Model Citizen Diecast

Patrick Strong - Founder for Model Citizen Diecast

Model Citizen was founded in 2015 with one single purpose: to help passionate car enthusiasts build the car collections of their dreams...in scale.

Contact: Patrick Strong at patrick@modelcitizendiecast.com | N/A | Visit Online!

          

• 1:64 is the gateway drug into this market; Hot Wheels vs Matchbox  
• Making the switch from 1:18 to 1:43 is it worth it?
• Should people stick to one size? Diversified collections? Only some cars come in certain sizes? 
• How do you curate what you sell? 
• Are there models that you should collect? For example, in the hotwheels world, the “hot rods” and “muscle cars” seem to be where the investment is long term, is this true for the larger models? What’s your take? 
• How tips on buying USED models?
• Hot takes on Brands? 
• Are there any collections people should visit? Famous ones like: Bruce Pascal, or Sergio Goldvarg, etc?
• What’s in the future for Model Citizen Diecasts? Anything new on the horizon? 

and much, much more!

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder. How did they get that job or become that person?

The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.

Crew Chief Eric: Scale models are an important storytelling device. They give us a visual representation of what matters to us. Models allow us to display the stories that forge our passion. Maybe you want a model on your desk of the car you drove on your first date. Or maybe you want to fill a display case with a model of every car that’s ever won at Le Mans.

Don Weberg: Model Citizen diecast seeks to educate and inform enthusiasts about the stories behind the models, both to help new collectors grow in their appreciation and to build a greater sense of community among [00:01:00] veterans in the hobby. Patrick Strong has been a collector and dealer of fine scale model cars for over 30 years and hand selects each model that he carries to reflect his demand for precision detailing and for compelling stories.

Crew Chief Eric: And with that, let’s welcome Patrick to BreakFix.

Patrick Strong: Thank you, Eric. Thank you, Don. I really appreciate the opportunity to be on with you to talk about models and whatever else comes down the pipe.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, thank you. And joining us tonight is one of our regular co hosts on BreakFix, Don Wieberg from Garage Style Magazine.

So welcome back, Don.

Don Weberg: Thank you. Thank you. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me again, Eric.

Patrick Strong: Can I just say one thing really quick? Speaking of Don, when I was deciding to start Model Citizen as a business, I wanted to believe that there was a continuing demand for great quality model cars, not just for model car collectors, but for car enthusiasts in general, who wanted to use these model cars as part of their broader storytelling [00:02:00] concept.

And one of the sources of inspiration for me when I started was none other than Garage Style Magazine. I would see it on the newsstand and I would see what these guys were doing with their garage mahals. And seeing, you know, not just the fabulous cars they had, but the garage art, seeing that was part of the calculus that made me really think that Model Citizen could work as a viable business.

Crew Chief Eric: And there’s one article in particular Don shared with me, which is actually available digitally now from one of the earlier issues of the magazine that inspired me to change the way I display my collection. Don, do you want to talk about the jewel box a little bit?

Don Weberg: You know, it was funny because as we climbed on, I thought to myself, Oh, I should have pulled out that magazine so you could see it because he was on the cover.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s on the website. You can search for it.

Don Weberg: Yeah, we, we had a cover garage. It was called the jewel box and it was literally called that because it think of a shoe box and just make it really, really big and give it two walls of glass and two walls of concrete on one of the walls. Very, very similar to what Eric has [00:03:00] constructed behind him.

He had this black and glass display case, and it was all 118 scale cars. And the guy was a mega collector. They were high end Porsche, high end Ferrari. That was his big ticket thing. And he was one of those guys who, when they were bringing out a new Porsche, Porsche called him and said, so we have this car coming out.

You know, you want one, send me a check. And he would.

Patrick Strong: To that end, my theory has been proven correct. Guys like that do love these models and they do acquire them alongside the people who are like hardcore model collectors. So to Garage Style Magazine, I say thank you for the inspiration.

Crew Chief Eric: Thank you. Now I’m glad we could help.

Like all good Brake Fix stories, There’s a superhero origin. And this one apparently starts 30 some years ago, right, Patrick? So tell us about the who, what, when, and where of you and how all this came to be. But more importantly, you’re still playing with model cars after all these years.

Patrick Strong: Absolutely. At the tender age of 48 years old, I am hopelessly addicted to model cars and toy [00:04:00] cars.

And I really don’t see that changing as the Science has yet to come up with a cure for this particular addiction. All we can do is feed it. Like most car enthusiasts, I started out at a very early age playing with toy cars. I grew up in the late 70s and through the mid 80s. And so for me, that was Hot Wheels, Matchbox and the adjacent diecast brands.

I don’t know where my perspective on cars and the way to appreciate them came from. I wasn’t from a family that was particularly enthusiastic about cars. They were just something that found me.

Don Weberg: But

Patrick Strong: somehow, at a very early age, I adopted a collector’s mentality toward cars. I took very good care of my Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, where you would see a lot of kids, you know, throwing them around, wrecking them, racing them across the floor.

I was very deliberate in the way I played with them and took care of them and stored them.

Don Weberg: I never played with them rough. I wasn’t the guy who took [00:05:00] them outside and let them roll down the sidewalk to see how fast and far they would go. No, no, no, no, no, no. They never went outside. They very, very rarely outside.

Patrick Strong: Oh, I never took mine outside. Horror of horrors. Never. Because then you get dirt in the axles and the tires and the wheels don’t roll.

Don Weberg: Now, if I played with mine, it would usually on my bed. I’d sit there and push them around on my bed or something or a couch, you know.

Patrick Strong: And of course they got beat up. I was four.

Still, I took that curator’s perspective toward my toys.

Crew Chief Eric: So it’s funny you mentioned that because I have a similar story in the sense that I was given about four or five years old as a hand me down, one of those soft, almost lunch pail matchbox carry cases. Sure. Without the grids inside to keep the car separated.

It belonged to one of my cousins. But in that were a bunch of really old, the 60s and 70s Hot Wheels, some of them red lines, but they were beat six ways from Sunday. But that was my little treasure trove at four or five years old. And like you, I’m like, wow, this is really cool. I got all these cars, you know, it was a lot of maybe 30 of them or so.

[00:06:00] And that sparked a passion inside of me as well.

Patrick Strong: For the listeners who don’t get to see this, Don is waving cars and cases around in front of us.

Don Weberg: Somebody talked about the slow closing box of storage and I thought, oh my God, we moved just about two years ago from LA to Dallas and we’re still slightly living out of boxes.

But what’s been really, really fun for me is when I moved out of my parents house into my first apartment, a lot of my stuff ended up in a storage facility. It was all childhood stuff. Literally what I keep holding here is an old Hot Wheels tire and it used to have a hubcap in the center and the hubcap had been missing for a century.

So yeah, I’ve been having a ball going through my childhood toys.

Patrick Strong: So I would have been very jealous of you even as a kid, because somewhere into the mix came literature. I became aware that there were Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars for me at that time that existed before I did. And that these things were no longer available.

And by the way, they were of some [00:07:00] really cool cars. Maybe it was one of those collector books that they gave out from time to time. And I saw that these things had existed before, but I knew kids who like you had inherited an older brother or an older relatives collection. And they had all these great things.

I didn’t have an older brother or older cousins. And so it was pretty much just, Hey, 1975 forward. The other piece of literature that I think is very relevant to my evolution as a model car enthusiast and eventual dealer was road and track magazine. Back in those days. This is the only thing I can think of as the genesis for my awareness.

Of and passion for higher detailed scale model cars, listeners of a certain age might remember that back then road and track had a semi regular feature called cars in scale. They would feature larger scale cars from a variety of exotic manufacturers from all over the world. Things from mass market [00:08:00] 43rd scale cars like Solido.

All the way up through Handbuilt cars from the British white metal companies of the day, and then these new larger scale cars that were starting to come to market. That clued me into the fact that there were these other things, and as a collector mindset kid, it’s like, I need to acquire these things. So there were a couple of fateful occurrences that happened along the way.

One was that I won a rigged art contest when I was five years old, and I know that it was rigged because I’ve seen my artistic ability. It was definitely rigged. The grand prize was something like a 10 gift certificate to the upscale toy store in Dallas, where I lived when I was a little kid. And I knew exactly what I was going to get before I even walked in the door.

I went right to the section where they had the 136 scale Corgi models that perhaps a lot of us had back then. And I selected, I couldn’t believe my good fortune. It was a Jaguar XJS. The most beautiful, most luxurious GT car on the planet at the time. [00:09:00] Candy, apple red. I just, I had to have it. And I still have that car in my collection.

So that was my first, what I would call better diecast model car, even though in the grand scheme of things, those corgis were. Nice toys. They were still toys. Fast forward a few years. The other piece of literature that was important to my villain origin story was a thing called the Sharper Image Catalog.

Sharper image for those who might be too young to remember this. was the gadget store par excellence. They sold all manner of useless to semi useful crap. I think they might have been the first retailer in America to offer a massage chair. Or you remember those orbs that had like the bolts of light in them and you put your fingers on?

Yeah, they had those too. And all kinds of like personal massagers and all this goofy stuff. And among the things you could order from the sharper image catalog were these wonderful one 18 scale, which is about 10 inches long is one 18 scale cars made by this Italian company called Borago. They focused at that [00:10:00] time on the great classics.

You could get an alpha AC, a Ferrari, two 50 GTO, a Bugatti type 59. And as someone who was already at, you know, at age eight, nine, it was already really into automotive history. I thought those were just the greatest thing I’d ever seen by this time. My family had moved to El Paso, Texas, which is quite literally a desert in the world of die cast car collecting at the higher end of the scale.

Couldn’t find these things. There took the family vacation to Southern California, walked into the right store and there it was the two 50 GTO Borago that started my really good die cast collection. And never stopped after that.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a name that was well known at the time, right? An Italian model car manufacturer.

And what’s funny about that is I’ve mentioned on previous episodes, my history in the car world and how my grandparents came over here after the war, and my grandfather was a chauffeur and my dad and all this kind of stuff. As my grandparents would travel back and forth, Middley to the U S especially during the holidays, it was like, well, we got to bring something for the grandkids.

We’ve got to [00:11:00] bring them a toy. And my grandfather, knowing I had an affinity for cars, cause I took after my dad. He gave me Borago models directly from Italy. They would just bring them over in their suitcases, which were a fraction of the cost compared to importing them in the U S I still have those cars 30 plus years later, but that’s what got me addicted to one 18th scale cars.

And kind of like you, I started with a Ferrari two 50 pontoon fender car, and that was my very first Borago. And then it just kind of escalated from there. I even remember going to Italy on trips and hand carrying back. Models in particular paint colors that we couldn’t get in the U S and I still have those.

I’m very proud of them in my collection, but one 18th has always been a sweet spot, but we’ll talk more about that as we go along.

Don Weberg: Yeah. Patrick, I got to tell you the, uh, the Quintas you sold me ended up being hand carried onto the airplane. It almost got me into a fight with a stewardess because she wanted me to put it in the cargo hold above my head.

And I just kind of gave her that look like, I don’t know, it’ll be fine. It’ll be fine. We put it right above you. I’m like, can it have like the whole thing to itself? [00:12:00] Believe it or not, she made it happen. There was one piece of luggage in there and the Lamborghini box. I thought that’s the way it’s got to be handled.

Patrick Strong: I love that. She did that for you, but I would be more concerned about that one piece of luggage becoming a projectile taking the box. I

Don Weberg: asked her, you know, is that bag going to slide? Can we put the Lamborghini somewhere else? Do you have somewhere else we can put it? And she said, there’s a hump in there.

So in the event, something moves that luggage, if it hits it. And he said, sir, I handled that piece of luggage. It’s overweight, so it shouldn’t move. Like, okay, well, we’ll see. Whatever will be will be. But yeah, I’m going to tell Patrick about you.

Patrick Strong: Well, shout out to the understanding stewardess.

Crew Chief Eric: Southwest Airlines for the win.

Said no

Don Weberg: one

Crew Chief Eric: ever.

Don Weberg: What are your thoughts on keeping the boxes? Keep them? Ditch them? What do you do with

Patrick Strong: them? There’s a spicy, hot take coming right after this. If you’re buying it to display loose anyway, and if the box is already thrashed, why bother [00:13:00] keeping it? Unless there is like the need to move at some future point.

If you know that you are kind of the end of the line for it, chuck that box. If it’s damaged, don’t worry about it. I had a heartbreak. That kind of had a bit of a happy ending. When I was 12 years old, I started collecting Hot Wheels cars from a very serious adult perspective. I kind of put one 18 to the side one because they were, we couldn’t find them where I lived.

And I just really went all in on Hot Wheels. I had kind of an adult collector, Sven Golley, who taught me about what this was like. Just to put this in perspective, this was 1987. At that time, there were probably no more than a few hundred. Serious Hot Wheels collectors in the U. S. It just wasn’t really the hobby that it is today.

And the first vintage Hot Wheels car that I bought was a custom Camaro blue. Not one of the rare colors, it’s a common color, but it was mint in the box. That was a keystone piece in my collection for decades. I grew up, I got married. It went in storage in the garage, a pipe burst in the garage, and the blister card was destroyed by the water damage.

And [00:14:00] I was sad about that for a minute. You know, here was this item that had somehow made it. From some retail peg in 1968 to my dumb little 12 year old hands in 1987 and it continued on and it just stayed like that for a long time. So I grieved for that little piece of cardboard for a little while, but then I said, well, that’s ruined.

Let’s free the piece. So I opened that up and I threw the damaged mildewed card away. And now I have this beautiful mint condition, gorgeous glowing spectra flame blue Hot Wheels Redline Camaro in my collection. And I love it just as much now as I did when it was in the card. Which brings me to my spicy hot take.

I would say keep them, but not for the reason that you might be thinking, because you’re probably going to have to move them someday. And that’s fair. Don, I’m sure you know all too well, you just did this. I’ve done it many times in my life, moving and handling. Loose models. It’s risky. You will invariably break off a rearview mirror.

You will invariably see an antenna go missing that [00:15:00] you won’t even realize it until you take the thing out of the Rubbermaid to put the thing in. You can wrap them as nicely as you can. You’re still gonna get some damage. So for that reason, I say keep the box if you have the storage space to retain them and if you have some way to catalog them, whether you’re keeping a spreadsheet or whether you’re just writing on this card on the side of a tub, just so you know where these things are.

If you can afford the space, I say keep the box.

Crew Chief Eric: You hit on something that I think is a common thread for every die cast collector. We all seem to start with that stocking stuffer or that first 164th Matchbox or Hot Wheels or Schuko or Corgi, Majorette, whatever brand was available at the time. So I think we all have that in common.

Is that really the gateway drug into this market? Are those what used to be the 94 cent Matchbox cars?

Patrick Strong: I wish they were still 94 cents. I think they’re buck 18 now. But for the vast majority of us, it is. Every once in a while, [00:16:00] I will run across some well-meaning, well-healed grandparent who wants to spend a hundred, $150 on a mini champs or, uh, auto art model for four year old Timmy.

I’m like, no, no, you really don’t wanna do this. I would be happy to take your money, but the kid’s just gonna wreck it. And it’s, and what I figured out, the thing that gets through is telling them, It’s going to stop being fun after it breaks and that tends to be the big dissuader. But I think for the rest of us mere mortals, absolutely that first hot wheels car or first inherited bucket of hot wheels cars is the thing that gets us going.

And I think from there we begin to sort ourselves into different alleys of Or maybe this is just a generational thing or a regional thing about what type of cars really appeal to us. The nice thing about your mass market 64 scale cars is there’s so much variety. You can kind of experiment with all of it and see what really sticks.

For me, it was European exotics more than anything. Of course, back then there wasn’t a [00:17:00] lot of variety, for example, in Japanese cars, in the mass market diecast brands. So I think it must’ve been about the first time the big two matchbox and Hot Wheels brought out Japanese cars was well into the seventies.

By the end of the eighties, that had become a little bit more ubiquitous.

Don Weberg: Funny you brought up the Japanese stuff. I was the only one of my friends who had this Toyota. And at first they were kind of making fun of me for having a little Toyota. And then a lot of the guys were like, where’d you get that car?

Where’d you get that car, man? Cause I want one of those cars. I’m like, yeah, see, they’re fun because nobody else has them. Hence some part of the fun of collecting is getting something nobody else has.

Crew Chief Eric: Mention the Europeans and the Japanese coming into the Hot Wheels and Matchbox scene, as I kind of stretched back, at least my memory cells.

I think Volkswagen was there almost from the beginning, right? There was always a Beetle or a type two bus, or even the first generation GTIs in the seventies and the eighties and things like that. But yeah, you’re right. The Japanese didn’t come into it until much later with Toyota’s and some Honda civics.

The bigger debate and maybe a pit stop [00:18:00] question is matchbox versus hot wheel. Where do you find yourself? Which camp are you in?

Patrick Strong: I hate camping. I love all my children equally.

Um,

Patrick Strong: I don’t really have a favorite between the two. I think that if we kind of boil it down to just those two as your big best known names in 64th scale, but we’ll come back to that Hot Wheels has always been fairly consistent.

If we’re talking about the main lines and not talking about the premium things that kind of got introduced. Over the decades, we’re talking about the main lines. Hot wheels was always fairly consistent about the nature of the subjects that they selected. They always had a pretty good balance of real cars tuned up and kind of a hot rod style, the California custom style or whatever came after.

And then their original designs, or as I will derisively call them, the generic unlicensed cars, and then they would add in this import, this race car, et cetera. But they always stayed pretty consistent about that, even though the quality of the cars has really improved over the years in terms of the detail that you [00:19:00] get out of a main line.

Hot Wheels car now is phenomenal. I can’t believe how good, like I finally got my hands on, they just put out an Alpha GT V6. I finally got my hands on one because they are just scalped to high heaven out here in LA. I finally got one and I’m blown away by it. It’s 1. 18 and it is wonderful. Matchbox. Has had more of a roller coaster existence when I was a little kid to me, there was a clear difference in quality.

Matchbox cars were much better than hot wheels cars. They were more realistic. They had a better chonky or hand feel to them more frequently. Would they have opening parts? And for me, the subject matter was more compelling. They were doing the cars that I was interested in. More accurately, for example, if there was a one to one comparison, the Matchbox car was always better.

Think Ferrari 308. Think Porsche 928. The Matchbox car was always better. Matchbox’s problem was that after 30 years in [00:20:00] business, until they were acquired eventually by Mattel, they never stopped having money problems. They went into receivership in 1982, and they went through a variety of owners, and Tyco owned them at one point.

And the quality became very erratic starting in the early nineties from the late seventies to around 1990. I would say it was just a golden era for matchbox cars. The castings were beautiful. The quality was beautiful. The subject matter was compelling, even in what you would call a normal everyday car, like they did a great Renault 11, remember the old Rover Sterling.

They did. Fabulous casting of that. And then they went broke again, and they really veered off into the toy lane. Terrible, gaudy paint schemes. Awful, awful wheels applied to normal cars, which was kind of strange.

Crew Chief Eric: But at the same time in the early 90s, then they introduced the world class series, which were the big wide body cars with gummy tires and chrome windows and pearlescent paints.

Well, where did these come from all of a sudden?

Patrick Strong: And perhaps there, we [00:21:00] see the seeds of the mass market premium car. I have a case full of them on consignment from someone here in town. The word I would best use to describe those world class cars now is unsellable. I don’t know why, maybe it’s that they are premium for their era, but it hasn’t translated well.

I think they’re cool, but. No one else does the real question of Matchbox versus Hot Wheels. My real answer would be, what about Tomica? What about Majorette? What about this entire galaxy of other wonderful brands that were a little more obscure in the United States until the advent of the internet. And of course, now we have the explosion of really premium 164 scale brands.

Think mini GT spark models has their sparky line of one 64 tarmac works in Oh, 64. And these things are just incredible.

Crew Chief Eric: M2 M2

Patrick Strong: I think was one of the early ones to get that kicked off. For me, it comes down [00:22:00] to subject matter and M2 hasn’t done a ton of stuff that I’m really into, but I do respect that, you know, what they did to kind of raise the stakes in one 64.

Don Weberg: Growing up, they all knew, okay, Don likes cars, so he’s going to go buy toy cars, you know. Today, maybe it’s the company I keep. I see collections of diecast. I mean, they’re just everywhere. Is it the availability? It seems like everybody today is a collector.

Patrick Strong: There was a perfect storm in the mid 1990s. Three things happened.

Number one, Mattel introduced the treasure hunts line in Hot Wheels cars. All of a sudden there was an explicitly limited edition. I mean, they make 10, 000 of something. How limited is it really? But there was an explicitly on purpose, limited edition thing that was hard to find. Once you introduce the concept of a treasure hunt, literally.

To try to find these things, then you’ve sparked that. I got to have it thing.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s like Wonka’s golden ticket, actually.

Patrick Strong: Exactly like that. So that was thing. Number [00:23:00] one thing. Number two was beanie babies. Beanie babies come along the mid to late. 90s. I myself was never into Beanie Babies, and I hate to do this because I abhor sexism in all of its forms, but I think we have to bow to the reality that 97 percent or so of die cast cars are bought by men.

I don’t know what the percentage of Beanie Baby collectors were that were men, but I’m thinking it was somewhat lower.

Crew Chief Eric: It was a non negative number.

Patrick Strong: Yeah, it is a non negative number. If you’re getting taken around to these shops with someone who’s collecting something, I think there might be something in you that wants to get in on the fun of collecting and acquiring something, but the princess Diana England’s rose beanie baby makes you rest in peace.

Isn’t really doing it for you, but here’s a 68 Corvette. That might be doing it for you. And so all of a sudden you’ve got two collectors in the household and you’ve got this demand coming up. Obviously the third factor would be the internet. The connectivity that it brought to everyone who had a dial up modem in the late [00:24:00] 1990s.

eBay came along in 97 or 98 and it’s an apocryphal story that Beanie Babies built. eBay. I think somebody says like 10 percent of all the transactions in eBay’s first year were beanie babies. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But the point there is that all of a sudden there was truly an international marketplace that didn’t involve looking at classifieds in the back of toy shop biweekly.

You didn’t have to rely on the next toy swap meet that was coming to your town. You didn’t have to get the Hot Wheels Collector Club newsletter. All of a sudden it was All there just for the price of a dial up connection, you could go and see it. So I think those three things, Mattel, Hot Wheels, introducing treasure hunts, the halo effect of Beanie Babies and the advent of the internet.

I think that’s why everybody collects Zycast now.

Don Weberg: So it’s not necessarily people who love cars. It’s literally just people got sucked into collecting something.

Patrick Strong: No, I think it’s mostly car enthusiasts who got sucked into collecting. Otherwise you got a bunch of people like me who collected baseball cards, who were not into it.

And I do think that [00:25:00] that absolutely was it. thing. I think that for a time, there were people who were going out there collecting hot wheels specifically because it was a thing to collect. I think those people are all gone now. I think that they found they were stuck with a lot of worthless stuff. I think they’ve been called out and just the car enthusiasts are left.

Crew Chief Eric: And as you mentioned, Mattel, the parent company of Hot Wheels and Barbie and a lot of other brands now also owns Matchbox. And if you wander down the aisles of your local Walmart or Target, where you’ll find Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, I’ve noticed a huge separation in quality. Matchbox is now sort of the second rate, the older cast, you know, they had some leftovers, more utilitarian, lots of fire trucks and Jeeps and off roaders.

And it’s like a whole different, almost. Feel to it than the classic matchbox. But to your point, Hot Wheels has elevated the brand. They started to introduce first, those premium cars, the Boulevard cars. Then they had the Forza cars. Then they had for us in the furious series. Like there’s all these new limited production runs that [00:26:00] they’re doing.

And now they’re doing these box sets, which are really, really cool. So now you take that 94 cents car, which became a buck 18 to somewhere around four 97, all the way up to 25 for like three or four cars. How has that shaken up the one 64 market with Hot Wheels trying to introduce something at almost every selling plane in the game?

Patrick Strong: We’ve seen it before with Hot Wheels. In fact, throughout Hot Wheels, entire history, going back to 1968, when the brand launched, they have with varying levels of success, tried to branch out from that mainline dollar ish. Car in the late sixties, early seventies, they tried to get into the one 43 business.

And there’s kind of a long story behind that. I won’t bore you or your listeners with it, but it’s actually tied to Borago Mattel. Seeing that there was a market for one 43rd scale cars, which had been a thing since the 1930s, they wanted to get into that business. So they bought an Italian company. Run [00:27:00] by the Bassana family and they launched their grand Toros line, which I think only lasted a year or two, but it wasn’t a hit in the U S and they shuttered it where that ties into bigger scale cars is that Mario Bassana took all the money he got from Mattel relaunched his toy company, focusing on larger scale cars, which he predicted were going to be a big hit, particularly with American customers.

And that was Borago. So Mattel was inadvertently responsible for the launch of Borago. But anyway, back to your point in the late nineties, Mattel was kind of riding high. They had bought Matchbox, I think in 1997 or 1998. I think more significantly for branching out, they had somehow secured an exclusive license from Ferrari.

To make scale model Ferraris at anything below like the premium price point, the handbill, the BBRs of the world, we’re still going to get to keep making licensed Ferraris, but in the mass market die cast, Ferrari became the only game in town. So Mattel started making one 18 scale Ferrari, one 43rd scale [00:28:00] Ferrari with varying levels of success.

They lost that deal and I don’t. Think too many people were that sad about it, if I’m honest, but some of the cars they made were quite nice. What we would think about as the premium cars. Now they started making those box sets around that time. You could get, for example, the first Jay Leno set came out around 1998 or 1999.

And they had a low rider set. That was great. I think that had three cars in it. Mattel, they’ve managed to use their considerable resources to try a lot of different things in die cast. And some of them have worked and some of them have created this really great legacy. Of the premium cars. And some of them have been largely lost to history like grand Toros.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, I’m a sucker for those new truck and trailer sets where it’s like you buy the race hauler and the race car altogether, full livery, the whole nine years. They just released the alpha one 55 TI with the race truck that goes along with it. It’s absolutely gorgeous. I mean, I’ve got a bunch of, especially rally inspired stuff from the eighties.

As soon as I see that it’s gone, it’s in my basket, it’s in my shopping cart. It’s coming [00:29:00] home.

Patrick Strong: Have you managed to score the new group B set? They have that has the metric. I think the launch 037, I think that’s in there. I have them all

Crew Chief Eric: separately, but not together. And I’m still trying to get ahold of the IMSA, GTO, ITU, Hurley, Haywood, hunch took Audi 90.

So that’s on my list. What I’ve learned is what makes it very difficult. Like you mentioned GTV six in LA. We haven’t seen those yet here on the East coast. So there’s this rumor, this legend that Mattel distributes cars. to different parts of the U S and different parts of the world, not only different cars in cast, but different liveries of the same car that are only available in certain regions.

Is that fact or is that fiction?

Patrick Strong: As far as the U S market goes, I don’t think that’s true. I don’t know that for a fact, but I think that that is just more a case of demand for this versus that in different parts of the country. And also frankly, high levels of scalper activity from one region to another.

A few years ago, the hottest Hot [00:30:00] Wheels casting was the Datsun Bluebird 510 wagon. And you couldn’t find them in any variant anywhere in Los Angeles, because anytime they would hit the shelf, well, they’ve never hit the shelves. They were being understocked by less than scrupulous retail store employees.

And they were either going out the back door to their buddy, or they were just going home with them. When they did hit the stores, they were just gone instantly. It was a miracle if you could catch one. On the other hand, I would go to visit my father in Oklahoma. No problem. There’s a whole rack of them at Target.

I think it just comes down to regional demand. As far as rest of world is concerned. I don’t know if it’s like this anymore. I’ve been out of Hot Wheels and Matchbox professionally for a long time. I’ve moved on to larger scale cars, but I do know that there were rest of world models that were not available in the United States, a couple of examples that come to mind back in the late eighties, early nineties Matchbox made a Skoda 130 rally car.

That was a rest of world model. Wasn’t available here in the U S they also did like an Opel cadet GSI. That would have been something that you couldn’t get here. Hot wheels did [00:31:00] a Peugeot 405. That was a rest of world car. Couldn’t get that here.

Crew Chief Eric: I have one.

Patrick Strong: I sold mine a billion years ago. Never got that Skoda.

I’d like to get one of those. Anyway, it doesn’t make sense to me. Just trying to think about this from a manufacturing and distribution perspective to segment off the U S region by region on such a high volume product, like mainline hot wheels cars. I think it’s just down to, you can’t find them at your local because the last guy got there first.

Don Weberg: I don’t think any of us have mentioned Franklin mint and Patrick, I wanted to get your Thoughts on that? I know when we were growing up, Franklin Mint was sort of the, wow, you’ve got a Franklin mint and the detail was absolutely exquisite on some of those cars. Where are they today and what’s the collector standpoint on those?

Patrick Strong: Your mileage may vary, but I think that. Demand for Franklin Mint models roughly approximates the American collector car market for real cars at large. You have an older generation of [00:32:00] people for whom a certain type of car was meaningful to them, whether that was a pre war classic or post war tail fin cars, American muscle, what have you.

And the generation that appreciated those cars for the most part. is aging out of the hobby, to put it very politely. So goes the real car, so goes the model car. Franklin Mint models simply have fallen out of favor. Those are a 124 scale car. 124 scale seems to be a scale that is rapidly declining in interest.

I think that became the scale that those were made in because That goes back to kit building from the fifties and sixties, the American model kit makers, your monogram, Ravel, AMT, MPC, that was the scale that they focused on. And I think that with a nostalgia for that in mind, Franklin and Danbury, they tooled for that scale and they made their Duesenbergs and they made their Packards and they made their try five Chevys.

I know that there are some of us, myself included, who really like pre war cars. Uh, ask me my [00:33:00] favorite car in the world and I’ll tell you it’s a 2. 9 liter Alfa. But for the most part, it’s just that the subject matter has fallen out of favor and the scale has fallen out of favor. And I field inquiries all the time from people, and it’s usually older guys.

Hey, are you buying Franklin Mint models? And I just have to very gently tell them, no, I’m sorry. That’s just not something that has any interest in me.

Crew Chief Eric: Patrick, we talked during your origin story about 118 scale cars a little bit, and I said we’d come back to it. We’re going to. Like you, I made the switch to the 10 inch cars and I still enjoy them.

Anytime I see, especially certain brands liveries of certain eras of racing, especially IMSA and rallying, things like that, they generally come home with me much to my wife’s chagrin and become part of my collection. I love the 10 inch cars. I think it’s. Good value for money, especially in the casting and the quality and the paints and detail and all that.

But there was this huge shift about 15 years ago where people gave up on one 18 scale cars, and it was very difficult to get them because they moved to one 40 thirds and for me, I couldn’t give up the one 18th world and it’s having a Renaissance right now. [00:34:00] We’ll talk about that, but why the shift to one 43rd and why are one 43rd so expensive and people just went nuts over it?

Is it a storage thing? Because you can put so many more in the same space.

Patrick Strong: I think that the actual shift was toward 118 in the 1980s, rather than the other way around, because 143 is the foundational scale of collector grade scale model cars. Our concept of being model car collectors started around the same time as the concept of actual car collecting really in the 1950s.

We think, if you think about it, there really wasn’t such a thing as a. Unintentional car collector until the 1950s, until after World War II. Also don’t forget the cars have only been around since the turn of the 20th century, which is when the first toy cars started appearing. 143 took hold in the 1930s.

The thing that really kind of set the template for that scale. It was the Meccano company is one of the big three that kind of drove these cars. They started making 143rd [00:35:00] scale road vehicles as train set accessories. They didn’t set out to start making toy cars. They set out to start making accessories for their train sets.

I’m bad at trains. I think it corresponds to O gauge, but the cars became unexpectedly popular unto themselves. People just started buying these cars exclusive from the sets. And so McConnell said, Hey, we’ve got a hit on our hands with these things. We should start selling them separately. Okay. Yeah. But what are we going to call our line of these dinky little cars?

Dinky. So Dinky became in the 1930s, one of the first companies that started doing these better quality scale model cars. And they were scaled that way to correspond to these train sets. The other big company from that era that was informative toward the whole industry was Solido. They were the first company that really focused on making detailed models of actual cars with features that we would come to expect over the years, functional suspensions, jeweled headlamps, opening parts from the [00:36:00] 19 thirties.

And then, of course, we had the production interruption of World War Two. But when production resumed after the war. By the 1950s, people were ready to start collecting these things. And one 43 was really kind of the only game in town for that. So by the time we get through the mid 1970s, obviously we’ve had the birth of 64 scale as, as a big thing with matchbox and then with hot wheels.

But they were toys. They weren’t really considered except by a very few tightly knit pack of nerds. Matchbox cars weren’t really collected like that. One 43 was collected by adults, which I think is why Mattel wanted to get in that business. It wasn’t until the late seventies and Mario Bassana brought along Barrago.

There were a few companies making bigger scale cars. Schuko had some cars. I think there were a couple of still made a couple, but it was really Barrago that kind of broke. And he was right in guessing that the U S market would be the one because we’re Americans. We like big, big detail. We’ll see that we’ll see in parts.

That’s what we had. Another die cast retailer who used to be in business a long time ago, told me [00:37:00] that he believed that the real ground zero for appreciation of one 18 scale cars in America was the TV show home improvement because Tim, the tool man made it acceptable to display these cars in your home.

And he had this ever rotating selection of one 18 scale cars. I have a funny story about him. I’ll tell you later. So there was that shift to one 18. So all of this back to your question, Eric, about why the shift toward one 43, it’s a shift back to one 43, but it is happening. You’re not wrong.

Crew Chief Eric: It has started in the early two thousands where you would go to shows or you would go to stores and you’re like, where are all the one 18th gone?

Why is it all one 43rd super detailed, but you look at the price and it’s like. Okay. 1 43rd scale car is five inches and a 1 18 scales, 10 85 bucks. Let’s just say at the time in the early two thousands for a 1 43rd, it hurt me because it was like, man, I could get a 1 18 scale car for 125, 200. I remember when auto art pushed the bar and they started selling cars at over 200.

And you’re [00:38:00] like. Are they really that good? And they were by all accounts for me as a one 18th scale collector, I pumped the brakes and I said, this is it. I guess I’m done because I’m not going to start all over again. And there are models available in one 33rd that I’m still like, why can’t I have this as an 18th scale car?

Patrick Strong: One of the major differences other than the size between the two scales. Is the variety of subject matter because they are less expensive to make, you’ll always get more one 43rd scale variety. And also because the back catalog is so deep again, going back to the 1930s, you had the explosion of Italian makers in the 60s.

And then by late 80s, you had Paul’s model art, many champs coming on the scene. Plus, and I think this is where you’re getting the idea about the expensive one 43rd scale cars. Starting in the seventies, you had the very high end hand built white metal and resin kits, and then the ones that were built by master builders, those are the things that would have been selling for 150, 200 back then, or maybe [00:39:00] a little less, maybe 85, but also in the nineties, many champs, one 43rd scale model, which were great, those were 25 or 30.

So there were really good ones out there. And then Kyosho did a line back then in the late nineties, that was. They did a Shelby Cobra Daytona coupe in one 43rd scale. That was just fantastic. And they were 25 bucks. The thing that is making it come back. One 18 scale is a shift to resin production, simple matter of economics.

It costs around. 250 to 300, 000 some years ago, it might be up to about half a million now to tool up a one 18 scale die cast metal bodied cars, something that has opening parts. Those tools don’t really wear out, which is a good thing because to recover your tooling costs, you’re going to have to make a lot and sell a lot of models.

If you are a company that is making one 18 scale cars in die cast metal, and you’ve just invested half a million dollars in tooling, you have to be making a product that you are confident is going to sell a lot so that you can recover your costs. Enter the resin caster, a resin cast for the same [00:40:00] scale.

A one 18 scale car is maybe 5, 000 because of the economics of the production of them. You can make much riskier choices with the subject matter. You can get into the weeds on some of the really exotic rally cars and small volume cars that few people have heard of or would be interested in. The trade off there is that those resin tools wear out after just a few thousand pieces.

If you get three or four, 5, 000 units out of a cast, if you’ve done well, it’s kind of a wash in that way. You can’t make as many, but you don’t have to make as many. But I think that the variety of subject matter that’s offered by resin 118 scale cars makes the scale more viable. The other thing that you kind of hinted at is the space.

Very few of us have the real estate resources to store. Thousands and thousands of 118 scale cars. A piece of advice that I like to give to people who are just starting their collections is to consider their space very carefully. If they are thinking that they want to collect in a uniform scale, which I do [00:41:00] not, by the way, my home office display case, it’s a mix of 1843 and 64.

For me, it’s more about the subject matter than the uniformity of scale. But some people want them all to be the same size. I completely understand that there’s just no way around it. 43rd scale cars take up way less space. And so for a new collector, I think they’re worth a look. On the other hand, one 18 scale, you can see it from across the room.

I know that the listeners can’t see this, but Eric, I’m looking over your shoulder at your really nice collection of one 18 scale cars, and you have some wonderful pieces in there that I can see clearly from here, they look great. So they have a lot of eye appeal. That’s really hard to deny.

Crew Chief Eric: And I’m glad you went there, Patrick, because this is the segue into the next section of why Don’s here.

We’re going to talk about collecting and collectors and buying these things new, used and at auction and things like that. And so you’ve sprung us into motion here to talk about the first time buyer, and I’m glad you brought up the diversification of size. Now, Unlike me, who I’m a diehard one 18th guy. I [00:42:00] have a couple of one 40 thirds here and there.

I do have a nice size collection that Don has seen in my garage of one 64th. I have these mirror display cases, and it’s just part of the ambience of being in the garage where I don’t want to have these 10 inchers in the way, because they take up more space, but in my office, it works, I’m all for diversifying.

But I do think that if you’re thinking about long term investment, you do need to maybe stick to brands. Sizes or even let’s say collections of cars, you know, certain eras, whether it’s rally, whether it’s IMSA, whether it’s prototypes, if that’s what you’re into, I think there’s a longer term game if you want to make a profit off of this.

So let’s dive into that part of the conversation a little bit more.

Patrick Strong: My advice to people who are considering how to best purchase and collect model cars with an eye on future investment appreciation is. Don’t period don’t do that. My personal story in that goes like this after we moved to Michigan when I was a kid and I found myself surrounded [00:43:00] by people who were very, very focused on sports, I figured as a collector that what I really needed to do to make some money was start collecting baseball cards because that was the thing back then.

I am not a baseball fan. I’ve never been a baseball fan. I don’t have anything against it. It just isn’t my thing. So there I was trying to buy baseball cards with an eye on future appreciation. Guess what? I never sold one of and is still sitting unappreciated and of no value in a tub somewhere in my garage.

All the baseball cards that I bought. The strongest piece of advice I could give to anyone starting a model car collection is do it because you like the cars. Because the chances are you’re gonna get stuck with them. If you take that as your starting point, are there better financial decisions that you can make with your collection?

Absolutely there are. And I’ll get to those, but I would say focus relentlessly and only on what you like without trying to worry about what the next guy is going to like. On my way back from Rennsport reunion, I stopped off and bought a small collection, a very small collection [00:44:00] of cars. And I probably paid 30 cents on the dollar to what they were purchased for originally.

Thankfully, the guy was not sad about that. He understands how the reselling game works and he just has no use for them anymore as an older gentleman. And he just wanted to move them on to the next person, but he bought these things and lost money on them. But he really enjoyed having them. And the collection that I bought really reflects his interesting taste.

So that’s my spiciest take on the investment angle of it. Having said that there are decisions that you can make that might help you. If you are in a position where you want or need to sell, the best thing there is, is focus on quality brands. If you are interested in trying to preserve your investment, you really do want to look at the higher end models, and this is not to denigrate what I would call entry level cars.

I sell some entry level model cars myself, and you can get really nice, well detailed things these days for 30 or 35. But if you really want to possibly get a return on your investment, beyond just the enjoyment of having it, which is all you should be doing. If you want to get [00:45:00] that return, focus on the higher end brands.

We’ve mentioned auto art a couple of times. A lot of auto art models have appreciated pretty substantially in value from their original retail price point. I think there are some that are trading for low four figures at this point. The ones that are trading for low four figures also happen to be some of the ones that have the best detail, the highest.

Part content, something like scale model cars that are designed to be collectible. You have a pretty high survivor rate. It’s not like old matchbox cars or hot wheels cars where they were designed to be toys and they become valuable because they get called because finding really nice ones is hard. They got played with.

It’s not hard to find good condition, old high end die cast. Cause they all got well kept for the most part. Focusing on quality products that have high part counts, high detail. If it is something that was made in lower volume, that never hurts. But beyond that, I’d say just focus on what makes you happy to have, because you’re probably going to get stuck with it.

Don Weberg: How do you ascertain the value of one of these cars? A lot of my [00:46:00] cars, like you and like Eric, and I’m sure a lot of the listeners we have here. Those cars I moved from California, I kid you not. Some of them I bought when I was six years old. They have been with me the majority of my life. And those, I still have the boxes for it.

Cause my mother was the one who said, hold on to the boxes. That’s where the value is. Well, as you said, it wasn’t so much value because I’m not the one who’s going to be selling these. It’s going to be whoever survives me when I die. They’re going to be the ones stuck trying to divest all these cars, but I do have the boxes.

Like you said, they came in really handy. When we had to move, you know, you wrapped them up in a really nice bubble wrap and then some paper towel, put them in the box and we’re good to go. But how would one ascertain the value of some of these cards? Where do you go? It’s not like you can call Kelly Blue Book.

Patrick Strong: You can, it’s just called eBay. It feels like the laziest. thing in the world, but it’s actually really quite useful going on eBay and looking at sold transactions. You don’t want to look at the ones that are still active where you have somebody asking some price for something. [00:47:00] You want to go and look and see what the actual transaction was.

I like to think of the eBay sort by sold items as like the sports car market magazine. of die cast collecting. You can go and see the actual results and see what somebody actually paid for that. It’s a good guideline. Obviously adjustments need to be made for the individual condition of what you have.

Sometimes finding the exact item that you have can be challenging, especially if it’s something old or rare, but it’s at least a good jumping off point for trying to establish a, an approximate value.

Crew Chief Eric: So I think there is a caveat to the investment discussion and that’s. backed in the world of one 64th and my rule of thumb that I learned from hot wheels and matchbox collectors was if nothing else you buy three one to sell one to store and one to play with usually those guys will turn right around like you said you know they’re looking for those dots and 510 station wagons I have a couple myself and they’ll turn around and immediately sell them for 3x or 5x that 94 cents or a dollar so they list them out [00:48:00] there for three bucks five bucks that’s Three to 500 percent profit, or you go to some of these shows and it’s like, well, what I can buy a premium for that price.

You know, I think there’s a lot of guys wheeling and dealing in one 64th, but you don’t see that in one 40 thirds and one 18th. I mean, the guys that I work with here on the East coast. I go to them and I say, Hey, I’m looking for this car because I’m trying to complete this part of my collection. I’m looking specifically for this model or this livery.

And they’re like, yep, I can get it. Or this company makes it, and this is what it’s going to cost. It’s not the same open marketplace. Like it is with the one 64th.

Patrick Strong: The reason for that is very obvious to get three hot wheels. Cars is 4 to get three spark one 43rd scale cars. Now it’s going to be 300.

Exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: As we dive deeper in this collection discussion, one of the things that you’re known for is curating what you sell on Model Citizen Diecast. So I wonder, you know, you said you diversify sizes even in your own personal collection, but what are your rules in what you select and what you want to resell?

Patrick Strong: There are three factors [00:49:00] that go into my decision making on what I’m going to stock at modelcitizendiecast. com. The biggest one by far is my taste. There is a galaxy of model cars out there. For everyone, if you are one of those people who still collects NASCAR models in 2023, there are a lot of places you can go to get that.

If I don’t get it, if I don’t understand it, if I don’t care about it, I don’t know how to sell it. Right at the top of the show, you led with model cars as a storytelling device. That’s the ethos that I live with this. This car tells a particular story, whether it is the story of a particular race, whether it is the story of a particular moment in time, that’s one of the major appeals to me.

So first and foremost, I have to consider, do I care about this car? If I don’t, I’m less likely to sell it because I don’t know how, however. I have to pay attention to what’s popular to just because I love something doesn’t mean someone else will and I’ve got a lot of stuff in inventory that I will probably never sell because I thought it was gonna be awesome because I think it’s awesome.

No one else does. I [00:50:00] do have to take into account whether or not I think there is some other weirdo like me out there who likes this one particular thing. And the third, Factor that goes into it is the quality of the model, just because a model company whose products I carry makes a model does not necessarily mean that I will stock it.

I have rejected over the eight years that I’ve had this business, hundreds of models from companies like Ottawa, where I’ll give you a great example of Ottawa. They made a metal bodied Jaguar E Type, Roadster and Dix Ted Coupe. And that’s an evergreen car. Everybody loves E Types. They are timeless. Auto Art’s model was almost perfect.

I mean, so much detail under the bonnet, the way the interior was crafted. It was magnificent, but they got the scale of the wheels wrong, and they got the shape of the wheels wrong. They did not look accurate at all. And when I looked at that model, All I could see were the wheels and how wrong they were.

Would anybody else have cared as much [00:51:00] about that as I did? Maybe, maybe not. But I do know that at the price point those models were, both wholesale and retail, I couldn’t justify it. So I never stocked them. Not just quality, not just how well made it is, but accuracy. It has to look right. And I think the reason for that is because, except for a very fortunate few people who are living the garage style magazine life and are parking their model collections next to their fabulous collections of real cars for the rest of us, they are stand ins these are stand ins for the cars we would like to own in real life to that end, they need to be accurate.

They need to look as much like the real thing as possible, because sadly for most of us, that’s as close as we’re going to get. And that’s okay. You know, we’re not all wealthy. We’re not all going to be wealthy. Let us have a really nice, accurate model car. Eric, I’ll give you an example. Looking over your shoulder, you’ve got that DTM BMW M3 E30, which I think is an auto art model.

But look at it. Look how perfect it looks. It’s almost a shrink ray situation. I happen to know on those [00:52:00] specific cars, one of the things they did to achieve the accuracy was at the Ottawa factory, after they cast the body, they hand ground using a hand tool, the wheel arch opening so that they could get that DTM wheel fitment really tight under there.

That’s the kind of thing that really I geek out about, about how good some of these things are. So those are the three factors for me. Do I want it? Is it popular? Is it detailed and accurate in quality?

Don Weberg: What are, let’s say, the top three, top four, in your opinion, of the highest detail, the highest level of construction quality of the DICAT world?

What would you put them as? Autowart

Patrick Strong: has been my yardstick for a long time in terms of evaluating whether or not something is quality. They took a lot of flack. When they shifted to plastic body models or composite, as they call it, what it really is, is ABS. Basically they are model cars made out of car bumper cover material.

There are a lot of people who equated metal body with quality. I think that’s a bit unfair after they. Had a few [00:53:00] poor first efforts. Auto art’s done a really nice job with their plastic body cars in terms of level of detail you get at the 200, 250 price point. They’re still pretty great after all these years.

Well, if we’re talking about mass market, as opposed to hand built. Very limited volume, one off things. I always go back to CMC, a German company, though they manufacture in China like pretty much everyone else does. CMC, focusing on a somewhat narrow band of subject matter, has just made just the most heartbreakingly beautiful 118 scale cars for the last 25 ish years.

They focus mostly on vintage German and Italian race cars. But here again, here’s one where they’ve made a model that I wouldn’t stock, even if I could stock CMCs because it was just a little wonky on the body shape. That was their two 50 GTO, kind of like a weird amalgamation of several different serial numbers.

And it just kind of looked off, but pretty much the rest of their line is exquisite. They’re very expensive. I think new CMC one 18 scale cars [00:54:00] run six to 800, but they’re worth it. They’re great.

Crew Chief Eric: Solido is pretty solid still, right?

Patrick Strong: So Solido. Has really elevated their game. A few years ago, I wouldn’t have considered carrying them at all.

I think they were very firmly in the entry level category, but the last few years they have made the conscious decision to get better. The quality of construction is better. One of the ways you can tell is like, kind of like looking at an old car. What’s your panel gaps? How well do the parts fit together?

They’ve really improved their quality on that. The accuracy of the models. I’m thinking specifically, they do a really nice line of Porsche 935 K3s. They’re fabulous. And they’re 75 great models to the extent that I’ve started carrying them myself. I think the best deal in 118 scale these days is Norev.

Norev is another legacy brand that dates back, I think, to the 1970s. They were big in 43rd scale for a long time, and they started making these really nicely made 118 scale cars, very accurate in design, [00:55:00] very nicely detailed in the hundred to 150 range. They’re wonderful. And Model Citizen has just started selling those too.

Crew Chief Eric: We tend to fall back into 118 yet again, but. There’s another caveat here, and sometimes the model you want in 118th is only cast by one manufacturer. You want the VW Nardo that’s over my shoulder? Maisto is the only one that makes it. You’re not going to find it by AutoArt. You’re not going to find it by CMC.

You get what you get sometimes at that point. But going back to what you said about Solido, I said the same thing. When they came out with their new 935s, And especially the Momo 935, which Derek Bell drove. And I had to have one. And I looked at it, I was like, man, for 85 bucks, this is a steal. Now, granted 20 years ago, 85 bucks for winning 18 scale.

I’m having a heart attack, but that’s actually not bad these days when you compare it to everybody else, but their quality has stepped up. You mentioned something kind of funny about collecting NASCARs in 2023. And it makes me think though, that there’s still room in this game to go after certain genres of [00:56:00] cars.

And one of the ones that sits close to heart for me is I’ve always wanted to have a collection of Jaeger cars, like the 914 6, the Jaeger Scirocco, the BMWs, and some of the other ones. They’re big money. They’re super cool. They come in a couple of different sizes, but that’s something you can kind of geek out over.

I’m still working on that, but on the same token, I feel like there’s reasons and seasons for collecting. I went through a whole period of VW and Porsche service trucks. If it said rendists on the side, I had to buy it. If it said VW service on the side, I had to buy it. I’m wondering if those are other things that new collectors should be thinking about is what do they want their display case to look like right now?

In your opinion, are there, let’s say liveries or styles or things that are hot in the market that people should be looking at or should be considering or maybe don’t know about?

Patrick Strong: I love that you led with the Jagermeister. example, because that is a livery that I’m trying to push that I’m trying to make happen.

I love it. I think it’s cool. I can point [00:57:00] to a couple of inciting incidents in my collector life that led me there. But the real reason that I want Jaeger to take off is because I am sick death of gulf. I don’t care if I ever see another golf livery to anything. Steve McQueen has been dead for 43 years.

Let’s let it go, folks. But are there others? Look back through the history of motorsport. Think about some of the most iconic liveries. Think about some of the most beautiful liveries. I’m thinking about the gold leaf lotuses of the 60s. The John Player special lotuses of the 70s. The McLaren MP four, four, all of the great Michael Schumacher era Ferraris, the mild seven Jaguar group C car.

What do all of those cars have in common? Tobacco sponsorship. Yes. And that’s a problem because that is largely banned. Perfect. The Rothman nine, five, six forces. Model car companies for the most part can’t sell those anymore due to [00:58:00] state and local regulations. A lot of the companies will sell a Rothmans era 956, and they will put something very coily on the box that says stickers included, and there will be a sticker sheet very discreetly slid under the car where you can apply them yourself to the car.

Crew Chief Eric: So has that then made the used market increase in value because of the ones that were produced during the time when they were allowed to do that?

Patrick Strong: Dealers and resellers like myself would like to think so, but my personal experience with that is it hasn’t made a big impact. I have a BBR Ferrari F310 with full Marlboro livery on it that I’ve had on offer for a long time.

And I can’t get any nipples on it. I had. A couple of L and M liveried Porsche, nine 17, 10 K and M cars that I just finally sold at Rennsport that I hadn’t been able to move. I would love it if that were true, but I’m just not sure that it is yet.

Crew Chief Eric: Any tips on buying used? Cause you do see them come up a lot at let’s say Mecham auctions and other places like that, or even [00:59:00] on eBay.

Like you mentioned, some are new in box. And you can see the patina on them. I bought some myself and I chucked the boxes in the trash. You know, bad on me, I suppose. But when I’m at a show, I’ve noticed some people they’ll kind of lean in and they’ll kind of like squint their eyes. And I’m like, pick the car up, look it over.

Just like you’re buying a real car, inspect it. Are there certain things you’re looking for? Maybe the way the bearings are, how the axles are, door gaps, chips in the paint. Are there things that you would use to negotiate down the price? If you’re buying a used diecast?

Patrick Strong: All of the above, except for negotiating down the price, I would be looking at how much the model has been handled.

If you can see any kind of damage on it at all, you need to be looking very carefully at your small parts. I know I mentioned rear view mirrors and antenna earlier, and those are like the first two things to go. I would just apply the same kind of due diligence to looking at a previously enjoyed scale model car as I would do a real car.

However, unless I am getting something that is really patina and I like the patina of it, [01:00:00] I’m only really looking at mint cars. I’m not interested in something that it might have like a small scratch or one little tiny thing for me. That one tiny thing is everything. I don’t want to mess with it unless it’s perfect.

If I’m buying it from an individual. The other hand, if you look at the case behind me, there are some cars that I bought. From a manufacturer, from a distributor for my business. And they had a small defect on them. And it’s like, well, I can’t really in good conscience, sell that to a customer. Model citizen is not just the name of my business.

It’s the way I try to do business. And I really don’t want to foist these things off on customers that trust me. If those items are less than perfect, I’ve got a 991 GT three in here. So one of my favorite cars got a little tiny paint defect on it. I kept that one because I’d already bought it anyway, what did I know?

But if I’m like looking at a secondary market car for my personal collection or to resell, it’s got to be mint. No question about it. Unless it’s an old toy that has some really charming worn patina [01:01:00] to it. Kind of like a real collector car. You have the movement of originality, you know, the preservation class at your Insert Concord here.

There is something very charming about that, but something that’s been produced in the last 25 years, I need it to be meant

Don Weberg: that guy. I’m telling you that he was the first one I ever met who literally had an Excel spreadsheet of every car he’d bought because he would go to swap meets. He would go to wherever.

Oh, I got to have that. He’d buy it, he’d get home. Oh, I’ve already got this car.

Patrick Strong: That’s very important to catalog your collection. For one, the reason that you mentioned, you don’t want to duplicate unnecessarily. I met a collector at Rennsport Reunion who bought a. Bunch of models for me. And he did that because he was able to whip out his phone rather than using a spreadsheet.

He just took pictures of his collection. He only collected old Porsche race cars and he had his collection organized by era and the number on the card. So he would be able to say, okay, let me look at my nine seventeens. I don’t have that one. And I sold the guy 18 model cars [01:02:00] on the spot. The other reason you need to do that is when the place burns down, you need to be able to demonstrate what you’ve got to your insurance agent.

And by the way, if you have a collection of model cars, get a writer on your homeowner’s policy for the model cars. You’ll thank yourself later. If you have collector cars and you insure them through one of the collector car specialty insurance companies. I don’t know about all of them. I do know that Hagerty will do special writers just on automobilia, automotive art collections on Petroliana on model car collections.

So, you know, word of the wise, insure your stuff.

Don Weberg: See,

Crew Chief Eric: just like in the real world.

Don Weberg: Yeah, exactly. Insuring. Does that even go for. Let’s just say, and forgive this, the cheapies, you know, your Boragos that you’ve had for years, your whatever. Did that go for that as well? Did you share those cards? Or are you talking about, like, the Kuntosh you sold me?

It

Patrick Strong: just comes down to how sad you’re going to be if you lose it, and how much better the money is going to make you feel. I don’t know. If I had a collection of 300 Borago [01:03:00] models, Spanning the history of the brand. Absolutely. I would have that insured. It doesn’t matter that they’re only worth 20, 30 bucks a shot,

Crew Chief Eric: but still six grand.

Patrick Strong: Yeah, absolutely. I’d say just insure it or at minimum have good quality photographs of your stuff. So that in case of a disaster, you can show that to an insurance adjuster who hopefully will be sympathetic, but a spreadsheet, a database with everything that you’ve got and how much you paid for it.

That’s not a bad idea.

Crew Chief Eric: We mentioned some of the high end brands, listed three that are in the top, but maybe there’s some brands to shy away from? Or maybe take a second look at?

Patrick Strong: Franklin Mint. You know, they have their charm and they have their enthusiasts, bless them. I don’t really want to down talk any particular brand.

I think that it comes down to what you want to do with your collection. If you are an authenticity freak like me, you want to stay away from some of the more. cartoonish lower end things that are have kind of the gaudy metallic paint and the wildly oversized tires. But I think [01:04:00] I’m not telling you anything you wouldn’t have figured out already on that in terms of if you are going for a realistic car, it’s really just a matter of what your budget can stand.

I don’t collect Mesto models, for example, because I am looking for something that has more detail and more authenticity, better quality paint, better shut lines. Having said that, not everybody can afford a 150, 200, 118 scale car. For some people, that 17 at Costco find is a find. And you know what? For 17 at Costco, those Mesos are great.

They are an unbelievably good value for someone who has a little tighter budget for their collection. I would just say avoid anything that just doesn’t ring your bell. If it looks wrong to you at first blush, just walk away. Unless you just have to have that one model, because they’re the only ones who are making it, and you’re trying to fill a hole in your collection.

It’s hard for me to understand that perspective, because I don’t share it, but I do, like, academically [01:05:00] understand, and this is the only game in town. You gotta have it to complete the set.

Crew Chief Eric: So what’s wonderful about this conversation is how much it really parallels The full size car collector world. And one of the last segments I want to touch on here is the modded die cast market.

We’ve all seen it. Guys are taking apart 164s. They’re taking apart 118 sale cars. They’re repainting them. They’re refinishing them. You know, doing the singer thing to die cast 911s. They’re putting big tires and big wheels. What’s your feeling on the mod community within the die cast market?

Patrick Strong: In general, I’m in favor of it.

Simply because I love the idea of individualizing. This is how you get something that is truly one of a kind or extremely limited volume. If it is something that has been individually customized, where I run into problems with that is the idea of the artist’s hand. As someone who goes in for authenticity in models, I generally.

Don’t want to see the artist’s [01:06:00] hand. I want it to still be an authentic or as authentic as possible scale model car. While at the same time being something that was unique. And as Singer would say, re imagined my friend, David Barnblatt owns a company called Vintage 43. Like me, he has a career in the entertainment business and pursues model cars as a profitable hobby.

He is an incredibly gifted scale model builder. His real passion is in building from scratch or restoring vintage white metal and resin kits from the seventies and eighties. And he does beautiful work. In addition to that, he also does some custom hot wheels, and he does it with an eye on authenticity, perhaps offering colors that Hot wheels does not offer.

And I have some of his pieces in my collection, just hot wheels cars, because I think they’re awesome. You know, hot wheels does that alpha Julia GTA. He did a run of four of them for me in my favorite vintage Alfa Romeo color, which is [01:07:00] yellow, okra, ochre, yellow. I just think that looks so cool. And I’m not generally a fan of yellow cars, but something about that really looks great.

So that’s one that I have. He did a Ruby Stone 964 for me, because he got to have a Ruby Stone 964, right? In general, I’m in favor of it. And I like that people are just giving it a try too. You know, why not? It’s a Hot Wheels car. Go for it. Be creative. Knock yourself out. But, be honest about it when it comes time to sell.

It’s like selling a clone at Barrett Jackson, you know. Tell me it’s a clone, don’t try to pass it off as a Mattel factory prototype.

Crew Chief Eric: Like yourself, Patrick, we’ve probably all met somebody in the community that’s maybe an amateur collector, might be an avid collector, might be a Hot Wheels superstar, you know, famous at some of these conventions and whatnot.

But there are some very special collections, almost museum level out there, like we talked about. Just like in the real world. Two names come to mind. Don is friends with Sergio Goldvarg. He has a huge collection. He actually was in the Guinness book of world records. And I met Bruce Pascal who has the most expensive hot [01:08:00] wheels on the planet.

Those are two big collections that I can think of where people can come in and check them out and things like that. Are there any others, even around the country that are destinations people might want to check out? Maybe they’re going on vacation or something like that.

Patrick Strong: There are just a lot of people who have big collections.

What surprised me most about the gold bar collection was how I can think of five other collectors who have collections that big that I know there’s that guy. I think he’s in Lebanon, maybe he’s got like 20 cars and he’s got, I think his is a, is a destination. The thing is, I don’t know of really a lot of quote unquote model car museums, big collections.

Tend to go hand in hand with something else. Example. I used to do business with a guy in Michigan who had a big collection of scale model, commercial vehicles and emergency vehicles. He did that because they were adjacent to his collection of full size vintage fire engines that he had. But the models became a museum unto themselves.

I don’t really know how to answer that because I don’t get invited into a lot of those collections, but they’re out [01:09:00] there. And I’d say that if somebody says, Hey, you want to come see my model collection, just say, yes. It’s probably unlikely to turn into a Buffalo Bill type situation. You’re probably just going to go see some cool cars.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, it’s like Don said on the first episode he was ever on the show. Hey, you want to come see my room? You want to see the cool stuff I have in my room? It all goes back to being that five year old kid, right? Yeah.

Don Weberg: Oh, it totally does. It totally

Crew Chief Eric: does. Well, that being said, we’re all well beyond the age of five years old.

So Patrick, what’s in the future for a Model Citizen diecast? Anything new on the horizon? Anything you’d like to share?

Patrick Strong: Absolutely. I think that if you’ve been a customer or follower of Model Citizen over the eight years that we’ve been in existence, It’s been a pretty small selection of cars. I don’t think I’ve ever had more than a hundred different items on the website at any given moment.

I’m looking to expand that. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve just started selling Norev models. I think they’re a fabulous value. You’ll be able to start picking those up on my website. Again, it’s a hobby business, but I’m looking to grow it a little bit. So look for more frequent updates. In [01:10:00] inventory, I am going to be adding a lot of premium 64 scale.

I resisted for a long time because there are so many other places to get it, but it just won me over. It’s so cool. So look for more 64 scale stuff, but yeah, just look for more. And more stuff coming up soon.

Don Weberg: Do you have any events coming up that you’ll be attending? Uh, maybe people can find you at.

Patrick Strong: I’ve been a pretty regular vendor at the Southern California Radwood events might be a couple of other smaller events in the LA area.

The next big thing for me is going to be LA Porsche weekend. So I do the. Porsche in vintage VW lit and toy show every February at the LAX Hilton. And I also produce my own event the day after that called diecast cars and coffee. My intention is that we’ll once again, return to the automobile driving museum in El Segundo, California.

So if you’re going to be in town for LA Porsche weekend, or if you’re just going to be in town period, come by diecast cars and coffee. It’s really fun. And then of course, I’ll be back in Monterey next August for car week [01:11:00] and. I’ll probably find a few things to do between now and then.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, Patrick, we’ve reached that part of the episode where I get to ask any shout outs, promotions, or anything else we haven’t covered thus far.

Patrick Strong: I just want to reemphasize whether you are a veteran collector with very finely honed taste, or whether you are new to the hobby model, citizen diecast. com is a great place to find. A very tightly focused selection of exquisite model cars. And if you are new to the hobby, my contact info is readily available there.

And I’m always happy to answer any questions you might have. Honestly, I’d rather make a friend than a customer, but model citizen diecast. com is a great place to start or continue your journey as a diecast model collector.

Don Weberg: The model citizen philosophy is simple. They believe there is no better visual expression for an individual’s passion for the automobile than a really great scale model, one that captures every detail and nuance of the real thing.

Patchfork is committed to helping car enthusiasts communicate their [01:12:00] passion to the world by curating a selection of only the finest, precision built scale model cars available. Cars you can be proud to display in Any home or work setting. To learn more about Patrick and Model Citizen Die Cast, be sure to check out their website www.modelcitizendiecast.com, or reach out to Patrick directly at Patrick at Model Citizen die cast.com or follow them on social media at Model Citizen Die Cast on Facebook and Instagram or at Model Citizen DC.

On Twitter,

Crew Chief Eric: Patrick, I can’t thank you enough for coming on break fix and sharing your passion for diecast. I think this has been a really enlightening conversation and the parallels that it makes to the full scale world of metal cars. This has been really, really cool. I look forward to filling a missing link in my collection.

Hopefully we’ll be able to work something out here in the near future. So thank you again for sharing your [01:13:00] love of diecast. And model cars with us and the rest of the world.

Patrick Strong: Eric, Don, thank you so much for having me on. It’s truly been my pleasure chatting with you today.

Don Weberg: The following episode is brought to us in part by Garage Style Magazine. Since 2007, Garage Style Magazine has been the definitive source for car collectors, continually automobilia, Petroliana, events, and more to learn more about the annual publication and its new website. Be sure to follow them on social media at Garage Style Magazine or log onto www.garagestylemagazine.com because after all, what doesn’t belong in your garage.

Crew Chief Eric: We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of break fix podcasts brought to you by Grand Touring Motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at Grand Touring Motorsports. And if you’d [01:14:00] like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article at gtmotorsports.

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Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 Introduction to BreakFix Podcast
• 00:27 The Importance of Scale Models
• 01:01 Introducing Patrick Strong
• 01:38 Inspiration from Garage Style Magazine
• 03:41 Patrick’s Early Passion for Model Cars
• 05:26 Childhood Memories and Collecting
• 07:20 The Evolution of Model Car Collecting
• 09:15 The Shift to 1:18 Scale Models
• 17:57 The Impact of Hot Wheels and Matchbox
• 21:39 The Rise of Premium Diecast Models
• 29:23 Regional Differences in Model Availability
• 31:26 Franklin Mint and Collector Trends
• 37:13 The Shift to 1:43 Scale Models
• 39:20 Economic Factors in Model Production
• 40:50 Advice for New Collectors
• 42:38 Investment vs. Passion in Collecting
• 45:57 Determining Model Car Value
• 48:42 Curating and Selling Model Cars
• 01:05:10 The Modded Diecast Market
• 01:09:24 Future of Model Citizen Diecast
• 01:11:03 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Bonus content available as a #PITSTOP mini-sode.

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