Doing a little cleaning yesterday and came across my collection. So I eneded up spending about two hours looking at them with my boys, who want so badly to start playing with them as their own. They must have over a hundred of their own, but these old ones really got their attention, lol. Surprised at how well my 5 yr old understood when I explained to him that these are to be looked at only, and not played with :D

Some more...

These are the oldest ones I could find...stamped 1969 on the bottoms.

1970 models...

These 8 were definatley my favorites of the whole bunch, some of the first ones I remember. Gotta love those old Nascars. I remember playing with these things day after day, after day, etc.

Some other oldies/goodies. If only I still had the ones that fell victims to destruction (by firecrackers, bb guns, etc.) somewhere along the way.

If you guys have pics, post 'em.

Holy crap! Did you steal those from my house?!?!?!? It's amazing how similar that is to my collection. I recognized at least half of those. You look just as anal as I am too - having the same cars, but different colors all next to each other. I love my old cars and all are in such great shape too. I always took really good care of them. It's interesting to get a price guide to see what some of those are worth. I have this black Matchbox Blazer with big tires that is worth around $200. I actually have two of them.

Great post!

I wish I still had my matchbox collection. I remember many of the ones you have Jim.
Did you ever have any Jhonny Lightning cars? We had a bunch of them with a special track that zipped them around.

Hold on to them! They must be worth ALOT of money.
I was searching for some bike parts on Ebay and I found an auction with about 700 matchbox cars, with all kinds of other memorbilia. I added it to "my ebay" watching page because it was bid up to $60,000.00!

They ended up selling for $77,000.00!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'll go back and see if I can find the page and post it.

I don't remember J Lightning, but it sounds like the Hot Wheels Scorchers set that I used to have...actually, I still have them up in my attic somewhere...will have to look for those too. The cars were the same size as the normal Hot Wheels, but they were made of plastic, had a little motor in them, and you could hook them up to a little "charger" that ran off D cell batteries, if I remember. The track was large and black, about 4 car width, and had real high banks. I also have a bunch of the larger Speed Kings by Matchbox.

$60,000+ for a collection of any size....OUCH!!!!

Kowalcs, you just have to keep them organized like that, don't you?! I thought it was a rule of owning these things!!!!! :p

Now how about those electric race car sets by companies like TYCO....still have all those too....can't wait to get those out and start playing with those, I mean "showing them to my boys." :D

I'm pretty sure I have most of those same ones in my collection, out in a box in the garage. Mine are not stored quite as nicely as what you're doing.

I remember the Sizzlers. Those were great. Needed that oval track because in a straight line they would go forever. :slick:

I used to prefer Hot Wheels over Matchbox, I thought their cars looked nicer, better proportions, etc.

I bought myself a slot-car track a few years ago. Had several when I was a kid. Used to be a group of us from the neighborhood that would get together and bring our cars and tracks to someone's house, make a BIG long track and spend the day running those slot cars. I'm not sure that these newer cars I have could hold a candle to some of them I had years ago.

I just finished counting mine after reading this. I HAVE 670 HOTWHELLS CARS! TWO BASKETS FULL! NO JOKE!

Boy do those pix bring back memories. Sadly, I have very few of my collection left, and I had a bunch of them. They would have all been late 60's-early 70's. I also had tons of orange plastic track with all accessories like Starting gate, Finish Line w/ trip flag, 110V in-line launch wheel (for oval track set-up). Many hours of fun!

I do, however, still have my baseball cards and a special 1964 Tonka Pickup (New condition - in box).

The Hot Wheels Sizzlers worked better w/ the Fat Track which we didn't have :(

I still have most of the Hot Wheels & Matchbox stuff. I've got some of the bigger Matchbox trucks that I'll post pics of next week.

The nephew thinks the Hot Wheels are neat. We usually get him a couple when we're @ a Winston Cup oops Nextel race. He sets up a drag strip & races them like we did wayyy back.

I have mine hidden away in a box someplace. Now, I'm gonna have to turn the place upside down and find 'em.

I hear ya Wolfman, mine are in two buckets out in the storage building. I couldn't see myself getting rid of them. They are right in between my G.I. Joes and Hot Wheels City and Construction site.

Great memories guys! I still have the orange Hot Wheels tracks with the garage you'd push them through which would propell them down the track. I used to have the Sizzlers too with the fat black track. My favorite had to be the Tyco slot cars though. I still have two different one with a ton of extra track too. I have the Super Duper Double Looper and I think the other one is called California GT. Great fun!
Another thing I still have are my old Tyco R/C cars. I have a Turbo Hopper, a 4WD Super Turbo Hopper and a mid 80's Ricky Rudd Motorcraft T-Bird called a Turbo Stocker. I remember on Christmas, my neighbors got the same Turbo Hoppers for Christmas and they were out in the street trying them out on Christmas morning. Well, they only had two different frequencies (27 & 49). I got out my controller and started controlling their cars and crashing them into curbs. They were so mad and thought there cars were junk! Boy, I was a mean kid! :D They eventually caught on and my fun was over.