The Car Guy of Benchfield
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Die Cast Collecting Today
by Steve Wingate

When I first started collecting Nascar die-cast back in 1992, Racing Champions was the only really big game in town.  They were all two dollars or less, and you could build a pretty respectable collection in fairly short order if you knew where to look.

I remember scouring every Wal-Mart, Kmart, drug store, and grocery store in the Birmingham and surrounding areas for Racing Champions that I didn't have.  This kind of searching did yield some satisfying results.  I found a shopworn  #42 Kyle Petty (w/ Peak Antifreeze scheme) Roaring Racer in a clearance bin at KB Toys.  A trip to Dollar Tree turned up Bobby Allison and Ken Bouchard, and I bought two or three of each.  I came across a #10 Sterlin Marlin car at drug store, something I had not seen before, and something I have not come across since.  Collecting was fun back then.

Now, people have caught on to the die-cast craze and specialty shops and manufactuers have rushed in to fill the demand.  The result?  Collecting isn't fun any more.  I can walk into one of the numerous collector shops or flea markets in my area and find anything I want for five times the price.

The most fun I've had collecting in the past five years was in 1998 while browsing the die-cast section at my local Wal-Mart.  I was looking hopefully at the tired assortment of Hasbro and Racing Champions, when a bored-looking Wal-Mart employee rounded the corner carrying a box that had been returned from layaway.  He pulled a double handful of  1\64 cars out of the box, poked them onto the pegs, then departed.  My throat tightened and my heart began to hammer.  There, dangling from the pegs, was a #10 Tide/Give Kids the World, a #36 Wildberry Skittles, and a #26 Trix/Lucky Charms/Cocoa Puffs.  I greedily snatched up these treasures, looking this way and that, ready to snap and growl at anyone who tried to interfere, and made my way to the checkout counter.
Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't appreciate the products out there today, it's just that they are so blasted expensive.  Like I said, you can find anything you want at today's shops, but be prepared to pay anything from 10 to 25 dollars for a 1/64 scale car and 50+ for a 1/24 scale.  Sheesh!  I suppose if I were a rich man, I might be tempted to pay such outrageous prices, because the array of products is simply dazzling and the quality is light years ahead of what it was eight years ago.  But most people cannot afford this type of thing.  My wife doesn't mind if I go into Wal-Mart and pick up two or three cars at a couple of dollars apiece every one in a while, but she would simply freak if I came home with a sixty dollar toy car.

My point is that this hobby has been taken out of the hands of small time collectors like myself and placed with the" deep pockets" set.  I can still go to Wal-Mart or Kmart and buy Nascar collectibles, but the selection stinks.  A typical retail counter has about forty of those Hasbro Rusty Wallace cars from 1998, several shop worn Hot Wheels items and tons of those gold and silver jobs for ten dollars a piece, and if you're lucky, there might be one or two Dale Earnhardt Lifetime Series (the ones you already have) cars.  On the bottom part of the counter you will find the horrendously overpriced Hasbro and Hot Wheels items in larger scales.  On the overhead part of the shelf, there will be around a gazillion gold 94s in 1/24 scale.  Sound familiar?  I've personally visited about twenty or thirty different stores in the past four years and found this view to hold true for most all of them.

I guess I should be happy.  After all, die-cast has become so hot because of the tremendous growth NASCAR has experienced in the past few years.  NASCAR has become mainstream and brought on tens of thousands of new fans and thousands of new collectors.

At least I can still say: "I remember when toy race cars only cost a buck ninety-seven." , in the same style my dad always used when reminded us that comic books were only a nickel when he was growing up.  Or how about; "We didn't have those fancy Jeff Gordon or Tony Stewart cars with their swanky tampo paint jobs when I was first collecting.  We only had Tom Peck and Jay Fogelman cars with these cheap little decals that always curled up around the edges, but we were proud to have 'em."   How about that?  Me... an elitist old fart in the world of die -cast collecting at the ripe old age of 31.

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2001 Car Guy of Benchfield
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