I enjoy Marty's videos. I have quite a few vintage Matchbox models awaiting restoration once the "man cave" is finished. Quite a few parts are now available to restore Matchbox, Corgi, Hot Wheels and Dinky toys. Far cheaper than restoring the real ones! 

That turned out quite nicely. Funny, I owned many Matchbox cars including the same '60 Parisienne convertible, plus a 2-tone blue '59 Impala coupe, a bronze Sunbeam Alpine & a yellow '62 Thunderbird. They vanished in 1972 when the sandbox my friend & I were playing in disappeared when we went away for a few hours and was replaced with a pool shed while we were gone.

cdnpont wrote:

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I loved Matchbox. Back in the mid 60's in Hamilton, every Saturday my father would take me to the variety store on Concession St and let me choose one, by number from the display case.

By 1967 when we moved to a new house in Burlington, I had amassed a small bucket of these cars, and as such I put many miles on them running the dirtpile in our new backyard. One day in the summer of 68 someone scoffed them all as they sat out overnight. I was devastated, but it was just then the Hotwheel craze broke, so I moved off the dirt and onto the Orange track. I had grown up.

But no joke, I still wonder what happened to those cars, even after all these years.

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Mark, you are probably referring to Booth's Hobbies on Concession Street near Henderson Hospital (as it was called back then). I remember that store back in the 1970s for models & railroad stuff. In Ancaster we had Ancaster Gift & Toy, always well-stocked with AMT models, Matchbox, Dinky Toy, Corgi Toy & Tonka stuff. It was owned by Mrs. Newman. She didn't mind us looking at stuff but if we came in too frequently and didn't buy she would kick us out of the store. All the toy brochures I had from those days got tossed by my mom after I moved out. Only a 1968 Dinky Toy brochure remains.

Getting toys stolen was always jarring. I mean when I was a kid & even a teenager we could leave the doors unlocked in Ancaster. A while back I met an old childhood friend & neighbor. He told me about a truck of his that got wrecked by me as a kid. Then I remembered from over 50 years ago that I broke his 1966 Chevrolet C10 pickup promo so I could grab the 327 from under the hood. Bad, I know. I also had my '68 Riviera promo smashed during a birthday party scuffle in '68.

Hot Wheels, man they were popular back then. We all had many of them.

I lived for Matchbox and Corgi cars as a kid. I would get a $1.00 allowance every week. There was a K-Mart nearby that had lots of Matchbox cars on the rack. I eventually had hundreds of them. On my birthday I'd get $10 which was usually enough to head over to the big display case at the back of the store that was full of the larger Corgi vehicles. For my fifth birthday I bought a Corgi Mack Truck with an Esso tanker trailer. Sixth birthday was a Mack truck with a flatbed trailer hauling two sea containers. Seventh birthday was the crane used to lift those containers. Eighth was a Corgi semi that hauled gravel. Ninth birthday was a Mack military flat deck semi hauling a Centurion tank (I still have that one). I have since purchased all the other trucks mint in the original boxes. I still need to get the crane.