The joy of purging and organizing the collection (and discovering the forgotten)...

As I mentioned in a previous post, the flu hit my house this week, and most of it was spent in bed. Towards the end of the week, however, I had enough energy to get up and work on something I have meant to do for while.

Clean.

I don't like clutter. It makes me nervous, and it bothers me if something doesn't have a place. I definitely got the OCD side of the collecting gene instead of the hoarding side. Plus, I don't like getting overwhelmed by the collection. My rule? If the collection can't fit in my office closet, then it needs to be cut down.

That's the first part.

The second? The Tomica Limited Vintage takeover continues. I still love the Mattel brands, and will continue to collect many of the castings, but I would be more than happy to just collect TLV. You can tell by my displays.

Here is what they were when I first got them:

Two cases of Hot Wheels/Matchbox, one case of TLV/Kyosho.

Here is what they are now:

That's 2 cases of only TLV, and the third has even more TLV, plus Kyosho, Greenlight, Aoshima, and a few Matchbox/Hot Wheels.

And as more TLV comes in, which is now every month from Japan Booster

, they will go in the displays. I actually need to start thinking about a fourth display.

All this means things are changing. There is the Lamley collection and there is the "Lamley Blog" collection. The Lamley collection are my personal favorites, and those are most of the models displayed. The "Lamley Group" collection are those models that I do like, and also interest many of you, and they are good to have on hand for future features on the blog.

But ultimately, I can't keep everything, and all has to fit in the closet:

So, during my flu week, I purged:

That means going through everything, extracting the extras I don't need, removing models I am no longer interested in, or have already done their job on the blog, and using those to make a very cool pile of diecast.

The collection is now down to the size I want, with room for future models coming in. Peace and tranquility, brother.

So what will I do with these extras? Donate some for sure, but I also know many of you would be interested in a good number of what I no longer need. Any ideas of what to do? eBay is the easiest method, and that is probably what I will do, but any other suggestions are welcome.

Another enjoyable aspect of the purge? Discovering models I essentially forgot about, and that give me great ideas for future posts. (That is what prompted the Matchbox SLR McLaren post on Thursday.) I took some pics as I went along. Some we have featured, others we haven't. And there is a ton of Matchbox from a few years ago that will definitely interest a lot of you.

Let me know if you would like to see some of these on the blog sometime down the line: