one where they've made a model that I wouldn't stock, even
• 53:42
  if I could stock CMCs because it was just a little wonky on the body shape.
• 53:47
  That was their two 50 GTO, kind of like a weird amalgamation of
• 53:51
  several different serial numbers.
• 53:52
  And it just kind of looked off, but pretty much the rest of their line is exquisite.
• 53:56
  They're very expensive.
• 53:57
  I think new CMC one 18 scale cars run six to 800, but they're worth it.
• 54:02
  They're great.
• 54:03
  Solido is pretty solid still, right?
• 54:04
  So Solido.
• 54:06
  Has really elevated their game.
• 54:08
  A few years ago, I wouldn't have considered carrying them at all.
• 54:10
  I think they were very firmly in the entry level category, but the
• 54:14
  last few years they have made the conscious decision to get better.
• 54:18
  The quality of construction is better.
• 54:20
  One of the ways you can tell is like, kind of like looking at an old car.
• 54:23
  What's your panel gaps?
• 54:24
  How well do the parts fit together?
• 54:26
  They've really improved their quality on that.
• 54:29
  The accuracy of the models.
• 54:30
  I'm thinking specifically, they do a really nice line of Porsche 935 K3s.
• 54:35
  They're fabulous.
• 54:36
  And they're 75 great models to the extent that I've started carrying them myself.
• 54:41
  I think the best deal in 118 scale these days is Norev.
• 54:44
  Norev is another legacy brand that dates back, I think, to the 1970s.
• 54:49
  They were big in 43rd scale for a long time, and they started making these
• 54:54
  really nicely made 118 scale cars, very accurate in design, very nicely
• 55:00
  detailed in the hundred to 150 range.
• 55:03
  They're wonderful.
• 55:04
  And Model Citizen has just started selling those too.
• 55:06
  We tend to fall back into 118 yet again, but.
• 55:10
  There's another caveat here, and sometimes the model you want in 118th
• 55:15
  is only cast by one manufacturer.
• 55:17
  You want the VW Nardo that's over my shoulder?
• 55:20
  Maisto is the only one that makes it.
• 55:21
  You're not going to find it by AutoArt.
• 55:23
  You're not going to find it by CMC.
• 55:24
  You get what you get sometimes at that point.
• 55:26
  But going back to what you said about Solido, I said the same thing.
• 55:30
  When they came out with their new 935s, And especially the
• 55:32
  Momo 935, which Derek Bell drove.
• 55:34
  And I had to have one.
• 55:35
  And I looked at it, I was like, man, for 85 bucks, this is a steal.
• 55:38
  Now, granted 20 years ago, 85 bucks for winning 18 scale.
• 55:41
  I'm having a heart attack, but that's actually not bad these days when
• 55:44
  you compare it to everybody else, but their quality has stepped up.
• 55:47
  You mentioned something kind of funny about collecting NASCARs in 2023.
• 55:52
  And it makes me think though, that there's still room in this game to
• 55:57
  go after certain genres of cars.
• 56:00
  And one of the ones that sits close to heart for me is I've always wanted
• 56:04
  to have a collection of Jaeger cars, like the 914 6, the Jaeger Scirocco,
• 56:09
  the BMWs, and some of the other ones.
• 56:11
  They're big money.
• 56:12
  They're super cool.
• 56:13
  They come in a couple of different sizes, but that's something
• 56:15
  you can kind of geek out over.
• 56:17
  I'm still working on that, but on the same token, I feel like there's
• 56:20
  reasons and seasons for collecting.
• 56:21
  I went through a whole period of VW and Porsche service trucks.
• 56:25
  If it said rendists on the side, I had to buy it.
• 56:28
  If it said VW service on the side, I had to buy it.
• 56:31
  I'm wondering if those are other things that new collectors should be thinking
• 56:35
  about is what do they want their display case to look like right now?
• 56:38
  In your opinion, are there, let's say liveries or styles or things that
• 56:43
  are hot in the market that people should be looking at or should be
• 56:46
  considering or maybe don't know about?
• 56:47
  I love that you led with the Jagermeister.
• 56:51
  example, because that is a livery that I'm trying to push
• 56:56
  that I'm trying to make happen.
• 56:57
  I love it.
• 56:58
  I think it's cool.
• 56:59
  I can point to a couple of inciting incidents in my
• 57:03
  collector life that led me there.
• 57:05
  But the real reason that I want Jaeger to take off is
• 57:08
  because I am sick death of gulf.
• 57:11
  I don't care if I ever see another golf livery to anything.
• 57:17
  Steve McQueen has been dead for 43 years.
• 57:20
  Let's let it go, folks.
• 57:21
  But are there others?
• 57:23
  Look back through the history of motorsport.
• 57:26
  Think about some of the most iconic liveries.
• 57:30
  Think about some of the most beautiful liveries.
• 57:32
  I'm thinking about the gold leaf lotuses of the 60s.
• 57:36
  The John Player special lotuses of the 70s.
• 57:39
  The McLaren MP four, four, all of the great Michael Schumacher era Ferraris,
• 57:43
  the mild seven Jaguar group C car.
• 57:46
  What do all of those cars have in common?
• 57:48
  Tobacco sponsorship.
• 57:49
  Yes.
• 57:50
  And that's a problem because that is largely banned.
• 57:54
  Perfect.
• 57:54
  The Rothman nine, five, six forces.
• 57:56
  Model car companies for the most part can't sell those anymore due
• 57:59
  to state and local regulations.
• 58:01
  A lot of the companies will sell a Rothmans era 956, and they will put
• 58:07
  something very coily on the box that says stickers included, and there will
• 58:11
  be a sticker sheet very discreetly slid under the car where you can
• 58:14
  apply them yourself to the car.
• 58:16
  So has that then made the used market increase in value because of the ones
• 58:20
  that were produced during the time when they were allowed to do that?
• 58:23
  Dealers and resellers like myself would like to think so, but my
• 58:27
  personal experience with that is it hasn't made a big impact.
• 58:31
  I have a BBR Ferrari F310 with full Marlboro livery on it that
• 58:36
  I've had on offer for a long time.
• 58:38
  And I can't get any nipples on it.
• 58:40
  I had.
• 58:41
  A couple of L and M liveried Porsche, nine 17, 10 K and M cars that I
• 58:46
  just finally sold at Rennsport that I hadn't been able to move.
• 58:50
  I would love it if that were true, but I'm just not sure that it is yet.
• 58:53
  Any tips on buying used?
• 58:55
  Cause you do see them come up a lot at let's say Mecham auctions and other
• 58:58
  places like that, or even on eBay.
• 59:00
  Like you mentioned, some are new in box.
• 59:02
  And you can see the patina on them.
• 59:04
  I bought some myself and I chucked the boxes in the trash.
• 59:06
  You know, bad on me, I suppose.
• 59:08
  But when I'm at a show, I've noticed some people they'll kind of lean in and
• 59:11
  they'll kind of like squint their eyes.
• 59:13
  And I'm like, pick the car up, look it over.
• 59:15
  Just like you're buying a real car, inspect it.
• 59:17
  Are there certain things you're looking for?
• 59:19
  Maybe the way the bearings are, how the axles are, door gaps, chips in the paint.
• 59:24
  Are there things that you would use to negotiate down the price?
• 59:26
  If you're buying a used diecast?
• 59:28
  All of the above, except for negotiating down the price, I would be looking at
• 59:32
  how much the model has been handled.
• 59:34
  If you can see any kind of damage on it at all, you need to be looking
• 59:38
  very carefully at your small parts.
• 59:40
  I know I mentioned rear view mirrors and antenna earlier, and those are
• 59:43
  like the first two things to go.
• 59:44
  I would just apply the same kind of due diligence to looking at
• 59:49
  a previously enjoyed scale model car as I would do a real car.
• 59:53
  However, unless I am getting something that is really patina
• 59:58
  and I like the patina of it, I'm only really looking at mint cars.
• 1:00:01
  I'm not interested in something that it might have like a small scratch
• 1:00:04
  or one little tiny thing for me.
• 1:00:06
  That one tiny thing is everything.
• 1:00:08
  I don't want to mess with it unless it's perfect.
• 1:00:11
  If I'm buying it from an individual.
• 1:00:13
  The other hand, if you look at the case behind me, there
• 1:00:15
  are some cars that I bought.
• 1:00:17
  From a manufacturer, from a distributor for my business.
• 1:00:21
  And they had a small defect on them.
• 1:00:22
  And it's like, well, I can't really in good conscience, sell that to a customer.
• 1:00:26
  Model citizen is not just the name of my business.
• 1:00:29
  It's the way I try to do business.
• 1:00:30
  And I really don't want to foist these things off on customers that trust me.
• 1:00:35
  If those items are less than perfect, I've got a 991 GT three in here.
• 1:00:39
  So one of my favorite cars got a little tiny paint defect on it.
• 1:00:42
  I kept that one because I'd already bought it anyway, what did I know?
• 1:00:45
  But if I'm like looking at a secondary market car for my personal collection
• 1:00:51
  or to resell, it's got to be mint.
• 1:00:52
  No question about it.
• 1:00:53
  Unless it's an old toy that has some really charming worn patina to it.
• 1:01:00
  Kind of like a real collector car.
• 1:01:01
  You have the movement of originality, you know, the preservation class
• 1:01:05
  at your Insert Concord here.
• 1:01:08
  There is something very charming about that, but something that's
• 1:01:11
  been produced in the last 25 years, I need it to be meant that guy.
• 1:01:14
  I'm telling you that he was the first one I ever met who literally had an
• 1:01:17
  Excel spreadsheet of every car he'd bought because he would go to swap meets.
• 1:01:23
  He would go to wherever.
• 1:01:25
  Oh, I got to have that.
• 1:01:26
  He'd buy it, he'd get home.
• 1:01:27
  Oh, I've already got this car.
• 1:01:30
  That's very important to catalog your collection.
• 1:01:34
  For one, the reason that you mentioned, you don't want to duplicate unnecessarily.
• 1:01:37
  I met a collector at Rennsport Reunion who bought a.
• 1:01:40
  Bunch of models for me.
• 1:01:41
  And he did that because he was able to whip out his phone
• 1:01:45
  rather than using a spreadsheet.
• 1:01:46
  He just took pictures of his collection.
• 1:01:47
  He only collected old Porsche race cars and he had his collection organized
• 1:01:51
  by era and the number on the card.
• 1:01:53
  So he would be able to say, okay, let me look at my nine seventeens.
• 1:01:56
  I don't have that one.
• 1:01:57
  And I sold the guy 18 model cars on the spot.
• 1:02:00
  The other reason you need to do that is when the place burns down, you
• 1:02:04
  need to be able to demonstrate what you've got to your insurance agent.
• 1:02:08
  And by the way, if you have a collection of model cars, get a writer on your
• 1:02:12
  homeowner's policy for the model cars.
• 1:02:14
  You'll thank yourself later.
• 1:02:15
  If you have collector cars and you insure them through one of the collector
• 1:02:19
  car specialty insurance companies.
• 1:02:21
  I don't know about all of them.
• 1:02:22
  I do know that Hagerty will do special writers just on automobilia,
• 1:02:26
  automotive art collections on Petroliana on model car collections.
• 1:02:30
  So, you know, word of the wise, insure your stuff.
• 1:02:33
  See, just like in the real world.
• 1:02:34
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:02:35
  Insuring.
• 1:02:36
  Does that even go for.
• 1:02:37
  Let's just say, and forgive this, the cheapies, you know, your Boragos that
• 1:02:41
  you've had for years, your whatever.
• 1:02:43
  Did that go for that as well?
• 1:02:45
  Did you share those cards?
• 1:02:46
  Or are you talking about, like, the Kuntosh you sold me?
• 1:02:48
  It just comes down to how sad you're going to be if you lose it, and how much better
• 1:02:53
  the money is going to make you feel.
• 1:02:55
  I don't know.
• 1:02:56
  If I had a collection of 300 Borago models, Spanning the history of the brand.
• 1:03:02
  Absolutely.
• 1:03:02
  I would have that insured.
• 1:03:04
  It doesn't matter that they're only worth 20, 30 bucks a shot, but still six grand.
• 1:03:07
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:03:09
  I'd say just insure it or at minimum have good quality photographs of your stuff.
• 1:03:13
  So that in case of a disaster, you can show that to an insurance
• 1:03:16
  adjuster who hopefully will be sympathetic, but a spreadsheet, a
• 1:03:20
  database with everything that you've got and how much you paid for it.
• 1:03:23
  That's not a bad idea.
• 1:03:25
  We mentioned some of the high end brands, listed three that
• 1:03:28
  are in the top, but maybe there's some brands to shy away from?
• 1:03:31
  Or maybe take a second look at?
• 1:03:33
  Franklin Mint.
• 1:03:35
  You know, they have their charm and they have their enthusiasts, bless them.
• 1:03:38
  I don't really want to down talk any particular brand.
• 1:03:42
  I think that it comes down to what you want to do with your collection.
• 1:03:47
  If you are an authenticity freak like me, you want to stay
• 1:03:50
  away from some of the more.
• 1:03:53
  cartoonish lower end things that are have kind of the gaudy metallic
• 1:03:57
  paint and the wildly oversized tires.
• 1:03:59
  But I think I'm not telling you anything you wouldn't have figured out already
• 1:04:02
  on that in terms of if you are going for a realistic car, it's really just
• 1:04:07
  a matter of what your budget can stand.
• 1:04:09
  I don't collect Mesto models, for example, because I am looking for something that
• 1:04:15
  has more detail and more authenticity, better quality paint, better shut lines.
• 1:04:20
  Having said that, not everybody can afford a 150, 200, 118 scale car.
• 1:04:25
  For some people, that 17 at Costco find is a find.
• 1:04:31
  And you know what?
• 1:04:32
  For 17 at Costco, those Mesos are great.
• 1:04:36
  They are an unbelievably good value for someone who has a little
• 1:04:40
  tighter budget for their collection.
• 1:04:42
  I would just say avoid anything that just doesn't ring your bell.
• 1:04:45
  If it looks wrong to you at first blush, just walk away.
• 1:04:48
  Unless you just have to have that one model, because they're the only ones
• 1:04:52
  who are making it, and you're trying to fill a hole in your collection.
• 1:04:54
  It's hard for me to understand that perspective, because I don't share it,
• 1:04:58
  but I do, like, academically understand, and this is the only game in town.
• 1:05:02
  You gotta have it to complete the set.
• 1:05:03
  So what's wonderful about this conversation is how much
• 1:05:06
  it really parallels The full size car collector world.
• 1:05:10
  And one of the last segments I want to touch on here is
• 1:05:14
  the modded die cast market.
• 1:05:17
  We've all seen it.
• 1:05:18
  Guys are taking apart 164s.
• 1:05:20
  They're taking apart 118 sale cars.
• 1:05:22
  They're repainting them.
• 1:05:23
  They're refinishing them.
• 1:05:24
  You know, doing the singer thing to die cast 911s.
• 1:05:28
  They're putting big tires and big wheels.
• 1:05:30
  What's your feeling on the mod community within the die cast market?
• 1:05:35
  In general, I'm in favor of it.
• 1:05:36
  Simply because I love the idea of individualizing.
• 1:05:40
  This is how you get something that is truly one of a kind
• 1:05:43
  or extremely limited volume.
• 1:05:44
  If it is something that has been individually customized, where
• 1:05:48
  I run into problems with that is the idea of the artist's hand.
• 1:05:53
  As someone who goes in for authenticity in models, I generally.
• 1:05:58
  Don't want to see the artist's hand.
• 1:06:00
  I want it to still be an authentic or as authentic as possible scale model car.
• 1:06:06
  While at the same time being something that was unique.
• 1:06:09
  And as Singer would say, re imagined my friend, David Barnblatt owns
• 1:06:14
  a company called Vintage 43.
• 1:06:15
  Like me, he has a career in the entertainment business and pursues
• 1:06:20
  model cars as a profitable hobby.
• 1:06:23
  He is an incredibly gifted scale model builder.
• 1:06:27
  His real passion is in building from scratch or restoring vintage
• 1:06:32
  white metal and resin kits from the seventies and eighties.
• 1:06:34
  And he does beautiful work.
• 1:06:36
  In addition to that, he also does some custom hot wheels, and he does it with
• 1:06:39
  an eye on authenticity, perhaps offering colors that Hot wheels does not offer.
• 1:06:44
  And I have some of his pieces in my collection, just hot wheels cars,
• 1:06:47
  because I think they're awesome.
• 1:06:48
  You know, hot wheels does that alpha Julia GTA.
• 1:06:52
  He did a run of four of them for me in my favorite vintage Alfa Romeo color,
• 1:06:59
  which is yellow, okra, ochre, yellow.
• 1:07:01
  I just think that looks so cool.
• 1:07:03
  And I'm not generally a fan of yellow cars, but something
• 1:07:05
  about that really looks great.
• 1:07:06
  So that's one that I have.
• 1:07:08
  He did a Ruby Stone 964 for me, because he got to have a Ruby Stone 964, right?
• 1:07:13
  In general, I'm in favor of it.
• 1:07:15
  And I like that people are just giving it a try too.
• 1:07:17
  You know, why not?
• 1:07:18
  It's a Hot Wheels car.
• 1:07:19
  Go for it.
• 1:07:20
  Be creative.
• 1:07:21
  Knock yourself out.
• 1:07:22
  But, be honest about it when it comes time to sell.
• 1:07:24
  It's like selling a clone at Barrett Jackson, you know.
• 1:07:26
  Tell me it's a clone, don't try to pass it off as a Mattel factory prototype.
• 1:07:31
  Like yourself, Patrick, we've probably all met somebody in the community
• 1:07:35
  that's maybe an amateur collector, might be an avid collector, might be a Hot
• 1:07:39
  Wheels superstar, you know, famous at some of these conventions and whatnot.
• 1:07:42
  But there are some very special collections, almost museum level
• 1:07:47
  out there, like we talked about.
• 1:07:48
  Just like in the real world.
• 1:07:49
  Two names come to mind.
• 1:07:51
  Don is friends with Sergio Goldvarg.
• 1:07:53
  He has a huge collection.
• 1:07:54
  He actually was in the Guinness book of world records.
• 1:07:56
  And I met Bruce Pascal who has the most expensive hot wheels on the planet.
• 1:08:00
  Those are two big collections that I can think of where people can come in
• 1:08:04
  and check them out and things like that.
• 1:08:05
  Are there any others, even around the country that are destinations
• 1:08:09
  people might want to check out?
• 1:08:10
  Maybe they're going on vacation or something like that.
• 1:08:12
  There are just a lot of people who have big collections.
• 1:08:15
  What surprised me most about the gold bar collection was how I can think of five
• 1:08:20
  other collectors who have collections that big that I know there's that guy.
• 1:08:23
  I think he's in Lebanon, maybe he's got like 20 cars and he's got, I
• 1:08:27
  think his is a, is a destination.
• 1:08:29
  The thing is, I don't know of really a lot of quote unquote
• 1:08:32
  model car museums, big collections.
• 1:08:35
  Tend to go hand in hand with something else.
• 1:08:37
  Example.
• 1:08:38
  I used to do business with a guy in Michigan who had a big collection
• 1:08:41
  of scale model, commercial vehicles and emergency vehicles.
• 1:08:45
  He did that because they were adjacent to his collection of full size
• 1:08:48
  vintage fire engines that he had.
• 1:08:50
  But the models became a museum unto themselves.
• 1:08:52
  I don't really know how to answer that because I don't get invited into a lot of
• 1:08:57
  those collections, but they're out there.
• 1:09:00
  And I'd say that if somebody says, Hey, you want to come see my
• 1:09:02
  model collection, just say, yes.
• 1:09:04
  It's probably unlikely to turn into a Buffalo Bill type situation.
• 1:09:07
  You're probably just going to go see some cool cars.
• 1:09:09
  Well, it's like Don said on the first episode he was ever on the show.
• 1:09:12
  Hey, you want to come see my room?
• 1:09:13
  You want to see the cool stuff I have in my room?
• 1:09:15
  It all goes back to being that five year old kid, right?
• 1:09:18
  Yeah.
• 1:09:19
  Oh, it totally does.
• 1:09:20
  It totally does.
• 1:09:21
  Well, that being said, we're all well beyond the age of five years old.
• 1:09:24
  So Patrick, what's in the future for a Model Citizen diecast?
• 1:09:28
  Anything new on the horizon?
• 1:09:29
  Anything you'd like to share?
• 1:09:30
  Absolutely.
• 1:09:31
  I think that if you've been a customer or follower of Model Citizen over the eight
• 1:09:36
  years that we've been in existence, It's been a pretty small selection of cars.
• 1:09:40
  I don't think I've ever had more than a hundred different items on
• 1:09:42
  the website at any given moment.
• 1:09:44
  I'm looking to expand that.
• 1:09:45
  As I mentioned earlier, I've just started selling Norev models.
• 1:09:49
  I think they're a fabulous value.
• 1:09:51
  You'll be able to start picking those up on my website.
• 1:09:53
  Again, it's a hobby business, but I'm looking to grow it a little bit.
• 1:09:56
  So look for more frequent updates.
• 1:09:59
  In inventory, I am going to be adding a lot of premium 64 scale.
• 1:10:05
  I resisted for a long time because there are so many other places to
• 1:10:08
  get it, but it just won me over.
• 1:10:10
  It's so cool.
• 1:10:10
  So look for more 64 scale stuff, but yeah, just look for more.
• 1:10:15
  And more stuff coming up soon.
• 1:10:17
  Do you have any events coming up that you'll be attending?
• 1:10:20
  Uh, maybe people can find you at.
• 1:10:22
  I've been a pretty regular vendor at the Southern California Radwood
• 1:10:25
  events might be a couple of other smaller events in the LA area.
• 1:10:29
  The next big thing for me is going to be LA Porsche weekend.
• 1:10:32
  So I do the.
• 1:10:33
  Porsche in vintage VW lit and toy show every February at the LAX Hilton.
• 1:10:38
  And I also produce my own event the day after that called diecast cars and coffee.
• 1:10:42
  My intention is that we'll once again, return to the automobile driving
• 1:10:46
  museum in El Segundo, California.
• 1:10:48
  So if you're going to be in town for LA Porsche weekend, or if you're
• 1:10:51
  just going to be in town period, come by diecast cars and coffee.
• 1:10:55
  It's really fun.
• 1:10:56
  And then of course, I'll be back in Monterey next August for car week and.
• 1:11:00
  I'll probably find a few things to do between now and then.
• 1:11:03
  Well, Patrick, we've reached that part of the episode where I get to ask any
• 1:11:06
  shout outs, promotions, or anything else we haven't covered thus far.
• 1:11:09
  I just want to reemphasize whether you are a veteran collector with very finely
• 1:11:14
  honed taste, or whether you are new to the hobby model, citizen diecast.
• 1:11:19
  com is a great place to find.
• 1:11:21
  A very tightly focused selection of exquisite model cars.
• 1:11:26
  And if you are new to the hobby, my contact info is readily available there.
• 1:11:29
  And I'm always happy to answer any questions you might have.
• 1:11:33
  Honestly, I'd rather make a friend than a customer, but model citizen diecast.
• 1:11:37
  com is a great place to start or continue your journey as a diecast model collector.
• 1:11:42
  The model citizen philosophy is simple.
• 1:11:44
  They believe there is no better visual expression for an individual's passion
• 1:11:48
  for the automobile than a really great scale model, one that captures every
• 1:11:53
  detail and nuance of the real thing.
• 1:11:56
  Patchfork is committed to helping car enthusiasts communicate their
• 1:11:59
  passion to the world by curating a selection of only the finest, precision
• 1:12:05
  built scale model cars available.
• 1:12:07
  Cars you can be proud to display in Any home or work setting.
• 1:12:11
  To learn more about Patrick and Model Citizen Die Cast, be sure to check out
• 1:12:15
  their website www.modelcitizendiecast.com, or reach out to Patrick directly at
• 1:12:23
  Patrick at Model Citizen die cast.com or follow them on social media at
• 1:12:29
  Model Citizen Die Cast on Facebook and Instagram or at Model Citizen DC.
• 1:12:36
  On Twitter, Patrick, I can't thank you enough for coming on break fix
• 1:12:40
  and sharing your passion for diecast.
• 1:12:42
  I think this has been a really enlightening conversation and the
• 1:12:44
  parallels that it makes to the full scale world of metal cars.
• 1:12:49
  This has been really, really cool.
• 1:12:51
  I look forward to filling a missing link in my collection.
• 1:12:55
  Hopefully we'll be able to work something out here in the near future.
• 1:12:57
  So thank you again for sharing your love of diecast.
• 1:13:00
  And model cars with us and the rest of the world.
• 1:13:02
  Eric, Don, thank you so much for having me on.
• 1:13:04
  It's truly been my pleasure chatting with you today.
• 1:13:11
  The following episode is brought to us in part by Garage Style Magazine.
• 1:13:15
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