| Ever since the first actual automobiles began to appear, there has been a veritable deluge of toys and models of them which have varied greatly in material, form of power, size, and fidelity of reproduction. There were early models of wood, iron, tin, and steel. Many were not powered, but an enormous number of them were self-propelling. There were “friction” cars, often called ‘hill-climbers,” in which a heavy iron flywheel stored up the. energy to give them momentum; there were an infinite number of clockwork models, ranging from very cheap productions to steel miniatures with triple springs, working clutches, and gearshifts. Collecting model automobiles became, and still is, a widespread and growing hobby, with clubs in many large countries. Collections, such as that of the Reverend Richard E. Matera may include hundreds of models.
Model car collecting has several aspects. First, like Reverend Matera, some people collect models which are, themselves, old—miniatures that were produced in past decades contemporaneously with the real cars they represent. It should be noted that old model cars should be left in their original condition, no matter how poor it may be. Never repaint such models in an effort to “make them look nice.” Such repainting destroys much of their value. Then, there are collectors of modern miniature cars who seek examples of models currently in production. Such models will, in time, be as outdated and difficult to secure as are those which are now fifty years old. Another group of collectors build their own models of modern or old-time automobiles, either from kits or scratch materials, or combinations of these.
EARLY MINIATURE RACING
Miniature racing devices, toys, and games, have been popular ever since the 1870s. Boys inevitably would race miniature vehicles of all types, whether or not they were exact reproductions of racing prototypes. There were numerous horse-racing and jockey toys, racing sulkies of tin or cast iron, mechanical banks like the Race Course Bank in which the insertion of a penny set the race in motion, and out and out racing toys, like the bicycle race. There was a popular horse-racing game made in Europe from the 1880s to the 1930s. In later years, the versions commonly seen in the United States had two or four horses, but the variety and size of these games made in the 1890s is truly startling. One catalog of this period lists fifteen sizes of the game, ranging in price from $3.50 to a model with nine horses on nine separate courses selling for $250! Nor was that all, for, on special order, even larger and more elaborate versions could be imported for prices as high as $1,500! (These, remember, are the dollars of the 1 890s.) These early race games may justly be designated a form of slot racing, for the horses ran in slots. In some cases, two to four horses ran in a single course, or slot. The horses running in the same slot obviously could not pass one another, so the winner was the horse nearest the finish line when the spring ran down. Most of these games were made in France; subsequently some of the smaller ones were produced by German manufacturers, including Maerklin Brothers, who later made an electric slot car, as described shortly. | | |
