We had a booth at a Collector Car Appreciation Day event a couple of weeks ago, and a fortysomething guy asked a curious question. He said, “I’ve been thinking about starting to collect these things, what should I get?” After the sound of ringing cash registers in my ears subsided, I attempted to form a cogent answer to this potentially very lucrative question. However, I was a bit flummoxed. I had never met an adult who had expressed an interest in collecting diecast without giving much indication of the source of that interest. So, I pressed for more info. “What kind of cars are you into,” I asked. “Oh, you know, a little bit of everything,” he replied. So, that was helpful.
I throw the question out to the LaLD community: if you were confronted with a newbie model collector and could only give them a single piece of advice on how to move forward, what would it be? We all have our own unique ways of approaching the model car hobby...what wisdom would you impart to someone just starting out?