So as I was searching, a fairly strange car jumped at me from the bin. That was the Batmobil from The Batman: the Animated Series (BtAS). It was cheap, and I thought about maybe 2 seconds, and it landed in my shopping cart. I love that series, and I like Batman and his tech, and the Batmobil is definitely part of it. No wonder that every series and movie emphasised them and made them unique. I have 3 Lego Batmobiles as well. At home I unpacked that little car, and I like it. It is black, unlike the latest Lego set that comes in blue.

For a while I didn't really thought about HotWheels. While I heard about the brand, Matchbox was more prominent in Europe, I think. Certainly my part of the world. Here, people look down on adult collectors of things, like comicbooks, diecast cars, or brick based toys. So when I become adult, they disappeared from my life.

Then last week I was in the same shop, and I saw HotWheels, this time not in a bin, but on a stand, nier to the cashier. I had time, and I looked through them. Roughly around 30 cars were there, and if you don't want to make the line wait, you have like a minute or 2 to decide, if you want something. I spotted a nice Honda Civic, which I first put it back, but then, almost when I was next at the cashier, I thought about it again, and I put into my cart.

That Honda is now is next to my Batmobil on my monitor stand, and I love it. In fact I started playing Need for Speed: Underground, and guess what, one of the starting car is the same Civic! Call that fate or something.

Since then, I spent countless hours of searching through webshops to see how much they cost, and just in general what kind of cars I can get. When I collect something, or just the general "I want this", I either has to have an emotionally connection to it, like I couldn't really buy The Batman technic car, because I haven't seen the film yet, but one year later I bought it myself for Christmas, because I like the movie enough that I wanted it. Took me some time to build it, enjoyed it, and I like the car itself as well.

Or I just have to like the shape, colors, or just the brand. Another example is that I like rally cars, because I grow up watching rally when I was a kid, and the whole atmosphere is special, seeing those cars in real life, upclose, etc. I generally like some of the brands, especially Japanese or German cars for some reason. Probably that's why I choose the Civic.

Yesterday I was intentionally went hunting. I knew some places where you may get toycars, but had no luck. My last stop was the usual place, where I bought my first two cars. I was in luck as it had many new cars, even Matchbox, and I come him with a nice Jaguar Mk1 and a wonderfully blue Ford GT40.

I will probably change pictures later, but til then here are the first ones:

I really should have bought another Jaguar, because I want to open it up. In the long term I will probably open up more regular cars, and buy it in pairs if I can.

Searching for a stand or just a looking through a bucket of cars is a different experience than using your favorite privacy respecting search engine. Physical books have smell and textures, while little diecast cars have colors, shapes and a nice pictures on the package. Collecting is also different, because you are going hunting, and you may not find the things you are looking for, but you still want to end up with something.

Mainline HotWheels cars here usually cost around 2 euros (our currency is in the toilet right now, so it can change) in shops, however on the web it's double or triple of the price. Nevermind some on Amazon. The simple grey Civic is about 5-6 times the price that I bought it for! How the frak does this make sense?

My long term problem, that if I want to collect some of the rare stuff (just simple non-Mainline HW), then I either have to go to another city (I live in 2 hours from the capital), or have to use the web, which would cost shitton more.

I found this good video about collecting HW and diecast cars, and it's a really good help for beginner collectors like myself.

As always with most thing that I start, and get enthusiast about it, I can easily lose interest in a few weeks or months. So I will see, how long this will last.