All else being equal, are mint condition cars always preferable to non-mint condition cars? Answer: NO!

This sounds obvious, but...:

...Aren't mint condition cars ALWAYS preferable to non-mint cars?  No!

You see it all the time in die-cast car forums, where they will describe a reasonable but non-mint car as a "filler", a temporary place-holder until you can find a mint-condition example of that casting.  As if to say, that the only purpose of a non-mint car is to be a place-holder until you find the "better" mint example.  

Which begs the question, are there ANY instances where, all else being equal (color, variation status, wheels, etc.), you'd actually prefer a non-mint car over a mint car?  

...And my answer to that is a resounding YES! 

Now, to be clear, this IS the exception rather than the norm.  For the most part, better condition cars are almost always preferable over worse condition cars.  And broken cars are ALWAYS less desirable than non-broken cars.  But...  ...there are situations where I actually prefer the non-mint car over the mint car.  

Some of it comes from the sense of sentimentality, that the specific non-mint model in question may hold sentimental feelings for you, that you remember playing with that SPECIFIC model as a kid, and the mint model just can't compete.  

But some of it also comes from the fact that to my eyes, the mint models are sometimes TOO shiny.  And the non-mint but good condition model may somehow look more like an ordinary car on the street, with a little less shine, and few more scuffs.  This is particularly the case for cars that are SUPPOSED to have scuffs - for instance pick-up trucks - or rally cars - rather than Rolls Royce's or Cadillacs.

I instantly thought of 2 real-life examples.  And they are from 2 of my all-time favorite Matchbox castings - the Mercedes AMG 500 SEC, and the Red Transitional Superfast Ford Pick-up.  In both cases I compared highly beat-up examples (left-most), with mint examples (right-most), and with good "filler" examples (center).  

And in both cases, I found that the played-with-good condition examples just had something about them that the mint examples lacked - some sense of old-car realism (particularly relevant for an old pick-up truck) combined with a unique "come-play-with-me" siren call.  

To be clear, it doesn't hurt that both of these middle examples also have that sentimentality going for them.  In both cases, these specific examples were the actual first examples of these castings that I ever had.  In the case of the 500SEC, it was a casting that I had desired as a kid but didn't actually get until a decade later as an adult collector.  And in the case of the pick-up, this was a casting that I literally had never before seen, until the day that I pulled that actual truck out of a $.50 bargain bin at a Matchbox collector flea market, marveling that such a great casting even existed.  But I don't think that sentimentality is the only thing going for them, instead I think that I would prefer them even without that sentimentality.  

 

So what do you think?  Am I completely off-base?  Or is there something about the playwear that is magical - some sense of "Velveteen-Rabbit"-esque toy-magic - gradually imbued on them by countless hours of childhood play?