The Mini Swedish Car Collection

About the Swedish Car Collection

Welcome to this small project that I'm starting. While it will start out small, maybe one day it'll turn out to be a larger project than I intended. The goal is to create a diverse collection of various Saab and Volvo diecast and model cars. They will be comprised of different brands from various decades, for example, new and vintage Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars. Each of the cars will get their own entries, almost as if they were actual cars on the main ONEC blog. In each entry, I'll discuss each car, give some history of it, and my personal thoughts and what it brings to the collection. 

A History of My Car Collection Past

I've always been a collector of diecast cars, mostly of the 1/64 scale. 1/64 scale cars are the typical Matchbox or Hot Wheels sized cars you find in your local Walmart or Target. I began my collection of cars as a young child, collecting mostly Matchbox cars modeled after classic muscle cars or other classics from the late twentieth century. Around middle school, Matchbox began focusing on construction and other utility vehicles, where I focused my attention towards Hot Wheels cars, which produced a lot of classic muscle and sports cars. During this time, I inherited my father's childhood friend's collection of vintage Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars. This collection consisted of over 100 valuable models, which was a very exciting moment in my childhood. 

Approaching the end of middle school and the start of high school, I began to wind down collecting. Although I had focused on higher end brands, such as Auto World and Johnny Lightning, I really started to lose interest in favor of musical endeavors and athletics. In my high school years, I had reached the height of my collection, with nearly 1000 1/64 scale cars. While I wasn't collecting cars as much as I used to in my younger years, I still would take visits to the Hot Wheels aisle to see if there were any new models that piqued my interest. 2020 was my last serious year of collecting before my brief collecting hiatus. I sold off a chunk of the collection at a yard sale, which consisted mostly of construction and utility vehicles. This downsized the collection to around 700 or so models. That would be the last of my activities for a little while, until two years later.

Last year, I purchased a white Matchbox Saab 9000 with "Saab" decals, which rekindled my interest in collecting cars again. I had two blue Matchbox Saab Sonnets and a red 9000, and I figured this would make for a great edition to my rather small Swedish car collection. Later that year, Hot Wheels released a model of a Volvo 240 wagon. Though it was a custom example and less stock, it was another addition to the now growing collection. Hot Wheels had also released several Volvo models, including a 122 Amazon Estate, a 142, and an 850 Estate. This is what sparked my idea to create the Swedish car collection. Today, as of the creation of this page, the collection has grown beyond the five small cars I started with. The updates to the collection will be outlined on this main page for convenience.