My name is Cub, and I'm a diecast addict. Hot Wheels mania is a sickness, and I've got it. Worse than a Beanie Baby collector. If anyone ever suggests that the Barbie and Beanie Baby fetish is just a "wimmin's thing", don't believe it for a second. I know better, and I'm far from one of the worst afflicted. In my first year of collecting, I accumulated fewer than 200 die-casts. Before my second year was out, I had joined the "thousand club". I swore I was stronger than this, that this couldn't happen to me. It did. And as I type before you, I am a broken man...living in a home overrun by boxes, my bedroom a minefield of display pegs and my living room a showcase for the Evil Wheel.

"Oh, but I'm different", I told myself when I realized I had it as bad as I do. "I'm not a serious collector. I'm not limiting myself to Hot Wheels. I'm not even going to try for complete collections. I'm only going to get a select few cars that have special meaning to me."

How the obsession starts In case you're interested, I do in fact believe that diecast collecting is a compulsive behavior afflicting a fairly large number of men and more than a few women as well. I'm not for one second suggested that it's a serious problem, but as long as it qualifies as a true addictive/compulsive disorder, and it should be noted that the cure is very often worse than the disease. Still, you should know how the problem develops and how to identify it. Diecast collecting usually begins during or just after a period of intense adult stress. Most collectors tend to have been lovers of diecasts as children, and therein lies the key to recognizing the disorder. Significant life stress forces us to regress mentally and emotionally to "earlier" states of being in an attempt to find some pattern in memory for successfully dealing with the situation. When we fail to find it, we dig further back in memory. This process typically occurs at a subconscious level...we might appear to be acting just a tad childish, perhaps only enough to barely notice, and not enough to disrupt our lives, but there may be a tumult of activity going on in the subconscious. The urge to collect typically stems from an internal recognition of feelings produced by owning and playing with the things we collect as children, when we would use these things as refuges from life stress and outlets for frustration, sadness, anger and other emotional upsets that we couldn't resolve with family or friends. If the inability to form relationships that allow this sort of resolution persists into adulthood, we'll be easy prey to adopting what we found to be successful as children as coping skills in adult life. Collecting diecasts evokes feelings of the childhood innocence and fantasy...stand at any toy car displays and you'll see this drama played out several times an hour. Problem is, an adult mind is more sophisticated and complex, and it takes one hell of a lot more toys - a lot more stimulation - to produce the same experience of relief from stress that we felt as kids. That's why adult collectors typically accumulate hundreds or thousands of cars, stuffed animals, Barbie accessories and other toys...it seems to be the only way to recreate the intensity of the effect we felt as kids. And until there's a way to really deal with the underlying problem, to really put it to rest, I've gotta level with ya as one who's been through the mill and seen a hell of a lot of what goes on in these circles: the cure is often worse than the disease. That's why I don't talk about treatment, but about tolerance. Face it...if you're compulsive, you're attempting to fill a need, and until some better way to fill it comes along, it seems pretty foolish to give it up.

And that's precisely how I've collected. Every one of the first 200 cars I bought had a story, and a meaning...at least, that was my story, and it stood up pretty well until my therapist finally broke down my defenses. Ah, but I got back at him...as a going-away present I gave him a gold-plated '32 Ford hotrod...now he calls me for help, because no one in the area knows more about diecasts and where to get them cheap than I do. I'd better know where to get them cheap...as of Christmas 2010, I had almost 10,000 of them. And that's not a typo.

I adored Hot Wheels as a kid. They arrived on the scene at just the perfect time for me...I was eight, beginning to get a reasonable allowance, and had become thoroughly bored with the usual boy-toys of the age. I was the prototypical Hot Wheels kid...I had every 1968 and 1969 Hot Wheels, and nearly all of the 1970 series (finances didn't permit me to own the whole set). My mania was so bad that when Hot Wheels offered a "bingo" promotion whereby you could win some mighty serious prizes by collecting buttons bundled with individual Hot Wheels, I joined what must have been thousands of other kids my age in stealing the buttons out of the blister packs at local K-Marts and Sears outlets to complete my sets.

People have often pointed out that had I kept my original collection, the value in today's collectors' market might be...well...let's see...I tore the engines out of most, wore the chrome off the wheels, chipped the paint, lost doors and hoods...it would probably be worth the same as if I had invested the same amount of money in a compound-interest savings account. In fact, I've been able to replace a few old childhood prizes for less, interest factored in, than I got for them when I sold them in 1970. Think about that the next time you criticize some poor kid for wrecking their toys or scratching their future-collectible PlayStation CDs.

Mattel's golden touch tarnished significantly in my eyes in the 1970s as they diversified and consolidated their hold on the die-cast market from previous market leaders Lesney (makers of Matchbox). I became much more interested in slot cars, but the prohibitive (to me) cost of slot gear, and the lack of a real club or competitive environment in my town more or less killed any interest I had in scale-model vehicles.

My disinterest was lost in the early 1990s when I "rediscovered" Hot Wheels along with about ten million other lost-generation guys who realized, like me, that they'd never own, let alone drive, the cool rides they owned in miniature as kids. I began to notice Hot Wheels more often as I cruised the Safeway for groceries, and refused to fork over the buck-and-change for some extremely cool casts in the mid-1990s on the justification that I'd "outgrown that shit". Uh-huh...well, as any addict will tell you, the harder you fight against your addiction, the harder it bites you when it comes back.

It (re)started innocently enough. After a particularly bad 1998, when it seemed like everyone around me was getting rich while I was going nowhere, I bought myself a Hot Wheels model called the Silhouette II, a remodeled version of a concept car released as part of the very first Hot Wheels series, and a car that had a lot of meaning to me. That car became a totem to me, and evoked a lot of strong childhood memories. My appetite had been whetted.

I held back my desire for more cars for months after that, convincing myself that I could be content with just one car. I didn't work. When I saw the maroon Classic Cord (pictured and described above), I rationalized that its personal meaning and adherence to its original design made it a reasonable acquisition. A couple of months later I picked up a black Phantom Corsair, another of my Auto Album memories.

In 2001, two things happened that accelerated a smoldering desire into a rampant mania. The first was turning 40. The second was watching the brick-by-brick crash of just about every personal and professional hope I'd worked toward for a decade. I needed comfort, I needed it b-a-d, and I got it from my faithful, loving satellite dish. I discovered the Speed Channel cable network (then SpeedVision), which was showing me forms of auto racing I'd never seen before, things like the complete flag-to-flag 24 Heures du Mans (Le Mans, the world's ultimate sports car race, and to many, the world's ultimate auto race), American Le Mans Series (ALMS) and Grand America multi-class road racing, Sports Car Club of America competitions on top US road racing circuits, and vintage racing from Laguna Seca and Goodwood. My childhood passion for fast iron was rekindled with a vengeance, and so was my desire to be a part of it.

Face it, Cub. You've got a chance in hell of ever racing at Le Mans, and in fact you'll be lucky to ever be competitive as a club kart racer, age and money being what they are. So what's left? Well, I decided, if I can't have or do the real thing, I'm damn well going to own the miniatures. And so I decided to start collecting 1/64th die-casts of open-wheel and sports racing cars. That was my criterion: if it raced at a top level (or represented a top-level race car...keep in mind that a lot of Mattel's best casts have been artist's composites of sports, Formula 1 and Indy racers of the day), I'd buy it...I'd limit my collection to just those cars.

And so the collection began.

But a problem quickly crept into my logic. How do I differentiate between what is and isn't a real open-wheel or sports racer? What fine distinctions do I make? The answer, of course, was obvious, and made absolutely no sense. And that answer was: one...dollar.

One dollar. That's about what it costs for a 1/64th die-cast toy car. One dollar. That's exactly what Hot Wheels cars cost when I first started collecting them. One lousy dollar.

I mean, let's get real here. That's the price of a candy bar or cup of coffee. For that much money, I get a memory, a feeling I can reach out and touch any time I want, a tiny treasure, a steel story. As addictions go, I have to admit...as long as I'm buying off-the-shelf cars and staying away from the high-priced classics (well, at least standing just beyond arm's reach of them), these are the cheapest kicks I've had since I learned you could make a gallon of cheap wine in two weeks with a tiny $3 envelope of chemicals, white sugar and tap water.

So that's how the addiction starts...a dollar at a time. But the collection grows, and with it, your lust. The hunger is never really satisfied; after all, you can't recapture your youth, and owning these miniatures will never slake the hunger for the Real Thing. But at the same time, I'm not one of those who goes in for the philosophy of total abstinence as the only viable interim treatment for compulsions. I eventually realized there's a big kid in me that just plain loves these things to death and wants them by the hundreds. And if I can keep that kid from firing shotgun rounds into the neighbor's window for playing loud music or accepting a job offer from Microsoft by spending a few bucks here and there on some toy cars, well, that's a no-brainer...da kid gets da kars...as many as da kid wants.

So what started as a tight, confined collection - nothing but real race cars that I'd actually seen racing either live, on TV or in old films or cars I actually lusted after owning as real rides - grew to encompass hot rods that turned my crank, street cars that evoked childhood memories, classics I admired purely for their esthetics...well, just about anything, really. And that's where the trouble began. Because, you see, now I have enough open-wheel racers to fill a 33-car Vintage Indianapolis grid...enough sports racers to start my own 1/64th Le Mans...and all I ever do is take a few out of their storage boxes every now and then, place them on my desk where I can admire them and use them as distractions from Real Work, and dream about driving the real things.

And it's not enough.

No, it's not enough. Hey, you get enough Beanie Babies, I hear you also need to give them a place to live and play. Same with Hot Wheels, pal...I need a race track and pit lane display now. Not to mention proper storage. And when I looked into the costs of even a do-it-yourself solution to these burning needs, the cost is likely to exceed my entire collection investment.

Ah, to hell with it. So I spend weeks and hundreds of dollars on an HO-scale village for my cars to live and play in. So I spend still more time putting together padded carry cases to protect the damn things. It's still better than firing potshots through the neighbor's window at 3 a.m. on a Sunday morning. Isn't it?

Well, isn't it?

Actually, considering my neighbors, perhaps it isn't...

Frankly, I don't care. There's a preprogrammed urge in humanity to collect; apparently it's stronger in men than in women, and if this is my expression of this trait, I suppose I can thank my stars I didn't choose to collect Internet stock certificates or sports cards. In fact, this is one product area where prices have actually dropped, and dropped dramatically. In 1970, a Matchbox car would set you back fifty cents, a Hot Wheels car a buck. Today you can buy Maisto's for the same four bits, and Hot Wheels for the same buck, no inflation accounted-for.

Ah, but that too is a problem.

When I started collecting, Lesney and Mattel were the only really noteworthy makers of quality 1/64th die-casts. Lesney manufactured in the UK; Mattel in the US and Hong Kong, and the price reflected the fact that labor costs in both countries weren't exactly cheap. Today, the manufacturing costs are dramatically lower, but alas, so are the relative labor costs. The one great shame behind this hobby is the knowledge that these toys are manufactured in developing Pacific Rim countries by people who probably couldn't afford even these cheap trinkets on the salaries they earn.

The more I learn about the politics of toy manufacture, the more convinced I am that these products are horribly underpriced, and that my bargain is bought on the backs of people who are least able to afford to give me this kind of break. Now, I didn't make the rules, but I do have to live not only within those rules, but with the knowledge of the price paid on all sides for playing. And that's not easy, not when I know that these toys should damn well sell for double, triple, perhaps even quadruple what I normally pay for them. But you just sort of gravitate to the pegboard at the local bigbox like a camel to an oasis...it's just so hard to avoid the temptation.

You'd think at this age I'd get it that the pictures still look better than the real toys. Yeah, I get it. But I'm also getting that new candy-apple Parkour Esmerelda coupe...and that '39 McKinley Roadster...and that Prattler concept car...and that Yugo dragster...oh, and I really should have a '71 Corvette in neon taupe, too...because while I do know the real cost of these things, I'd never expect an eight-year old to care.