Thursday, August 7, 2014

A Collector Collects --Bachmann Mini Planes

What's your earliest collection other than baseball cards?  Or should I say, what's the earliest collection that you still have?  Mine is this collection of plastic airplanes.  I think I accumulated them somewhere between 5th and 8th grades in the early 1970's.  If it weren't for the internet I wouldn't be able to tell you much about them.  A little research and I found they were from a company called  Bachmann.  After all these years this grouping is pretty much an airplane graveyard.  Most of them have one sort of damage or another.

Here's an image of what they looked like in the boxes.  Truthfully I didn't even remember the boxes at all.  I must have tossed them when I bought the planes.

I can show you where I bought them:

That's Hobbymodels on the NE corner of Devon and Western in Chicago.  It's long gone, replaced by an Indian electronics store.  I grew up three blocks north and a block east of there.

You can really see how poorly I've taken care of them over the years but they were cool.

11 comments:

  1. Neat. I think I had one or two of those.

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  2. I had some of those. Don't recall how many or which ones exactly. I know I had one of the commercial passenger ones and a military jet or two, my older brother had a few more military ones I think. Might of had one or two of the bi-planes. Don't recall exactly which we had. I think we also had a helicopter or two, maybe they were a different company.

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  3. It's always a freaky little experience for me when long-disused memory cells get called upon. The planes by themselves were just little planes, but when I saw the photos of the boxes, my eyes widened a little and I said "I remember those... I remember seeing those hanging on hooks in stores... I had one of those... a P-38 Lightning!"

    I have not seen my mini-plane in years, but I would not be at all surprised if it's in a box somewhere around here.

    As for my oldest collection that I still have (other than baseball cards), It's along the same lines... I still have a few of the Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars I had when I was a kid... and now you're making me want to dig out all of this stuff, as if I don't have a sufficient number of distractions. :-)

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    1. My Matchbox and Hot Wheels collections predate the planes but alas, I do not still have them. I loved the little cardboard boxes the the Matchbox cars came in. I think I had the first Hot Wheels.

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  4. What a collection! I have a couple of similar exemplars and others that you have to assemble the parts.

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  5. Interesting posting. My uncle owned Devon HobbyModels until the middle 1980,s. John Novak is his name and he still makes paper models as well as an occasional scratch built. I worked there on and off in the 60,s and 70,s. It was a huge hobby shop. Lots of great memories

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  6. Interesting posting. My uncle owned Devon HobbyModels until the middle 1980,s. John Novak is his name and he still makes paper models as well as an occasional scratch built. I worked there on and off in the 60,s and 70,s. It was a huge hobby shop. Lots of great memories

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    1. Thanks for commenting. There's a good chance you waited on me at one time or another. Loved the store. Bought a camera and film etc at General Camera across the street. Miss those days.

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    2. That's great! I bought all my Bachmann Miniplanes there. I loved that shop!

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  7. I had a large collection of Bachmann Miniplanes too! I think they might still be in a box somewhere, unlike my Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars which my parents gave to a friend's kid brother when I went away to college. I bought them all at the same hobby store, although I wouldn't have remembered the name as Devon HobbyModels. I was in there often enough! The Miniplanes were about the only thing I bought, but I also covered the realistic-looking firearms. I'm not surprised but still sorry to hear that the shop is gone!

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