:wave: Greetings all;

I still remember the summer day me & a friend went to buy this T-Jet 500 Pontiac GTO conv. in 1970. We went to Bob's Hobby shop on Gravesend neck Rd. in Brooklyn.This car got so much use that the metal on the old armature was worn off & it is on its 2nd armature. The brush springs wore out & I installed brush tubes in the original chassis.The crown gear was also changed due to wear & lost count of changes of brushes, p/u shoes & g.p.The rear Bumper came off & I tried to re-attach it with a soldering iron & burned the lower rear wheel well.It fell off again & was lost.I sculpted a new one out of plastic wood in the '70's. I later installed a repro bumper from 3R (Stefaniak era).This is one car with too many memories to ever sell !

Still crazy after all these (36) years !

Neal :dude:

great story! :thumbsup: i wish i knew about the former lives of some of the tjets i've collected over the last few years. man, if these cars could talk...

--rick

That is great!
I take it that is the original chassis under that GTO?
It proves that they keep on going and going and going...

Neal! How cool is that!
It is easy to see how they become more than just toys. They become......what......buddies?!

Thanks for sharing that cool car and neat memory! :thumbsup:

Very cool story. I have a few with similar lineage. This reminds me of why I have never regretted playing with my slot cars when I was a kid instead of squirreling them away for "collector" value. A mint GTO like this may bring you a hundred bucks on E-Bay today, but you simply can't put a price on the joy that this GTO has brought to you over the last 36 years.

I have some of my own personal GI Joes with history like that and a few other things like models, trains, Hotwheels and Matchbox, Ideal and Gilbert building sets and Schwinn bikes, but no original slotcars.

I do have some of my friends original collection though.

I actually think I started liking them better in the 80s than I did in the 60s.

I'd love to see a picture of that original armature. Great story. This is my favorite part of this hobby. Randy.

one of my first cars was the afx green/blue pinto funny car, it was traded to a neighborhood kid when I was about 15. about ten years later when we started racing back up I found that that kid didn't have any of the collection anymore, but I knew the guy he traded them to. bought back the 33 car collection (all afx tjet and older tyco) for 70.00 with a buddy of mine. we took turns picking cars and he nabbed the pinto first pic........dammit, but a few years later he was cool and traded it back. now I'll never get rid of it.

story 2.
the first car I remember buying was a white ford gt (tjet). forgot about it, sold it on fleabay and had the guy write back saying he wasn't happy with the car, I think it was a wear spot on the stripe, I gave him a full refund, even on return shipping, because when he wrote he was unhappy thats when I realized I sold the first car I bought, and was so happy to get it back.

story 3..lol...this is why I can't sell anything.
when we where kids Dad bought "his" slotcar that no one was allowed to touch, it sat there in its case on the hutch, not to be raced but admired. the Good Humor Truck. well I snatched that baby outta there and had it in my case as soon as dad forgot about it.........14 years ago my dad passed away, and i'll always hold that truck dear to my heart. and I have the hutch now too.
BTW, about a month or so before he passed away I raced him with the white ford gt in story #2 above, I gave him the blue lighted mint Ferrari, which was tons faster and he kicked my ass and was so happy to brag about it to everyone. (blue ferrari, another keeper)
alright, I'll stop hogging all the board space with my stories. but sometimes talking/writing about them brings back all the memories.

story 3..lol...this is why I can't sell anything.
-snip-
alright, I'll stop hogging all the board space with my stories. but sometimes talking/writing about them brings back all the memories.

Don't stop... good stories. :)

GP

These are the cars that I still have from my childhood.

1580 International Semi slate blue/black Aurora
1364 International Tow tan/black Aurora alum Silicone
Hot Rod Coupe turquoise Aurora custom/painted purple
1401 Willys blue Aurora no rear bumper blue Silicone
'63 Buick Riviera red Aurora painted white
1405 McLaren BRM red Aurora lowpro siliconex4 slimline
1406 Repco Brabham green Aurora lowpro siliconex4 slimline
1370 A C Cobra white/red Aurora
1371 '65 Mustang conv turquoise Aurora
1373 '65 Mustang 2+2 turquoise/black Aurora
'65 Mustang 2+2 turquoise Aurora painted purple
1374 Ford GT white/black Aurora alum Silicone
1495 Cobra GT blue/white Aurora flameflower
1376 Porsche 906 yellow/red Aurora
Porsche 906 olive/white Aurora painted green
1378 Lola GT blue/white Aurora
Mako Shark turquoise Aurora alum Silicone
1381 Dino Ferrari blue/white Aurora AJ 007
1388 '67 Camaro turquoise Aurora alumx4 Silicone painted blue
1479 '67 Cougar white/butterscotch Aurora tuff one
Dune Buggy conv green Aurora siliconewhitewallx4
Dune Buggy coupe red Aurora AJ 007
1478 '68 Firebird yellow black Aurora tuff one
Dodge Pickup red Tyco Silicone
Mercedes C-111 mkII orange TycoPro Silicone
I'll never forget going to my friends house around the fall of '64 and he had a small layout on a 4x4 piece of plywood. I was hooked and couldn't get my parents to the store fast enough to get my own setup. I must have had alot more that those listed above, cause I sure have alot of spare parts. From that point on I've always had a track set up wherever I lived.
hojoe

when i got divorced my ex took all my race cars and hid them in spite of everything i did keep my track tho

I wish we still had all of our slotcars. we had both HO and 1/32. We lost it all to a flooded basement of mud, sewerage, and rain water. There was a foot and a half of crud in the basement and all of the slot stuff was on the bottom shelfs Dad got rid of everything that was in the water no questions asked.

when i got divorced my ex took all my race cars and hid them in spite of everything i did keep my track tho
Death would have shortly followed, her's that is, LOL.

My parents bought me a track when I was six. It came with a red lola gt and tan Mako Shark. It was mounted on a yellow fiberglass frame. I could carry it around, plug it in and it was ready to go. I have never seen a track on the mounted fiberglass since then. It had two levels with the first turn being a loop of 9" radius turns to get to the second level, then the third turn was an opposite loop of 9" radius turns to bring it back down.
I remember the skinny T-jet wheels sliding like crazy around those loops.
Eventually, I had to take it off the fiberglass so I could extend a straight section off of one of the loops.
Jim

Of the cars I had when I was a kid, only one remained in my possession after my step brother raided my stuff in the mid 80's... The AFX Porsche Carrea.

When I first staring collecting, my first goal was to cellect the cars of my youth.. after that, I went nuts and started collecting cars from all over

I;m a junkie now.

My first set was the AFX Pit Row Special. Christmas present around 1972. It came with the dark blue and yellow Ferrari 512 and the yellow and black Corvette funny car. I still have the Ferrari. Many miles, many smiles, and great memories to last a life time.

My first set? Dad bought a BIIIIIG Tycopro set when I was about 4 or 5. (I think it was more for him than for me. :D ) I still have the white Chapparal and the silver/red Porsche, or what's left of them. I used that old Tyco snap-lock track as long as I could with lots of AFX and MT cars, till I finally had more track sections with broken tabs than good ones. At some point before I got my driver's license I stumbled upon a big clearance lot of oddball Faller track pieces at a train-oriented hobby store, and I used it to replace the Tyco stuff for a while...

--rick

My first set was not an HO but 1:43 scale, Jouef brand (french)
I was around 8 or 9 and received it for Christmas

I still remember that the powerpack was bright orange, and the 2 cars were a white BMW 3.5 CSL and a blue Alpine Renault A110.

I'm tempted sometimes to buy these 2 cars as it's easy to find 'em on eeBaay France, just to have them: will maybe do it one day...


Concerning HO, I fell in love with them really really later and the first impulse was simply done by finding in a basket case at a yard sale, a car that was small as a Matchbox or HotWheels but with electrical contacts at the bottom...And because it was a Mustang and that my daily driver was a Mustang too, I bought it.

WOW it suddenly reminds me all the pleasure I could have with the Alpine and BMW of my childhood, so I decided to check a little more on the web and discovered that there was so many people loving and involved in HO slot cars that I jump in the wagon: the rest is history (and lot of cash spent too)

My friends think I'm totally nut to collect small plastic electrified cars for, that can't even been found in our toy shops in Switzerland (except some times during Christmas), but bought only from boards or eeeBay or some (too rare) find in yard sales.

This is the culprit of my HO slot cars addiction

http://slotcar.zanzaman.com/images_slotcars_big/092.jpg