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Collecting Die Cast Vehicles |
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Written by Maggi Stone-O'Hara
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Monday, 23 July 2007 |
There is hardly a child anywhere who has not played with a diecast vehicle. They are an ubiquitous part of growing up and although many of us have just disposed of our die-cast models as we grew up, the few who held onto them may be absolutely astounded at the price that some of these 1:24 scale and 1:18 scale collectibles will now fetch at auction! There are some extremely rare and collectable types of diecast hot rod, tractor trailers, street rods, and various other vehicles that can draw bids of hundreds of dollars or more! That's a lot of money for some little toy cars!
The collectors have subdivided their categories into very specific sections. Some collectors will only buy Ford Mustangs, while others will specialize in Model Ts, Cadillacs, pedal cars, or even non automotive diecast models such as boats, airplanes, tanks and other military vehicles, tractors and other agricultural vehicles as well as perfect reproduction of large construction equipment.
If you want to collect diecasts for fun, you can usually find them at local general department stores like Walmart or Target, or at toy stores like Toys R Us for a couple of dollars each. You will find a staggering selection at these larger stores so that you can certainly bring home the diecast model that you prefer. If you want to get into valuable collections, then you really should do your research. You can easily be convinced to way overbid on an online auction and end up with a diecast model which you couldn't resell for 10% of what you paid for it. However, there are some amazing deals to be found. There are many cases of people plunking diecast vehicles on the online auctions that they found in the attic or at a garage sale and then stand by dumbfounded as the bids go to $100, $200, $300 and more!
The aforementioned garage sales are a great place to find inexpensive die-cast vehicles. You have to be careful as many of them will have been manhandled to a fair degree and have broken wheels, scratched or missing paint, etc. Those models will be fine to take home to play with, but have zero resale value. You probably won't mind too much if you find something you like as the common price for garage sale diecasts is around 25 cents, so it certainly is affordable.
For the die-hard There is various computer software on the market which is designed specifically for serious diecast vehicle collectors. Not only will it allow the collector to keep track of the color, current value, original cost, condition, scale and many other details for each model, but can also be effective in helping you determine which diecasts in your collection have the potential to draw high bids on the online auction sites. Diecast collecting is a fun activity with the potential to earn you some real money. Give it a try!
Maggi Stone-O'Hara works with CrownPremiums. They manufacture diecast replicas of cars, trucks and tractor trailers.
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