How it started

I have always been a fan of Hot Wheels cars thanks to my father buying them for me when I was a toddler. My father started my collection shortly after I was born. He passed away when I was three; yet 25 years later and I still have the cars he gave me. They are not in the best of condition anymore, but their sentimental value is priceless to me. They are currently stored at my parent's house, I will have to get a picture of them one day to post on here.

Even though I had Hot Wheels cars growing up, I didn't actually start seriously collecting them until the mid-90's. I do have hundreds of them before that period, but they were all opened and heavily played with. Nothing like having an adventure with your cars or maybe setting up a huge dealership to sell your cars. When my brother would join in on the fun, I had it set up to where my cars were on the dealership lot and that every three minutes or so, he would earn fake paper money we had (the kind you find at the dollar store). He could then use that money to purchase a car to drive around in. It never lasted long because he would want too many cars and three minutes seemed like eternity for him.

And here we get to the point of my first post in this blog, how on earth did I become a serious Hot Wheels collector. Ironically enough, it was because of Matchbox cars. I kid you not, I became a serious Hot Wheels collector by a birthday gift of Matchbox 1 in 25,000 series cars. My grandparents and mom gave me a ton of them for my birthday one year. I, being a young child who loves playing with cars, of course wanted to tear them open and play with them. But...just hang on one second, there was a stipulation to these prized birthday gifts. I was not allowed to open them. How can you tell a child that they are not allowed to play with toy cars? I didn't know what Limited Edition was, I just saw cars enclosed in their plastic prisons that needed to break free and hit the tracks.

So it started, my Hot Wheels collecting bug that hasn't been killed even to this day. It wasn't because of Hot Wheels cars, but because I was not allowed to open Special Edition Matchbox cars. When buying Hot Wheels cars from that day on, I almost felt like I would be punished. Talk about a mental scar. It did seem like punishment but yet it somehow blossomed into a fun hobby. Cars that I buy today, even if I buy them with no intentions of selling, are very difficult to open. Fortunately my wife has no problems with opening them and I can let her do it for me (I'm such a great husband, haha).

My collection is relatively small compared to many collectors I've run into, thus the reason why I call my blog Part-time Collector. It is a fun hobby that I do when I have some free time, but nothing that I live by. I hope you have enjoyed this short first post. I will leave you with a picture that contains most of my collection, the rest of them were in other locations and it has grown since I took this picture earlier this year (I blame you K-mart day! That will be another post).



Until next time,

Derek Twigg

John 3:16