Fine Mercedes 300 E / TE castings by Matchbox, Corgi and Majorette

More Mercedes castings...  I'm not sure why I find Mercedes passenger cars in 1:64 scale to be SO irresistible... 

The early '90s Matchbox 300 E is a very high quality casting - with a nice heft, nice detail, door mirrors, opening doors, 8 dot wheels, a separate grill, etc.   I have it in the 2 common colors, it's probably available in others but these are the 2 that I most often see - a civilian version in light blue, and a German police version in white with green lettering.  Both colors are nice.  I wish I had it in other colors...  This casting would be an excellent candidate for a customization/re-spray - the problem is that they are somewhat rare - so these are the only 2 examples I have...  Both are very nice and represent the best of Matchbox from this period. 

However, fans of the mid-size 300 cars, and fans of wagons in general (me!) have additional options...  Majorette made a very nice blue 300 TE station wagon, with an opening rear hatch.  The 2 that I have are in the same blue color, but with minor trim differences.  The car is nicely sized from a length perspective, but sits a little high for my tastes.  The standard issue Majorette wheels are also a bit of a letdown - the Matchbox 8 dot wheels just look nicer.  Overall, the casting is a bit of a mixed bag, with the nice (the hatch, the heft, the integrated roof rack) being offset by the not as nice (the bumpers look plasticky, the high stance, the cheapy wheels).  But still a good enough casting that you should try to get it... 

Lastly, Corgi also had a 300 TE wagon, in this version at least in ambulance guise (not sure if it was available in civilian colors).  This is the definite 3rd place casting relative to the nicer Matchbox (1st place) and Majorette (2nd place).  While the size is nice (its within a smidge of being as long as the Majorette, and is actually a bit wider - giving it a chunkier appearance) and the metal detail is reasonable, it has no opening parts, ultra-cheap standard 4 dot Corgi wheels that would look cheap on a Maisto/Fast Lane, a grossly done light bar (its the cheapest police light bar that I've seen on any die-cast car - ever!), etc.  Overall, while I'm happy to have it in my collection, I wouldn't recommend that other collectors seek it out to buy it.  It's only a marginal casting, and being a Corgi is hard to find and frequently a bit pricier than other brands, so its probably not worth the money you'll have to pay... 

Extremely rare Superfast teal Lincoln Continental

The Lincoln Continental is one of the best Matchbox castings ever done.  In real life the Lincoln was a big square car, and the die-cast version of it is correctly in scale, big and square, with beautiful metal detail in the grill and an opening trunk.  When introduced as a regular wheels car, it came in a slightly unfortunate teal (really Lesney...  teal?) or a less common (but more formal looking and hence desirable) dark blue.  When they converted it to Superfast spec, (with a new and beautiful olive-gold paint color, nice wheels and a super-soft suspension), the height of the car was raised to modern standards, taking a nice casting and elevating it (pun intended) to one of the nicest castings in all of Matchbox land...

But as pretty and great as the olive gold transitional car is, don't you kind of wish you could have ALSO had the superfast in the original dark blue or teal colors...?   In short, don't you wish that you had the teal car pictured here...?!?

But you won't find this car easily.  It's listed in the variations listing of my matchbox books by Charlie Mack (The Big Book of Superfast Matchbox Toys) as being worth $2000+ (and that was 10 years ago...).

So did I buy this one for $2000?   No, it's a fake.  A simple baseplate swap... 

I had a beat-up transitional gold car that was missing its trunk lid.  I had a beat up teal regular wheels car, that was so beaten up that I didn't value it.  I combined the body of the regular wheels car with the baseplate of the missing-trunk-superfast car, and suddenly, I had the one-of-a-kind car that I'd always wanted... 

Actually, I like that it is so beaten up.  It looks legitimate that way, as if its a surviving car, un-restored, parked outside on the streets and subject to the rain and sun... 

Only the baseplate shows the truth, the drilled-out rivets a gaping hole and testament to its non-legitimacy... 

How to store a Matchbox car collection... (or maybe, lessons on visualizing how big sixty-five hundred is...!).

If you're a toy collector, chances are you struggle with questions like:  "How much is too much", or "I like so many types of cars, how do I decide where to set my boundaries" or most especially, "if a Matchbox car is so small, how does a collection of them manage to take up SO much space!!!". 

20 years ago, pre-kids, and having only (a paltry!) 2000 cars, I had the luxury of having an entire room devoted to my hobby...  but those days are long gone.  Now my collection lives mostly in an attic closet, under the eaves of the roof, with a few more boxes scattered throughout the basement and in other closets.  When I want to find a certain car for this blog, I start pulling out case, after case, after case, after case...   Pretty soon my room looks like these photos (or in many cases, much worse!).  And pretty soon after that, my wife gets upset about what a mess it is, or about how much "clutter" I have, and I try to cram it all back into a closet and pretend to be a normal 42 year old again... 

These photos give a glimpse of what part of a roughly 6,500 piece Matchbox car collection looks like... 

I'm convinced that I learned basic math skills from a Matchbox case.  They almost always had 12 car trays.  Most cases either held 2 trays (a 24 car case) or 4 trays (a 48 car case).  Later, when the see-through Plano "Jammers" came out, they also held 48 cars, preserving the case logic.  When Matchbox sold the red "Matchbox Across America" 50 state cases (top of the big pile in the foreground above), they advertised it as holding 50 vehicles.  In my mind they were cheating, assuming you could double up some motorcycles and other small cars.  In reality, the cases had 4*12=48 slots...

Occasionally you saw a 72 or a 36 or a 12 car case, but they were rare.  Rarer still were the real oddballs - the 40 car cases, or the steering wheel shaped 20 car cases.   So most cases held some multiple of 12 cars.  Even now, when multiplying 12 times 6, I think about the trifold 72 car cases (spread out on the right side of the floor in the photo) and get to my answer. 

The 24 for small/48 for large numeric consistency also makes it easy to estimate collection sizes when your collection moves from monstrous to overwhelming...  Just round up by 1 or 2, and count by 25s and 50s...   By that logic, the biggest stack of cases in the center rear of the above photo has roughly 550 cars in it.  The slightly smaller stack to its left has roughly 400 cars in it, as does the tall stack in the foreground.  The smaller stack to the right (again center foreground) has only 200 cars.  The assorted cases scattered around the remainder of the floor and table have another 950 cars in them, for a total of roughly 2500 cars. 

Now that those 2500 cars were out of the closet, I could actually crawl into the closet, taking the below photo...:  


There are 30 Jammers style cases there (a few are hidden by other cases or out of range of the camera angle, holding roughly 1500 cars.  The various cardboard boxes shown hold probably another 300 cars.  Then there are 13 smaller Rubbermaid containers, each with about 100 cars individually wrapped up, for about another 1300 cars.   A few more smaller containers in the closet add on another 100 or so cars, for a total of about 3200 additional cars. 

In other places in my basement and closets I've got a few larger Rubbermaid containers of unopened MIP cars, (maybe 300?), plus another several boxes of cars (500?) that I plan to sell someday - junky cars, cars I don't like, duplicate cars, etc.   These add maybe another 800 to my estimation, for a total of at least 6,500.  I work with numbers and statistics for a living, I don't think I'm estimating overly high.  If anything, I'm probably low.  I'm sure that if I really thought about it, I'd remember a few other places that I've stashed cars... 

6,500+ cars?!?  Yikes...  Please don't sign me up to be a candidate for the TV show "Hoarders"! 

On the other hand, if the 10 year old version of me could see this collection, I would be very, Very, VERY happy with myself...! 

 

Nissan Ambulances - by Tomica

Ambulances are an interesting segment of die-cast culture, and this is actually my 2nd post that is just about ambulances, which is odd since I'm not an OVERLY huge fan of ambulances... 

Anyway, Tomica has a huge variety of minivans (see my recent minivan post), and therefore have a lot of castings that they can make into ambulances, resulting in 4-5 distinct ambulances made from Nissan vans!

I actually have 4, with a 5th being a police van that seems like it could double for an ambulance...  I've shown them in order of age, oldest to newest, with the first one (a Nissan Caball) being more of a police van.  The 4th is the El Grand and is the same casting as the safety car El Grand shown in my Tomica van post.

All are nice castings, you won't go wrong with any of them.  As usual the older ones feel nicer and higher quality, though none are cheap-feeling.

I particularly like the 2nd oldest Caravan-based ambulance.  It's rear opens (though it doesn't stay open for a photo).  It is still old enough to be made in Japan, and has that silky suspension that older Tomicas are known for.

Overall, incredible to find 5 ambulance models all by Nissan, all made by Tomica...

(Updated photos) The dearth of Minivans in the die-cast world... so thank goodness for Tomica...!

Minivans....  One of the most ubiquitous types of cars on the road, but easily the most under-represented type of car in die-cast. 

If you ignore the VW vans (which due to the coolness factor of VW Transporters are the most modeled minivan brand), and the full-size vans (again which have a slightly higher coolness quotient), there are VERY few mainstream castings of minivans such as Ford Windstars, Kia Sedonas, Nissan Quests, etc....

1.  Matchbox did the original '84 Dodge Caravan (the car the launched and still defined the actual mini-van market in the USA) in the '80s.  My casting was the black one to the right (actual example from my childhood collection - though now I've also got it in white), and it was an important piece of my collection, in no small part since my family had an '85 Plymouth Voyager (identical to a Caravan).  This casting was a pretty nice casting, with a working sliding side door (Matchbox' first and possibly only ever sliding door).  Plus it had the chunkier truck wheels on it, giving it a bit more of an SUV/off-road look, which was a whole lot nicer than the factory K-Car wheels with plastic wheel covers that our real family car came with... 

2.  Hot Wheels brought out a slightly customized late '90s Dodge Caravan in the late '90s.  The one I've got is in maroon with heavily tinted windows and overly radical 3 spoke alloy wheels, not sure if it came in other colors.  While it's not a favorite casting of mine, it still is a decent effort and worthy of mention in this severely under-done segment.   

3.  And a recent addition, the Matchbox Ford Transit Connect.

From the mainstream Matchbox and Hot Wheels brands over the last 30 years, that's it for non-VW-minivans...  Very sad! 

If we expand to other toy brands, we get:

4.  The late '80s Pontiac Transport from Majorette (in blue on the right), which unfortunately had the un-realistic see-through roof that robbed the car of realism... 

5.  The Toyota Hi-Ace from Majorette, which came with an opening lift-gate. 

6.  Maisto had a beige European-market Ford Galaxy, that was done in typical Maisto cheapness, but was at least another entry into the list...   

I can't think of any Johnny Lightning or Greenlight or Racing Champion models...

7.  I think I've got a late '90s Ford Galaxy/VW Sharon (same car) from Siku buried some place in the collection, but I'm not sure I'm able to pull it out quickly... 

In sum, 7 castings, from all but 1 of the major die-cast producers, over the 30 years since the original Caravan/Voyager came out!  The point I'm hopefully effectively making is that for such a popular car type, it is amazingly un-modeled in the die-cast world. 

Enter the minivan savior...  ...Tomica! 

In the last 25 years, Tomica has produced well over 25 distinct minivan castings, with multiple spin-off variations that could be considered unique models on their own, like the police, road crew and ambulance variations.  If I include the recent slew of hard-to-categorize cars that might be small minivans or tall station wagons (Toyota Ipsum, etc.), the number could easily pass 35....  On top of that, most of the castings have opening features - usually a sliding door or an opening tailgate.  Wow.  In short, if you're a collector who wants a diverse slate of car types, and who values unique and well-modeled castings, you NEED to consider expanding your Tomica collection. 

As has been mentioned earlier in this blog, one of the really impressive things about Tomica is that they are constantly updating their castings.  I've got 3 unique Toyota Alphards, all amazing in a crème white, representing 3 different generations of Toyota Alphards (shown at right in order of release, with the black the most recent).  Even if the Alphard changed its looks dramatically over those 3 generations, that would still be shocking attention to detail from any other toy-maker.  However the Alphard DIDN'T change it's looks dramatically with each re-fresh.  But Tomica STILL felt the need to bring out a new casting for each generation...  For context, Matchbox NEVER updated their Caravan casting, continuing to sell the original casting after Dodge had re-freshed, and then entirely re-designed, the real Caravan...




I've got 3 different castings of Honda Stepwagons, with the oldest (light blue below) casting in 3 colors and the newest (dark blus below) casting in 2...  ...And that doesn't count the other Honda minivans, including Odyssey and Elysian...

1 of my favorite Tomica minivans of all time (and one of the first that I found - which might explain my fascination with it) is this Mazda Bongo.  I think I like it so much due both to the boxy (VW Eurovan-esque) shape of it, as well as the Eurovan-Westphalia-esque pop-up roof (maybe another comparison test is in order - again with the Hot Wheels "Sundowner" Vanagon matched up against this Bongo in the battle of the pop-up roof minivan campers!).























Tomica has done 2 generations of the Nissan El-Grand, both of which come in both normal consumer (I've got the old one in white and the new one in black) as well as yellow safety car guise, allowing this crazy photo of 2 generations of El Grand safety cars (newest on the left).  While the older El Grand's large size made it a favorite of mine (I have it in white - and it looks so nice against the equivalently sized Alphard!), the new El Grand is noticeably smaller (though it claims to be in the same 1/64 scale) and has no opening features, making it a bit of a disappointment.






















Another favorite Tomica minivan is the Mitsubishi Dilica - just a cool looking van, sporting silver and sage-green paint in my collection.

The Mitsubishi Grandis isn't quite as nice looking, though it is still a worthy effort and a good model.  I have it in white and light blue.

I have 2 generations of Nissan Serena's - the older in silver and bronze and white, the newer in an eggplant purple.  I like the older one a bit more - there is more detail in it.

My least favorite Tomica minivans are these Toyota Estimas.  I might dislike it so much due to the bland beige paint that I have it in...  Amazingly, Tomica offered the newer one in almost the same color of off-putting paint, allowing me to not like it in both generations....





This Honda Elysion (in light blue) is another highly regarded Tomica minivan of mine...











These Toyota Noah's come in 3 colors, though one of them is tagged as a Voxy instead - with a unique number on the baseplate.  However they are all the same identical casting.








A Mazda MPV (in red) and a Toyota Wish (blue) are 2 additional reasonable minivans by Tomica.  The detail is nice and they are definitively collectible, though I don't like either ENOUGH to make them favorites of mine (even though I actually owned a real MPV for a while).





Then there are these 2 unfavorites from Honda - the Airwave (blue) and the Odyssey (white).  Mostly I dislike their size - they seem too low for a minivan.










As I get to the end of this amazing list, I wanted to show another favorite casting, the Toyota Probox, in 3 different versions...  I like the looks of this casting a lot, and really appreciate the 3 versions.







And finally, no discussion of Tomica minivans would be complete without the most prototypical of all Japanese minivans, the Toyota Hi-Ace...  I could only find 2 castings of the Hi-Ace, though I'm willing to be that I'm missing a few...  In fact I know that I'm missing at least one, which is on order and being shipped from Japan as I type...

Well, that's close to a wrap on the die-cast minivan situation.  A remarkably under-represented segment of modeled cars by the major toy makers, with Tomica utterly saving and utterly dominating the market.  And if anyone from Tomica is reading this - then here is my request for you to do the Hyundai H1 - a ubiquitous and cleanly styled minivan seen everywhere in the Caribbean and Latin America....

P .S.  There is one other minivan producer - from a quality toy maker that I often forget about due to their complete lack of a US presence...  ...and that of course is Norev.  On a trip to France around 2010 I picked up every Norev that I could find, including several minivans...  All were models of French vans - Renaults and Peugeots.  But this discussion of Norevs is probably worthy of its own post someday...

The 2 Matchbox transitionals that might be less preferable in superfast vs. regular wheel form

Superfast transitionals are my favorite Matchbox cars.  Period.  End of statement.

The best designs of the golden era of Matchbox...  ...but raised up to modern (and realistic) heights, with silky soft suspensions...  What's not to love...?   When I first took up Matchbox collecting as an adult, I was thrilled to read Dana Johnson's Matchbox price guide and find out that being newer, transitionals were worth less than the older regular wheels....   ...Except until I realized that Dana Johnson was wrong and that traditional demand (high) vs. supply (low) economics dictated that prices for the superfasts were rising...

For the next 20 years of adult collecting, I actively sought out the superfast transitionals, until I finally completed the collection just prior to turning 40 years old.  So, now that you know how much I love transitionals, what's up with this post....?  Are there actually transitionals that are less preferable than the regular wheels versions?

Well, no, *I* still always prefer the transitionals...   ...but there ARE 2 models where the transitional version loses functionality relative to the regular wheels versions, so *YOU* might make a different decision...

The first one is the Foden Concrete truck.  The regular wheels version has a wheel-driven gear to turn the concrete drum when the truck is rolled.  However while the superfast version gaines the superfast wheels, it LOSES the gear.

A side note...:  I find the heavy trucks to be the least appealing of the transitionals.  The regular wheels versions have equivalent size wheels, such that the transitional vs. regular wheel height differential that you get with the cars goes away.  In addition, most of the heavy trucks don't get the silky "superfast" suspension, although they are still tagged as superfast. 

The 2nd model that loses functionality is the model that is widely regarded as the rarest (and hence most expensive) of the superfast transitionals, the Pontiac Grand Prix (GP) sport coupe. 

(Another editorial note...:  Having sought out and found all of the transitionals, I personally think that the Iron Fairy crane, the Fire Pumper and the Land Rover Fire Truck are all potentially rarer than the Grand Prix, although the Grand Prix's muscle-car-driven popularity might drive a higher demand and hence a higher price).

Regardless of its rarity, the Pontiac Grand Prix is a nice model, and I like the purple paint color more than the bright red of the regular wheels.  So what functionality did it lose...?  Well, the regular wheels one has opening doors.  The superfast's are cast shut... 

I've wondered for years why Matchbox chose to cast the doors shut...?  Was it that the suspension got in the way with the spring for the doors?  Is it possible to do a base plate swap, ending up with a red version with opening doors but the superfast suspension?  Are there actually a few legitimate purple cars with opening doors? 

In conclusion, there ARE 2 models that lose functionality in superfast form, giving potential rise to the argument that the regular wheels version is better...  But for me, the choice is clear.  It's always Superfast...!