[stuckinthe60s]

David, then, are the cars pictured the actual ones you first got all those years ago? I have three Revell cars in my collection from my original purchase in 1965, although the running gear had to be sought out and installed decades ago.
Speaking of Revell, Don, I had never seen other colors than red on the 1/32 GTO's until recent decades. On the backhand I later ended up with a white, then a somewhat rarer yellow one. I also have never fallen in with the obsessions with colors and duplicates as our HO and Scalex (ahem) friends are prone to, Always felt, "hey, get out the rattlecan!". But here about a year ago a club mate put up a number of cars for sale, and of all things, here was a GTO in it's injected color: green!! "Where in the world!?" I thought, and impulsively bought it. I think that impulse clicked in me, as the GTO was the first slotcar I owned, along with the Vette when I got the set so long ago. An emotional purchase, and now I'm on the lookout for more colors! Who would've thought.

 

[dgersh]

Exactly Steve.

The same thing happened a few years ago here when I saw a couple Strombecker 1/32 cars here in colors that had never been seen in the States: a yellow Dino and a Cheetah in another unusual color. Picked those up and was later able to pass on the Dino to a Ferrari fanatic who happened to have the missing front valence for that car in the right color - and couldn't convince anyone he'd actually seen a yellow Dino...

The GRC Spitfire is another case: about 9 out of 10 are yellow, but it seems they made them in 8 colors for use as rental cars, and a few guys have been searching for the rarer colors since. I donated a purple one many years ago to a big Thingie fan!

Don

 

[Dopamine]

David, then, are the cars pictured the actual ones you first got all those years ago?

Yes they are, although it's likely that the wheels fitted to the Ferrari and Mirage have been swapped from other Scalextric cars when I was a child. I think the Ferrari originally had silver wheels, maybe the Mirage too. Also looks as though the Lotus 16 and Mirage have had new rear tyres at some point in their lives. I still have the boxes for the cars somewhere.

I rarely drive my old cars these days, but they all still work. I hold race meetings at home occasionally - modern stuff with fancy controllers, sticky tyres etc - and after our last meeting, where we'd raced NSR Formula 86/89 cars (lap times of 5.4 seconds) and a fleet of heavily modified Scalextric BTCC saloons (7.2 seconds) several of the guys stayed behind and we spent half an hour doing time-trials with my Scalextric C.96 Auto Union that I'd bought new when I first started earning money delivering newspapers before school. It's had new front tyres at some point, but the rears are the originals and still surprisingly grippy. Best lap was just under 10 seconds. That's progress for you. Brilliant car with steerable front wheels, and sufficiently slow that when it's sliding around corners you can actually appreciate the opposite lock!

 

[Roguejackal]

I have 500+now, I use to have them in classes apart from my Lancia's but I decided to go manufacturers as the boxes stack better and they are usually better suited for racing.
I now however have been spoilt by the better cars so need to reingage with the lesser manufacturers otherwise I will end up selling a lot of cars.

 

[Slot Car Paul]

Errrrm, I just looked at my spreadsheet where I record all the salient details, it's nearly 1000, most are F1 or Le Mans cars as they are my main interests but I do have some road cars, some rally cars mostly group B and some quirky oddities that could be called film or tv cars, not all are runners, I have quite a few kits to build and several F1 cars to convert from other's of similar shape and size, as we had 2 eras where the cars became very alike. Just typing this makes me realise the madness of this but hey ho, as someone above said, driving on the real roads now is such a chore it makes sense to me somehow.

 

[42redcat]

Should I throw away all the boxes/‘jewel cases’ to save space?
Mike

 

[beardy56]

Luckily most of my cars came without boxes/cases which is just as well as I don't tend to keep them in the boxes but I do keep all the boxes. So Mikes question is very very prevalent

 

[42redcat]

Luckily most of my cars came without boxes/cases which is just as well as I don't tend to keep them in the boxes but I do keep all the boxes. So Mikes question is very very prevalent

I have boxes full of boxes!😽

 

[Dopamine]

Should I throw away all the boxes/‘jewel cases’ to save space?
Mike

No. If you do, there will likely come a day when you're sorry that you did. Or...

No. Sell them. Have you seen how much new ones cost? There's a buoyant market for secondhand cases. Or...

No. Tyres go off eventually, but they go off much more quickly if the cars are left exposed to circulating air. Keeping the cars in their boxes slows down the rate of deterioration of the tyres. Or...

No. Give them away. I need a few and I'm sure I'm not alone!

 

[m60g]

I’ve got around 60 mix of GT3 and Group C

 

[merkit the grof]

No. Tyres go off eventually, but they go off much more quickly if the cars are left exposed to circulating air. Keeping the cars in their boxes slows down the rate of deterioration of the tyres. Or...
No. Give them away. I need a few and I'm sure I'm not alone!

That is very true, I once bought a job lot containing mint tyres from the 60s, they felt really soft through the packet, opened them, fitted to a car, great grip (race winning tyres!!!)
2 hours later they were rock hard .
I am convinced UV is also a factor in killing tyres.


Joel

 

[tangerinedream]

I would imagine there's more plastic in a crystal case and black base, than in the car.
Whilst environmentally bad for some folks, it does protect the product in transit, retail display and home display.

 

[dgersh]

Value-wise, if you don't care about the eventual resale value of your cars, chuck 'em or sell 'em. If you do, keep 'em.

As for tires, I wonder if one of those climate-controlled wine humidors would help... The cars I race mostly use urethanes, and those seem to stand up pretty well in my display cases or boxes - some are 20 years old!

Don

 

[Autoavia]

I don't have a clue how many slot cars I own but every car I have was bought with the intention of racing it so no shelf queens.
It started off as an invite to SSRC to have a look 40+ years after my last dabble with slot cars. This grew to getting one car for each of our 14 club classes which has gradually grown to at least 3 or 4 for each class.
Then I got persuaded to start Vintage racing and got talked into racing at Double Trouble so now have maybe a dozen working 1/32 and 1/24 vintage cars and boxes and boxes of bits and projects.
This led to getting involved in CSCRA events which again led to building cars and even more boxes of projects and then I got into Policar events and have eight RTR and scratchbuilt Policars with at least another six part built and along the way I progressed from 3 secondhand Parma controllers with various ohm ratings to a Carsteen which made a world of difference to my driving and means I can use a single controller for every car I race. I also bought a Poly Butler pit box as my little toolbox was just too small to carry everything to club that I wanted to race and test each week.
It has all got completely out of control really but at least it keeps me occupied and helps fill the hole left by my other half passing away in January and it could be worse. I could have spent all that money on drowning my sorrows so thank god for slot cars.

 

[tangerinedream]

Slot cars are not only enjoyable they do have some resale value, bad as anything is in any of our lives ,there's usually some poor soul suffering more than us, look at the Ukrainianians lot in life.

It's so important for folks to have hobbies and interests, SWMBO has recently taken early retirement from teaching and taken up tennis, recorders and hockey that she was doing in her teens and twenties.

As a kid my dad had a taxi business, many of our customers didn't last long in retirement, after finishing in the pits, the potbanks, the Michelin, the steelworks, not only had they had a physically demanding life, they had no interests outside work and the working men's club.

Enjoy the cars,it's an auto museum in miniature.

 

[merkit the grof]

when started collecting slot cars, I read somewhere that it was best specialise in a single area of collecting.
So I decided to collect French cars, tobacco sponsored cars, Ferraris, and any old cr*p that took my fancy.
Eventually I sold most French cars and tobacco sponsored ones to make room for more Ferraris.
Only trouble is, I kept buying old cr*p as well.
Counting RTR, unmade slot kits, plastic models and slot bodies (I have very very few diecasts) I have around
1000 Ferraris
151 Fords
64 Porsches
61 Chevrolets
59 Lotus
I'll spare you the rest, but the non Ferraris outnumber the Ferraris! So much for concentrating on a single theme


Joel

 

[HiFi]

Well, until today, I had four slot-cars and one static model destined to be a slot-car, any previous cars having been scattered to the four winds over nigh on a half-century’s moving around.

They’re Scalextric Start ‘F1’ cars and an Airfix Ford P68.

But today, their numbers have been boosted by a pair of MRRC Chaparral 2Fs 😃

I have a feeling numbers could grow exponentially once we move house yet again and get a track set up 😶

 

[Dopamine]

I had no idea how many of each marque I own, so have just counted my top 10.

1. Porsche - 315
2. Ford - 284
3. BMW - 136
4. Ferrari - 129
5. Chevrolet - 107
6. Audi - 81
7. Mercedes - 75
8. McLaren - 72
9. Lola - 44
10. Lancia - 43

I wonder whether the licensing of marques to slot car companies affects the overall totals? I vaguely recall reading a comment several years ago from someone who'd worked for a number of slot car manufacturers, that Porsche was the easiest to get a licence from and Ferrari the most difficult.

 

[merkit the grof]

Top 10 is a good idea, here is mine.
Ferrari 1039
Ford 151
Porsche 64
Chevrolet 61
Lotus 59
McLaren 58
Maserati 48
Lola 48
Jaguar 47
Indycar 46


Joel

 

[dgersh]

Couldn't resist playing this one as well, but here are top ten manufacturers in my collection:

Strombecker - 93
Scalextric - 64
Aurora - 43
Monogram - 37
Cox = 35
Russkit - 35
Revell - 34 (+ 2 Revell-Mono)
K&B - 34
Circuit 24 - 32
Jouef - 32
Policar - 28 (+ Polistil 8)

Don