Every collector seems to have their own preferences on how to store their models. I have always been partial to the 24 and 48-car “egg crate” style cases. These were originally developed my Matchbox back in the very early 60’s, though the first ones had cardboard dividers. They actually hold up remarkably well (I know because I own several of those old ones) but the plastic inserts developed in the late 60s were superior, and soon there were half a dozen or more companies making them, all more or less of the same basic design.
I have over 50 of these cases in my toy room holding all my die-casts. It was only natural, then, that I would continue to use them for my T-Jets. The bad thing is, these cases are expensive to buy. They’ve been out of production for a while now; the versions made today, which are a solid piece of extruded plastic without removable trays, are cheap junk my opinion, and completely unacceptable to a collector like me, so I will only use the original vinyl covered cardboard ones with the removable egg crates, and I always prefer the 48-car size to the 24. Because these cases are necessary, but they aren’t really exciting, it’s kind of a drag sometimes having to spend all that money on something that’s only for storage, especially considering the postage on these items is also high because they are large and bulky.
I’ve had 4 of these 48 car cases for my Auto World Ultra G racing fleets for a while now. 2 are for the Muscle Cars and 2 for the sports cars. 2 of the 4, though, were in really bad shape. I bought them because I got them cheap, but a while ago, the lid from one of them, which was held on only by threads of unbroken vinyl at the edges, detached completely, and that made me realize it was time to get some nicer cases to replace the ones I’d been using for 4 years: after all, a collection of T-Jets this nice deserves nice garages!
I also needed another one for my now-relaunched “Get Backs” project which is continuing apace, and so I decided to use a good chunk of this month’s toy money to buy 3 new cases; two are replacements for the Ultra G slot car fleets, and one is an addition for the die-cast “Get Backs.”
My first T-Jet case was this Tara design from the early 80’s showing a drawing of several cars of various types, and for no reason other than uniformity (my OCD again) I stuck with this design, since its not too hard to find, but coming across good ones at reasonable prices has been a challenge. I got one of these recent buys for a fair price, but the other cost quite a mint. But hey, I needed two of them, so I had to do what I had to do!
For the Get Backs case I decided to get another red one to match the original Get Backs case, but the design on the lid is different; this one I actually haven’t seen before and didn’t have already, so that’s kind of cool. Although the structure is slightly different, this one was also made by Tara Toy Corp, probably a newer design that I would guess is from the early to mid 90’s.
All 3 of these are in excellent condition but with postage included set me back nearly $200, so that’s a good amount of scratch I can’t spend on cars, but you have to have a place to park ‘em, and that just can’t be neglected. I also never fail to buy some of the loose trays if I ever come across decent ones for sale on the usual sites at low prices, since you never know when you’re going to find another good deal on a case that’s in good shape, but missing some of the trays, so having extras around is always a good idea.
The Tara Toy Corp was incorporated in New York in the mid 1970’s and has made a variety of playthings of various types over the years, but toy storage bins and cases have always been a specialty of theirs, and as you see by the pics in this post, they’ve been commissioned over the years by all the big names to make car cases, as well as their numerous generic designs through the years. Although there is some variety in construction methods over time, these cases are generally of high quality and durable and I’ve always been happy with them: they stack easily, open wide, and the structure of the 48-car design provides an easy way to remove the top trays and display both pairs of trays either side by side or by placing the top trays on the lid when its’ flipped open. It was easy, though, since this design was a copy of the original that couldn’t really be improved on. Their own design was the 72-car tower that I profiled here! These are hard to find and expensive, but this is what I bought for my Aurora originals back when I thought I’d stop buying them at 72 cars. HA HA! I’m going to need 2 more of them to hold The Road Crew now, which means I’d best set aside some more money for more cases, because…you know…
“More cars is always good!”
Leave it to you to make even a conversation about cases interesting! Besides being better and cooler, I think it’s totally appropriate to store these cars in the kind of cases they would have been in when new. It feels right and for practical reasons, seems like the best way to store a collection like yours!