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organizing your diecast collection
Topic Started: Jul 10 2014, 01:08 PM (1,393 Views)
daniel60
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Personal Luxury Car
Well things started out well. I loved seeing all my Johnny Lightning 1955 Fords and Chevys lined up but then it came to the rest of the stuff. Don't, Don't ever try to do this. It will take hours I started about 0930 and now it's 1405 and my legs and ankles are breaking from trying to store them correctly in the plastic storage containers. I wish I haven't ever started. I still haven't showered and I'm exhausted and there still is crap everywhere. I would love to just throw away the hot Wheel entry cars. They are worth nothing to me.

Anyone else tried this? Did you go crazy trying it? I know I did. I have been off this week and thought I would do the crap that needed to be done. Geez I need to go back to work. It's time to get away from this free time it's freaking making me work harder.
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jedimario
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RAWR
I can never decide how I'd want to organize them. By die-cast company? By car brand? Separate the racecars? I just throw them all in Jammers and hope my collection doesn't get so large that it takes more than a half hour to glance through it.
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250 TR
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Oh man, sore subject with me. I have room to display about 1000 cars, and at last count had 1500. I keep pulling regular hot wheels of the shelf to make room but am adding them faster than I get rid of them. In the past when I actually could fit everything, I had one shelf for all Non Kyosho Ferrari's, one for Kyosho's of any make, one for Hot Wheels 100%, and then all other makes and brands on other shelves.

Now my Kyosho's take up three shelves and I've got I've got a lot more variety in everything else, I don't think it makes sense for me to break up the cars by diecast brand anymore. I think what I am going to do is seperate them by country. Italian cars will probably fill an entire bookshelf, and then I'll split the other bookshelf between European, Asian and American cars. Within each county's grouping I will put all race cars first followed by all road cars, and then seperate each of those subgroups in order of brand. So for instance on Ferrari's I'm thinking the order of display will be:
Kyosho Ferrari race cars
Ferrari race cars of other brands
Kyosho Ferrari road cars
Hot Wheels Ferrari Racers series:
Hot Wheels Premium Ferrari's (100%, Retro, etc)
Vintage Brands (Lesney, Penny, Speedy, Aurora, etc)
Mainline HW, MB, etc
Cheap brands like Summer

I can think of a few issues in doing it that way, but of all the ways I've thought about displaying them that seems to be the most logical for the way my collection is now
Edited by 250 TR, Jul 10 2014, 02:15 PM.
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carcollector
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The organizing of a collection is a great adventure ;) . My great problem is that I collect a very great number of Diecast Cars, there are HW's, MBX some Sikus and Majorette's in the bigger scales are Dinkys,
Corgis, Cararamas, Starline, a great number of models from the East from brands like Atlas Collection, Schuco....... and than a lot of 1/24 and 1/18 scale models. And if that would not be enough I've a great
variety of Grell Models too. Organizing all those brands is very difficult even when you've place to put them into shelves, a great number are displayed by Manufacturer (Corgis togheter, Starlilne's toghether)
others are displayed in order to put all Porsche's or all Mustang's together.
When I receive new models I make a pic of that model and then put it into an Access List with the name of the manufacturer, the year, the brand, the Model, the color, the collecting number and information if it is boxed or not. My great problem is that I do this only the last few month and as I'm collecting for about 40 years :wacko: Model Cars I'll have work to do for the next years and years and years..... :toy: :o

Patrick :wave:
Edited by carcollector, Jul 10 2014, 03:01 PM.
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daniel60
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Personal Luxury Car
Great stories guys. I use to store them by manufacturer, like Chevrolet or Ford and then I got this great idea to go by manufacturer and year of car. Oh boy did I get over my head. Then I said lets keep the better cars within this parameter then I went nuts. Then you didn't see one and then you are getting crazier then a coon cleaning his hands covered with grease.
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cody6268
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Minivan
Tried numerous times to organize mine in the carry cases. I gave up.

I counted them about two years ago and came up with about 250. But, I only counted MB's or HW's. Adding the others might double that.
Edited by cody6268, Jul 10 2014, 05:40 PM.
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funeralxempire
SUV
Trying to organize my collection has been an exercise in futility.

Everything is tossed into random (mostly unlabelled) jammer cases with one labelled 'big US/Aus', two labelled 'pony cars', one labelled 'sports/exotics' and another 'lux/exotics'. The other 8 are blank.

I have about 500 cars scattered through out my room too, but they'd all be unlabelled case bait.
Edited by funeralxempire, Jul 10 2014, 03:57 PM.
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Hosspower98
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Forever Blue Oval
Simple:

Mustangs & Shelby Mustangs - (1600+) 1:64 scale, M2, AW, GL, SC, JL and HW 100%.
Shelby Cobras, Cyclones and a spattering of other Fords - (200+) 1:64 scale, GL, HS, SC, JL and HW 100%.
Ford trucks all years - (750+) 1:64, 1:43 scale. M2, GL, Jada, HS, RC, YM, RChamps, MBX and HW.

All Mustangs, Cyclones, Shelby Cobras except M2 cars and trucks are in Jammers. Each M2 model is displayed in acrylic cases.
All JL, MBX and HW Ford trucks are in Jammers. All 1:43 trucks, MBX, RChamps, RC, YM are displayed.

Any miscellaneous products like Motor Max, Maisto, Upper Deck etc are displayed in HW wall mounted 32 compartment wimpy plastic thingies.
20+ New York State Police vehicle examples in various scales are displayed.

As you might know, as a new car arrives, it is photographed, entered into a Photo Database and promptly uploaded to my "Latest Grabs" thread at Swifty's. It is also entered on a spreadsheet. I can seek out and find any model within minutes.
Edited by Hosspower98, Jul 10 2014, 04:04 PM.
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daniel60
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Personal Luxury Car
Hosspower98
Jul 10 2014, 04:01 PM
Simple:

Mustangs & Shelby Mustangs - (1600+) 1:64 scale, M2, AW, GL, SC, JL and HW 100%.
Shelby Cobras, Cyclones and a spattering of other Fords - (200+) 1:64 scale, GL, HS, SC, JL and HW 100%.
Ford trucks all years - (750+) 1:64, 1:43 scale. M2, GL, Jada, HS, RC, YM, RChamps, MBX and HW.

All Mustangs, Cyclones, Shelby Cobras except M2 cars and trucks are in Jammers. Each M2 model is displayed in acrylic cases.
All JL, MBX and HW Ford trucks are in Jammers. All 1:43 trucks, MBX, RChamps, RC, YM are displayed.

Any miscellaneous products like Motor Max, Maisto, Upper Deck etc are displayed in HW wall mounted 32 compartment wimpy plastic thingies.
20+ New York State Police vehicle examples in various scales are displayed.

As you might know, as a new car arrives, it is photographed, entered into a Photo Database and promptly uploaded to my "Latest Grabs" thread at Swifty's. It is also entered on a spreadsheet. I can seek out and find any model within minutes.
No doubt you have it figured out Jack. Organizing 101. :thumbup:
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juantoo3
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FWIW Daniel, I initially had mine *mostly* sorted by make like Ford and Chevy, had my Limey cars in one jammer, Asian cars (mostly Japanese) in another jammer. I didn't realize at the time how easy it made comparing across makers (HW, MBX, JL, etc). I did have a couple jammers dedicated to Impy, EFSI, Kenner and some other obscure brands, but they were primarily foreign makes anyway (except the EFSI Model Ts). I've always kept my HW redlines and JL Toppers separate, but those two frequently got mixed together.

One day I got the brilliant idea to sort by makers *and* by makes...it took me all the free time I could find for about two weeks to sort through, and I finally reached a point where I stopped where I was at and let it go. Mostly it is done, but my JL jammers still are not sorted by make. The upside is now I can find some of my more obscure brands that I have maybe 50 or less of, like Tomica, Yatming and Zee. And there are some that I don't have room for (extra JLs, RCs, Ertls) that ended up in a mixed bag jammer anyway.

If I knew in advance what a PITA it would be, I would have left well enough alone. But done is done, and at least I can find pretty much what I'm looking for now, but I still need more storage boxes to sort them out to make up for the mixed bag and some other overflow from HW and MBX. I rotate through some of my display pieces, but I'm to a point now where what is out on display are those models I don't really want to put away...everything I've pulled has been a real mental challenge to put away, but room needed to be made for new models I like a great deal better.

The upside is finding them again 6 months or a couple years later and getting the pleasant surprise like Christmas all over again.

I keep telling myself I need to thin the herd. Maybe a donation to the local Salvation Army is in order...
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daniel60
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Personal Luxury Car
If I knew what PITA it would be, that's funny as heck. But sorry I haven't been able to figure out the FWIW. Thanks for your comments Wesley.
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juantoo3
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FWIW=For What It's Worth
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jjot3
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Microcar
I enter everything in to a spreadsheet with multiple tabs. Carded (Hot Wheels), Red Line Club (Hot Wheels), Loose, Sales, Expenses, Trades, Misc.

Most of my loose cars are older Hot Wheels redlines and blackwalls and Matchbox cars. I keep those in Jammer cases as well as several of the old original collectors carry cases. I used to "store" my carded cars on those black racks you could buy at Michaels and AC Moore, but soon had too many cars. Now, they're stored in cardboard bankers boxes.

Unfortunately, although my spreadsheets are current, don't even bother asking me to find which box a particular car is in! That's my next step . . .

Like others who have posted above, I think a thinning of the herd is in order very soon . . .

I like the idea of an Access database with photos. However, with 1500-plus cars (and growing), it would be a time-consuming task.

Finally, I also collect horror-themed action figures. Those alone take up 9 or 10 of those huge plastic storage bins!

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craftymore
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Support your local demo derby.

The majority of my loose cars are in Jammer cases. Think what others I have will end up in single plastic bags and tossed in a storage container. The rest of my stuff is either displayed on shelves, in a display case or still on the card hanging on push pins. It's not ideal but it's reality!
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poorvanner
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*In Memory Of*
jjot3
Jul 15 2014, 11:10 AM
I enter everything in to a spreadsheet with multiple tabs.
I like the idea of an Access database with photos. However, with 1500-plus cars (and growing), it would be a time-consuming task.

Actually quite easy to convert Excel spreadsheet lists to an Access Database.
Just make sure all column titles are exactly the same across the spreadsheets, and they can be put right in.
I am doing mine in Excel spreadsheets, one file for each mfg, one tab for each casting.
When I finally do make a move to Access, I will need to go through them all and recheck those titles. Set up a query and away we go.
Just as an aside, I am not currently using MS Excel, too expensive. I am using Open Office, which is free. I do save the files in Excel format.
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SeberHusky
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Station Wagon
I sort by brand. And then within the brand, sort by year. For companies like YatMing, Kenner, etc with impossible-to-pin-a-year-on models, I just sort by brand.

Hot Wheels
>1980
>1981
>1982
>1983

Matchbox
>1960
>1961
>1962
..etc
Edited by SeberHusky, Jul 16 2014, 04:08 AM.
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toyotageek
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Japanese Minicar Maniac
poorvanner
Jul 15 2014, 02:54 PM
jjot3
Jul 15 2014, 11:10 AM
I enter everything in to a spreadsheet with multiple tabs.
I like the idea of an Access database with photos. However, with 1500-plus cars (and growing), it would be a time-consuming task.

Actually quite easy to convert Excel spreadsheet lists to an Access Database.
Just make sure all column titles are exactly the same across the spreadsheets, and they can be put right in.
I am doing mine in Excel spreadsheets, one file for each mfg, one tab for each casting.
When I finally do make a move to Access, I will need to go through them all and recheck those titles. Set up a query and away we go.
Just as an aside, I am not currently using MS Excel, too expensive. I am using Open Office, which is free. I do save the files in Excel format.
For those of us not in the know.... is there a benefit of one or the other regarding Excel vs Access? Advantages? Disadvantages? Ease of use?

I've attempted to use Excel for my collection on several occasions, but always fail in updating my lists... :(
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jedimario
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RAWR
I just have everything in a single page of an Excel spreadsheet sorted by the car's make. Columns for model (Mustang, 911 Turbo, Civic, etc.), year that the car was manufactured if available (a Hot Wheels model of a 1992 Mustang that HW first released in 2006 would be listed as 1992, for example), color (followed by a description of any additional paint details where applicable), wheel color, common scale (a Matchbox with 1/60 listed on the base goes in as 1/64), and finally the die-cast brand- not company.

The second page in the file has a few pivot tables that let me easily access some basic stats based on the first page. At any point in time I can look up how many BMWs or Kyoshos or 1/43 scale models I have, it's quite nice :) With that capability, I don't feel like I need to jump to access.
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Douglas
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SUV
Hosspower98
Jul 10 2014, 04:01 PM
I can seek out and find any model within minutes.
I was once able to do this too, find most any model in minutes, and that was with thousands of cars in the collection too.....now it could take me a couple/few hours just to get to the box that may, or maybe not, contain what I'm looking for. :D

I like to sort by brand, and then sort them further within each brand, except for a couple small sub-collections which might be mixed brands, or maybe I should say I use to do all that, but then I moved from nearly 1000 sq.ft. down to about 600 sq ft, much of it got mixed when packing for the move, and with little display space most of it is still in boxes.

I never did catalog anything, but then I always seemed to just know what I had and what I didn't when I was out hunting new or even resale models.....but now I'm a little older than I was then, and when I'm out and see a model I like, I have to scratch my head sometimes wondering if I already have that variation packed in a box somewhere....of course some of that confusion could come from the fact that I don't have many of the models on display as they once were, when I could see them, enjoy them, and so knew what I had.

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Jeff Koch
Compact
daniel60
Jul 10 2014, 01:08 PM
I started about 0930 and now it's 1405 and my legs and ankles are breaking from trying to store them correctly in the plastic storage containers.
It took me six months of evenings to sort and catalog my display in 2002. Then in 2011 when I changed my display method, it took me another couple of weeks of evenings to get everything how I liked it. Still not satisfied, but things are better than they were.





jk
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b2young
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Sad firefighter
New guy here....I'm at least 1000 models behind in my catalog....and there are already more than 5000 models listed there (in a Filemaker Pro database). Couldn't for the life of me make Excel work as a database; like Dug-my-toys above, I end up with multiples of some castings simply because I have no idea what I already have. I've tried carrying photos or segments of my db on my phone to help me avoid duplication, but that takes too long in a store.

Displaying them is not easy, either. About 2000 on display, the rest in jammers cases (only a few cases....too expensive...) and see-thru tubs from Sterilite/Rubbermaid, etc. Brands or scale or what they're made of have suited me so far.

For instance, I have a lot of European HO-scale plastic....all displayed together on some bookshelves. Also some pre- and post-WWII slush metal all on one shelf, different brands/mfrs. Auburn rubber--and other rubber/vinyl makes--together. Matchbox/HW/Corgi etc diecast mostly displayed by brand in their own bookshelf---but not changed in 10 years (scads more to add, just need to rearrange EVERYTHING to make room.)

Even as a retiree, with "all the time in the world" available, there's just too much to do to get my collection to where I want it. I have to have a "life" outside the toy room, you know? As a desperate last-ditch effort to be able to locate models in those big bins, I managed to get the Matchbox MOC items sorted into bins by type, so at least I can just grab a bin to see if I already have something I've spied online or in a store. But the piles of recent purchases, kinda thrown together in piles, is a major hindrance. Uncatalogued, so NOT placed into sorted bins or displayed until they're in the catalog. I have at least 19 50-60 quart bins filled with diecast. Overwhelming.

Time for an episode of Hoarders, Buried Alive to visit me? Not yet....but some day.
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clem24
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Station Wagon
Spreadsheet would be a nightmare LOL.. I am way too lazy for that. For the moment, my 'priority brands' (Tomica, AW, GL, and some others) get space in the Jammers. DLM'ed MBX are tossed into a small plastic clear jeweler's bag and into a Tupperware. I try to leave all my HW's carded so it doesn't face the same issues as the MBX.

To see what I have, I basically take pictures of everything on my phone like this so I can easily see it when I am out shopping.. B)

Posted Image
Attached to this post:
Attachments: WP_20140311_23_04_03_Pro.jpg (159.81 KB)
Edited by clem24, Jul 29 2014, 03:53 PM.
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poorvanner
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*In Memory Of*
toyotageek
Jul 16 2014, 08:50 AM
For those of us not in the know.... is there a benefit of one or the other regarding Excel vs Access? Advantages? Disadvantages? Ease of use?

I've attempted to use Excel for my collection on several occasions, but always fail in updating my lists... :(
I don't think there is any real advantage from one to the other.
If you make a database in Excel, then there is a bunch of set up stuff that has to happen before you can print reports, or sort lists out of it. Access is easy to do that. If you just want a list, Excel works well.

I sort by manufacturer, then casting.
All Mfg's get a file, then each casting get a sheet by itself within the file.
Assign them a number on a row, then some details. A small removable sticker on the base with the number on it.
Most of mine are loose, so in a jammer case or other case they go.
I only have 3 inch models done like this, and not all of them. Want to do them all, someday, someday, somehow.
And I also fail miserably in keeping updates current. New stuff sits in rows next to my keyboard waiting until I have a moment.
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GMack64
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Compact
Mine I sort by model year as nowadays I only buy road/street cars up to 1990, divided into decades 50's 60's etc.. Film cars I sort by year of 1st screening..and my old matchbox's by the years that they came out eg: '68 to '78.
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Atencio
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Station Wagon
I use Evernote as a database. Similar to Access but with mobile versions it looks prettier and I use it for work and saving Internet articles as well. Auto-Syncs with other devices so I can work on it off my phone, ipad, or computer.
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