Tell us what this hobby means to you? 13 questions answered by you, Michael Moskov from Glenwood Springs, Colorado, USA

We’re always looking for more collectors to feature on DiecastSociety.com Diecast Collector Of The Month (DCOTM). Click HERE for all the details! ** Remember, for your efforts all winning candidates will be mailed a pair of www.DiecastSociety.com decals! **

 

1) What first got you collecting diecast? How long have you been collecting? What is your total model count as of today?

I am not sure what exactly got me started collecting diecast. As little kids, we all played with Matchbox cars, but that is not really collecting. I think credit should go to my dad.
I grew up in Bulgaria, which was way behind the iron curtain, under the communist regime. This meant that anything “western” was “evil” (thank God I got raised differently). Therefore things like Matchbox cars, Hot Wheels or dare I say Bburago was basically nonexistent in the country. Of course, there were people who had them, but they were not sold anywhere. Just brought “from outside”. This made the possession of such items something special. They were really hard to come to by and you could often see adults have a “secret cabinet” with nicely arranged Matchbox cars in it.

I grew up in a somewhat poor family and my parents worked their buts off to provide for me and my brother. They did their very best to pretty much not lack anything. My dad worked ’till late and many times hit the bar on the way home. He would come next to my bed smelling of rubber from the tires he worked with and booze. And every time he would pull a tiny little box of a Polistill car. They were a whole series, just like the Matchbox cars, with pictures of the real car on the box and the little (1:64) car inside. At first, he used to bring me a different F1 car from them every once and a while and tell me about the guys who drove the cars. I remember the very first one he brought home was the Ferrari 312T of Niki Lauda. These not only became my most prized possessions but also started a love affair with cars in general and specifically with F1 and racing. I learned about Niki Lauda, Nelson Piquet, Emerson Fittipaldi, Villeneuve, etc..  So I guess that’s where the first sparks started flying. This was the late ’70s. Today, I am somewhere around the thousand mark. I haven’t counted them.

2) What was your first diecast or memory?

Other than what I already wrote above?  Well, there were these two kids in my neighbourhood. Both were spoiled brats. One by his father being a Communist party member and working in Austria and the other the opposite way, being a grandkid of someone who ran away in the US from the government. So the first had access to “goodies” from The West and the other had US dollars. Then there were these stores called Korekom that were for the “selected few” where you could only shop with US dollars. So the Commy kid had a really cool swiss army knife that the other kid really wanted. And things just happened that he lost his knife and a couple of days later I found it. So being a kid, I went and sold it to the US kid for $20. With the money, I went to the Korekom store and spent the money on buying a Bburago 1:24 scale Ferrari 288GTO which I remember was red and covered in stickers like a racing car. I remember spending the change on two packs of cigarettes that came in a cool square looking boxes. One was Rothmans, like the livery on the Porsche 959 on the poster on my wall and the other an all-black with gold letters JPS, just like on the lotus F1 cars from the ’70s that my dad used to bring me. I didn’t even smoke back then, but I thought it was cool to have fancy cigarettes.  LOL.  I still regret not giving the knife back to its rightful owner. It kinda eats me inside from time to time when I remember it, but we were just stupid kids and did a lot of stupid kid stuff. Maybe three days after I got the Ferrari I went back to the store and exchanged it for Bburago’s French Blue Bugatti Atlantic, which even at that early age, to me looked like the most beautiful car ever. THAT I did not regret.

3) What is your favourite scale, and why?

This is a tough question, which is easy to answer in the same time. I don’t have one. Some old Japanese toy-like models in 1:43 with little jewels for headlights gives me just as much pleasure as the Zonda R from AUTOart in 1:18. I love my 1:87 Herpa F40 just as much as my F40 from Pocher in 1:8. I like them all.

4) What are some of your favourite models to date? Did you share any photos with us?

Ohhh, that’s a hard one. It is really hard to say because I have different favourites for different reasons. Maybe Bburago’s F40 for being the first model I got in 1:18 and the model that probably started things to get more serious for me. That thing was way ahead of its time in therm of detail too. It is probably a Tie with Gilles Villeneuve’s Ferrari 312T4 from Exoto where he is holding the umbrella. This is a model that is not only finely crafted, but it just represents my all-time favourite racer in such a perfect way. It just has this feel about it, that has nothing to do with parts count or details. It just speaks to you, it has character.

5) Is there a model that has eluded you, a holy grail of sorts?

Well, I wouldn’t call it a Holy Grail. And honestly, I can still find it. I am just not willing to pay the crazy money for it. But I think I can qualify it here.  1993 Ferrari F93 of Jean Alesi by Minichamps in 1:18. One day I’ll get crazy and just buy it for whatever they ask for it, but this day has not come yet.

6) What is your favourite brand/manufacture, and why?

This is similar to the question about scale. I don’t have a favourite brand and I can honestly say I don’t believe in brands. It is just a name on a box. All the Limited Edition PR BS crap means nothing to me either. A good model is a good model no matter who made it and a crappy model is a crappy model no matter who made it the same way. Pretty much anyone out there has some really nice models and some incredible POS.
I love Ralph Lauren dress shirts. Not because they are POLO, but because they are pretty much NukeProof. You can wash them, dry them, bleach them all you want and 5 years later they look exactly like the day you bought them. I love Volcom jeans for the same reason. I go biking downhill with my armour under them and after 4 seasons of abuse, they finally broke at the pocket, where I keep my keys. The same way my Mattel Elite Scuderia kicks the crap out of my BBR SP1.

7) Describe your current theme and what your overall goal is?

Ah, that’s easy. Ferrari. My goal? Live long, collect them all.

8) Do you display your collection? If yes, how?

Some part of my collection is on display. A big part of it. I have a room in my house designated just for that. My wife and kids just call it my room, but everyone else jokingly calls it “the museum”. I have a variety of cases in it. I believe that if we can afford to spend a lot of money on models, we should spend some for displaying and protecting them.

9) Do you have any other hobbies, passions or addictions?

Unfortunately yes.  I love F1, HotRods, watches, good food and good wines. I love to cook at home (my wife has a hard time boiling water LOL) but I like to eat out and try different places. I love mountain bikes. Why do they have to cost so much? I LOVE…and I mean I L-O-V-E good single malt scotch. These starting at about $100 a bottle don’t help my model budget much either.

I am also an avid plastic kit builder, except I use the kits just for parts and usually build models the way I see fit. I think I better stop here, because I am starting to scare myself, realizing how many passions/addictions I have.

10) What do you think about the diecast hobby as it stands today?

I think it is doing just fine. It is evolving and changing just like everything else around us. People should either move with the change or get out of its way.

11) If you could change one thing about the diecast hobby what would that be?

There should be something done to prevent scumbags like Tony K and Exoto to run their schemes. Other than that I like it just the way it is. A little challenging, a little unpredictable and all fun. If we could get all the models and all the releases were coming exactly on time and all the manufacturers had perfect QC it would have been really really boring and we probably would just lose interest.

12) Do you modify cars? If yes, what are some examples?

Yes, I do. I have been in some form or another since I was eight or nine. When I was little there was a guy in the neighbourhood who collected little cars. He befriended me back then and I just visited him and his three daughters last year in Europe. I will never forget how I wanted a pink Cadillac in a Matchbox car. There wasn’t one, but he pulled a Thunderbird convertible from his stash, drilled the studs on the bottom and took it apart. He stripped the paint and mixed nail polish from his wife to get the pink. Then it was unbelievable as I watched him use a ladder in the middle of his kitchen to position this little jar with a straw on it at the level of his face. With his hands he held the tiny body of the car while he blew in the straw, painting my little T-Bird with what essentially was a crude homemade airbrush. Then he baked it in his oven, which his wife was not too happy about.

Ever since then I modified all my toys. I remember painting a whole dozen of really cool Matchbox cars all black with a marker and calling them “the Black Mafia” when playing with them. My dad was going to kill me when he found out.  Our days it is at a lot higher level. I modify and build models for a living and also produce my own parts.

13) What is your 1:1 daily driver?

I am not allowed to have any sports cars under threat of divorce, so I drive a Subaru Legacy Limited Wagon. It has some things done to it that my wife either does not understand or does not know about. It lets me kiss 140mph once every two weeks while keeping it under the radar.