Barn Finds

I liked watching shows like The Pickers. Barn Finds are totally cool and when you do chance by something special, it just feels great. To me, it isn’t so much the monetary value of the barn find. Sometimes it’s just about the hunt, or sometimes it’s just because you really wanted that particular item. One day, there was someone selling on Gumtree. The ad said a bucket of Tomicas for twenty Singapore dollars.

I initially bought them for Matthew because he wasn’t really a collector. He just likes them like any toy car, although he had been growing fond of Tomicas more than Hot Wheels lately. While Hot Wheels cars are definitely lookers, the appeal of a Tomica goes skin deep. Most (if not all) of them have working suspension and a good number of them have opening doors or bonnets or hatches. They are also more true-to-life and includes a good number of mundane everyday cars like a Suzuki Carry or a Subaru Samba.

There were a good 30 or so cars in that bucket which equates to them costing no less than a dollar each. There were all in played with condition and Matthew really digs them because a lot of them are pretty old cars. I took a handful and was contemplating on restoring them. After a while though, I thought that I would just keep them as they are. They have been dusted and cleaned but I kept the scratches and paint chips. In a way, they have an old school charm that way. After all, these cars were meant to be driven, or in this case, played with.