When we first bought our house, I was excited about all the shelf space available in the downstairs family room. My plan was to display a few of my toys on these shelves and change them out periodically in order to showcase my collection.
This plan went ok for the first few years but as you can see
by the dust in the images below, I eventually stopped switching pieces out.
Smalls were hard to dust and easy to lose. For these reasons I’ve now switched
to a static display of larger toys and boxed items.
These images were taken with an HP 717 6.2 Megapixel camera
that I was beta testing when I worked for HP back in 2005.
In the center of this first photo is a Marx wind-up tank my mom and her siblings had as kids. It still worked when I was a kid, but many a grand and great grandkid played with it since then and it no longer functions. The old red metal convertible back left and the blue plastic convertible on the right were also toys handed down from my mom’s side of the family.
The three small cars in the front of this photo are part of the
“World’s Smallest Matchbox” collection. On the left are a few Micro Machine
Insiders. Barely visible along the back wall are two Star Wars Micro Machine
spaceships. The middle area contains small cars that I got from Walmart and KB
Toys, but whose brands I’ve forgotten.
The green rubber truck above is an Auburn Mack truck that I found buried in the sand box at our apartment complex in the late 60’s. The five motorcycles I got as a kid in the early 70’s (unable to recall brand). In the back are two Johnny Lightening Monopoly sets. These sets contained a 1/64 diecast scale model of a car and its smaller Monopoly counter (two more are displayed in the photo below).
Finally, we have several of my favorite smalls. The yellow
car on the front left is part of a set that was pretty common in dime stores in
the early 70’s. The revolver, tiny brown
car, and green tow truck all came from my Grandma and I was told they are
Cracker Jack Prizes.
The little blue halftrack with the gun on the right is also
a CJ Prize from my Grandma. The little silver tank to its left was one of the
few toys my father owned. These two toys hold a special place in my collection.
The black locomotive, grey battleship, and thin red car are
metal pieces from an old Monopoly set my mom and siblings had. The little blue-green
plastic car in the back I purchases for 1 penny in the mid 70’s at the
“Souvenirs 1 Cent to 1 Dollar” shop in West Yellowstone. To the right of it is
a little green halftrack with claw that came as a prize in Botan Japanese rice
candy that we used to be able to buy here in the states before this kind of
thing was banned. The little green armored car in front of it came from a
gumball machine.
Last but not least is the red airplane on the right and the
two planes partially pictured beside it. They were prizes from Captain Crunch
cereal back when they put cool things like this inside the box. These are
famous World War 2 planes. The red one fully in the picture is a US P-51
Mustang, the yellow one is a Japanese Zero and the dark red that is barely
showing is a German JU-87.
