What are the 12 most favorite Tomica cars in my collection? Which 1 is my most most favorite?

16 years ago, my wife and I were expecting our first child, and I had to convert my hobby room, filled with shelf upon shelf of toy cars, into a baby room.  The cars were largely all packed up into boxes (a few STILL remain in those boxes!), with only the most favorite models getting "garage" space in traditional Matchbox 24 and 48 count carry cases where they could be easily accessed...

Now days I have many more cars, but also many, many more cases, such that the majority of my collection is immediately accessible.  But staring at the cases that hold my Tomica collection last night (estimated at roughly 500 cars), I started to wonder how I would pare that collection down again if I had to pack it up all over again...  What are my most favorite 12 Tomicas that would warrant a garage space if all I could spare was a 12 slot light-blue tray from a traditional Matchbox case?

I started the exercise with a few ground rules... 

1.  Although I picked the 12 number from a Matchbox tray, I wasn't going to force the cars to ACTUALLY fit into the tray, allowing me to choose over-sized/extra-long vehicles as part of the 12. 

2.  The criteria would be my "favorite" cars, not the "most inspired", "most realistic", "rarest", "most valuable", "most collectible", etc. 

3.  There were no other rules...  I wasn't going to require myself to have token representation from any particular categories of cars - if 100% of them were Nissan Skylines, then so be it! 

I started creating my entry list by swiftly stripping potential candidates out of the cases that hold my Tomicas.  I assembled them all on a tabletop for further perusal, inspection and ranking.   Although I intended my first pass to be about 50 cars, instead I ended up culling 109 highly valued cars out of the cases and onto the table.  That's a LONG way from just 12 favorites!







The next cull was fairly easy - pulling out the ones that I liked but knew didn't have a chance of making my top 12...  That meant that I was down to 73 remaining:

Removing a few more that I knew weren't in the same league got me down to 62 cars remaining - and the process was starting to get more daunting.













I decided to change the rules to get down to 48, a full size Matchbox case, so 14 need to come out...  The culling becomes sterner...  what?  3 Evolutions?!?   No, only 1 can survive...   And finally I got down to my top 48! 

Interestingly, my top 48 only includes 1 Tomica Limited Vintage model, very few micro cars, a large number of minivans and larger SUVs, a large number of sedans (especially Toyota Crowns) and 3 different medium duty box-type delivery trucks...!

From there, I separated them into the bottom 24 (#s 25-48)...















...vs. the top 24 (#s 1-24).  From this esteemed group will come my favorite Tomica car in my collection!













And finally sorted those 24 down to my top 12 cars.  As I looked at the contenders for my favorites, I was struck by how many of these had already been featured at various times in this blog (of course - since they are favorites!).











#12:  Older Toyota Dyna Box truck











































# 11:  Mitsubishi Pajero (featured in an earlier blog-post):











































#10:  Pontiac Firebird Trans Am (featured in an earlier blog post):

#9:  Mercedes-Benz G-Class (shown in an earlier blog post):

 #8:  Toyota Century:

 #7:  Cadillac:

#6:  Mazda Bongo Friendee (shown in at least 1, if not 2, prior blog posts): 

 #5:  Datsun 1300 Truck:  (Note that an older (non-premium) version of this exact casting - white with a heavily scraped roof - made it through several of the cullings before getting cut going into the top 48):

 #4:  Toyota Alphard (2008 casting, though all of the 3 castings are favorites along with the white Nissan ElGrand) (shown in several earlier blog posts): 

#3:  Nissan Fairlady 240ZG (shown in an earlier blog post):

 #2:  Nissan Leopard:

 #1:  Toyota Crown:

 Now that I've taken all of these photos, and written up the entire blog post, I wonder about some of my selections...  Were those initial 109 really my 109 favorites?  How about the top 12 - am I sure that none of the next 12, or the next 24 beyond those, deserve a spot in the top 12?  How about the ordering of the 12...  Do I really like the #1 Crown more than the Nissan Leopard?  How did the Toyota Century end up behind the Cadillac?!? 

Regardless of the exact final order, there is no doubt that the above models are some of my favorite and most highly prized models in my collection.  I've loved that #1 Crown since I got it 15 years ago, though the same casting in off-white is arguably equally prized (top left corner of the 25-48 photo).

If I could only have 12 Tomica models, I'd probably keep most of these 12 castings.  And if you are just starting to collect Tomicas, perhaps keep your eyes out for these...  You won't go wrong!

I hope you enjoyed the post...  Now I've got to put 109 contender cars back into their proper cases!