Any other collections

[romiin]

 Or is trains a full time hobby. Just curious if anyone dabbles in any other hobby or collectables.

[Brian Miller]

Too many to list.   Dinkys, red line hot wheels,  GI joes, wind up and tin toys, gas memorabilia, phonographs, radios, music boxes, Large pressed steel trucks, juke boxes, coin op, coke machines, etc, etc.

[Brian Miller]

If I would only collect trains, I would have quite the collection.  Not the measly 5000 pieces I have.

[romiin]

  you have 5000 train pieces? whoa!

[Terry]

I've collected a lot of different things over the years, but I've never collected food stamps. The one time I looked into them, I was told I had too many cars. I'm back up to 3 now. For 18 months I was down to only 2 vehicles.

I have 1954-62 Tonka trucks above my kitchen cabinets:

 

 

The red dump truck with sand loader is from 1962/63, the rest are all from the 1950s. The green one  on the far right is a Smith Miller Armored car. It's not a Tonka but it's neat.

These all came from the original owners as a result of me asking people if they have any old toys when I was in their homes buying trains. Before I did the Tonkas I had a nice group of Doepke vehicles acquired the same way.

To me it's about the seeking. I like the Tonka step vans. They made about 15 different ones with advertising on them. In 3-4 months you could buy a nice example of each on eBay. No challenge to that.

The one collection that was fun was the advertising button collection. Every time I saw someone with a button I asked for it. I did that for years and filled two 5-gallon buckets with them. I still find them in drawers and mixed in with other clutter.

[romiin]

  I like that grader you have Terry looks pretty cool

[Brian Miller]

The vast majority of serious collectors that I have meet have at least one other area of collecting interest.  The trains were usually the main area that the money and time went to, but the secondary ones were also important.

[Terry]

The grader goes with the 3 orange trucks on either side of it as a 4-peice set from 1957ish in the Tonka State Hiway set.  Not the dump with the yellow bed and sandloader on the far left. I bought that with a bunch of trains and it was in a large box. I thought it was the original box, but it was a box for a rare Hoover Vacuum.

Tonka made a truck with a low-boy trailer for the grader to ride on. I had one from a different buy, but it was beat up and then painted over the dirt so I sold it.

[romiin]

  Hats off to those that held on to all these collectables.  Most of the toys we had as kids probably ended up in the land fill.  I will never forget a neighbor kid had every piece you could get of Gi joe. set. probably worth a small fortune today.

[early0electric]

Well, I have Spook Stories cards and stickers, both series and also a series 1 set with ghost eyes which is very hard to come by. Of the 48 stickers, I have 42. I also have a dormant collection of about 150-200 Halloween postcards dating from the turn of the century (1900) to about 1920. I have Winsch's, Clapsaddle's, Wall's, Schmucker's and more.

[romiin]

 I have no preference, Some stuff I buy is folk art. If it catches my eye I'll buy

[romiin]

  Grab this little guy today, now before you get all that's not old. Surprisingly enough it is 50yrs old. We're getting older boys. Stuff from even the 70's is getting there now. The Lady I got it from said she got it for a gift in 1972