A day in the life of a toy car collector

by Doug Breithaupt
November 5th was the date of the big Greater Seattle Toy Show and along with my son Bentley, I had saved my nickels for a toy car spending spree, We left Port Townsend, Washington at 8:30 AM, selecting our Citroen SM as the steed of choice for the day. A recent picture of the SM is shown to the right.

The sky was clear when we left but half way to the show, the heavens opened and stayed open the rest of the day. I was glad I had put new wiper blades on the SM. We proceeded full-steam ahead through the monsoons, arriving in Puyallup, Washington at 10 AM.

We spent the next three hours at the toy show and I spent about $40 when I could have easily spent $400. The following images are from the show and the Matchbox Club meeting that followed. The models I found are included in the additions to the collection section of this issue.

It was a good day and after a nice dinner of pasta on the way home, we arrived back in Port Townsend at about 8:30 PM, Twelve hours of toy cars is a good way to spend any Saturday, The next day, I gave the SM a well-deserved cleaning and put her back in the garage until our next outing.



This table provided some very nice models that were offered by a Matchbox Club member. I ended up with a few.




.

Also a Matchbox Club member, this vendor provided me with a Matchmates Citroen set. My son Bentley joined me at the show and added to his toy car collection too.

This display looked so nice I wanted to take the whole thing home. Of course I would then need to explain to my wife why it was necessary to re-finance the house.



Don is another Matchbox Club member who always has some great toy cars to offer. As usual, I ended up with a few. He even threw in some tires for my Dinky Cadillac Eldorado!

Here is another member of the Matchbox Club who is a vendor at the Greater Seattle Toy Show. He found me a Matchbox Rolls Royce model (shown above) that I have wanted for a long time.





After the toy show, the local Matchbox Club had a meeting at the home of Tom Larson. This is Tom's Toy Room where Matchbox is king.



Here is more of Tom Larson's collection.



If you have not met Tom, he is the normal looking guy with all the great toy cars. Tom had some great cars to offer to those who had a few dollars left and the price was usually adjusted to meet whatever you could afford to spend.

HOME>>