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Lately, the cost of living here has been getting expensive.

Inflation is at 7.7% as of October. Fuel prices have been climbing more than they've been falling. The minimum fare for jeepneys is now Php12. Tuition fees rise ever higher. Power bills are higher, and they are also subject to weird problems.

Worse, wages remain the same. And with the aftershocks of lockdown still reverberating, most people are only scrounging by with odd jobs.

Now is not a good time to indulge in luxuries. Now is not the time to overspend on frivolities.

And yet here I am this weekend, taking inventory of my car collection.

It's a much-needed, long-overdue stock check because I haven't been tracking my collection consistently since January 2021. I've been trying to carve out any time from my schedule to line them up by purchase date and see how much bigger the collection has grown. For now, though, I only want to know how the past two years have looked, how much money I've spent acquiring these models, and ask myself if this hobby is sustainable.

That means I can't stop at merely listing them down.

CHAPTER 1: Parking Lot Survey

My process begins by gathering all the boxes and loose cars strewn across the house into a single place: the mattress in my bedroom. It's the easiest part of the accounting process because I plop every new acquisition onto my desk anyway, and I often find anything missing either in my bag or in a shoebox that acts as my electric fan's riser plinth. I don't get to play with my toys often, what with work, school, and sleep occupying most of my day. But in the few moments when I get to hold them for longer than ten minutes, I get to feel like 10-year-old me again, boundlessly energetic and bubbling with excitement as he gets to swoosh about the cars that he saw on the internet.

That is precisely what I do. After lining them up in neat rows on the bed, I randomly pick up a car and make vroom-vroom noises. Childish for some, sure, but in my defense, I believe that toys are meant to be played with, not merely gawked at or put on a no-touch-no-flash-photography pedestal. I lift a car with my left hand, lift another with my right, and "race" them, my eyes serving as a camera that can film at almost-impossible angles just by tilting and yawing the models a little. Most of the time, a theme forms; other times, it is as random as pitting a vintage Datsun Fairlady 2000 against a hypercar.

Oh, right, I got sidetracked. Sorry.

Next, I open my phone and check my purchase history on apps like Lazada and Shopee, counting them against what II have on the bed to see if anything else is missing from the lineup. This phase also helps me classify everything by brand and age, from new-in-box to old loose ones found on flea-market-esque users. Anything the apps didn't catch was most likely bought in a department store or another non-online source. Or, in the case of Castheads and Tomica Asia, gifted as part of a raffle draw.

In all, I have 80 unique models spread across nine brands. Counting repeats in the same or different colors, I've gathered 92 cars from the start of 2021 to December 2022. That's an average of about 45 die-cast cars a year, which is still well within the average I get for myself since I first started tracking purchases in 2018. Unlike before, however, I've covered every price class, from bargain-bin basic to rare superpremium and everything else in between.

CHAPTER 2: One of Everything On the Menu

At Php130 in retail rates, Hot Wheels represents the floor of the collection, at least among new acquisitions: they're the default brand for those who want to start collecting die-cast cars. A sub-brand of Mattel, I find Hot Wheels to be a good compromise between detail and price: they look like the cars they replicate, but it's understandable for them to cut some corners to reach the one-US-dollar price point (I'll come back to this later). The brand covers basic (the Php130 tier) and premium (Php450 to Php600) tiers, though online pricing tends to be massively volatile between individual stores and castings. Some models command exorbitant prices; others are either at or below sticker prices.

Of the 92 cars on my bed, 36 come from Hot Wheels.

Three of those 36 are rubber-shod, metal-on-metal die-cast cars from their Premium Car Culture lineup, all of which I've wished to get for so long. The Volkswagen ID.R, Lancia Rally 037, and Ford RS200 are all part of the rally-themed Thrill Climbers batch, and these items used to sit for the longest time on my wishlist before finally having the money to buy all three at a discounted price with waived shipping fees.

I've always had a single principle regarding my hobby: never buy something I cannot afford three times over. When I was being paid per article on Drivetribe, I was not only getting steady enough income to allow that room. Back then, I knew I could effectively write off the models as a business expense if I posted a review or showed them off. For this group, at least, it only partially came true.

The other 33 belong to the basic line, with plastic wheels and a mix of metal exterior and base with plastic inserts. Modern Hot Wheels castings follow that five-piece system for cost efficiency, guaranteeing that no material is wasted. It does introduce a compromise, however, as designers have to decide how much of a car's grille should be molded in plastic, for example.

Some models, like the Le Mans-winning Corvette C8.R and the legendary 3-seater McLaren F1, do an admirable job at replication given the compromise. Others, like the Swedish-built 250 mph Koenigsegg Jesko, have some elements that spoil an otherwise reasonable representation. Mixed with the new cars are old castings, mostly rare Ferraris. The blue Ferrari 330 P4 aged like the finest Italian red wine; others, like the 512M, are showing their age on the hinge.

Tomica is the next biggest contingent, with fourteen (14) castings across three price tiers. For the longest time, I've considered Tomica the midrange option, a step above Hot Wheels but below more expensive, adult collector-oriented brands like Kyosho. Steady price inflation has pushed some of its sub-brands into the same class as the rubber-tired premium Hot Wheels cars, but I've paid no mind because Tomica tends to stick around longer on the shelves. As of 2021, the classic Red Box Tomica (models that come in a rectangular box with a wraparound red label) costs Php260, though the price has since climbed by about Php90 today.

Yet the quality remains the same, which is a good thing: Tomica has consistently heavier, more robust body castings and often has suspension on the wheels thanks to a metal strip buried in the base. Their car choice also provides ample coverage to those that other brands miss, and any overlap makes for excellent comparisons.

Surprisingly enough, however, I only have twelve from the basic line, though they come in different states of freshness. The newest ones -- diminutive 3-cylinder hot hatchback darling Toyota GR Yaris and the angular Lamborghini Sian, are about what I expected. However, the Suzuki Katana wins out by including a rider figure. What shocked me more was the vintage Mazda 787B casting, a model I paid way more money than I'd have liked, but I'd instead bag that for Php508 than risk being sniped by a more moneyed collector. It's scuffed, and the paint has chipped away. Still, I'll never find a casting like it again, mainly because superpremium examples of the Renown-liveried one command four-digit price tags.

But even more shocking was the Epson-liveried Honda NSX JGC car I got. Built for the limited-edition Tomica Limited sub-line, it features rubber tires, a metal base, a glass display case, and enough surface detail to make it eligible for a 3D scan. Yet I got it for only Php33 more than the Mazda despite second-hand prices for similar examples creeping up to four digits. Both acquisitions are miracles in timing, and opportunity, equaled only by the Ferrari FXX K model from the mid-range Tomica Premium line, yet another online grab.

And then there's the raffle box. I won a box full of fresh Tomica from an official raffle promo on Instagram that required writing some sappy story about why someone's been collecting the toy, and while they're cute and I never say no to free toys, there's a reason why I'm reserving all my views here.

Speaking of reserving views, I'll be talking at length about the Majorette cars I won in a separate raffle in another vertical, but here's the skinny: Castheads Magazine, a publication I've known since 2018, ran a raffle back in 2020 but the prizes got stuck at customs for a long time. I don't want to elaborate too much as these are freebies, but I'll say this much: it's good to be lucky.

Matchbox comes in fourth with an astounding six cars over two years, including the all-electric 2020 Tesla Roadster, a concept that so far only exists more as a die-cast car I bought at TriNoma last week than an actual electric vehicle. Fortunately, I got it for Php30 off its original Php150 asking price, which I couldn't say for the four other Matchbox I got, all of which I got for an average of Php175. I don't think it's an unfair markup given the toy's quality, but it's a little challenging to stay as close to big-box-store pricing as possible when shopping for models online.

CHAPTER 3: The Premium Question

Time to raise the pay grade, then.

MiniGT is a sub-brand of TrueScale Miniatures, a die-cast company founded in 2006. They've made quite the splash in the larger 1/18-scale format, but with the launch of MiniGT in 2018, TrueScale pushed the limits even further. MiniGT boasts multi-piece metal/metal construction, intricate side mirror modeling and an interior that comes in either left-hand or right-hand drive. And they were going to do it for about US$5 o US$10, around the same price that Hot Wheels' Car Culture line plays at.

In the Philippines, that means around 450 to 800 pesos.

That's well within my strike zone! Brilliant! Surely that means I can snap them up quickly, right? Well, it's more complicated than that.

Because I took a long time waiting and saving to land my first MiniGT back in 2021 when I finally got the chance to get a Porsche 991 GT2 RS. MiniGT picks fantastic cars to turn into 1/64 replicas, but no matter what car they choose, I always find MinGT to be just that little bit out of reach (it doesn't help that they don't sell in said bix-box stores).

Until I finally got paid big for a month's worth of writing.

That's when MiniGT started to look less aspirational and more viable, especially when Hot Wheels and Tomica have been slowly pricing themselves out of my reach with some of their sub-brands. With similar coverage in car choice, MiniGT's build quality rivals the best of either brand while maintaining a level of playability that satisfies the kid in me. To this day, I still find it shocking that I can even afford their McLaren Senna, let alone think about the next MiniGT I want. Come the second half of 2021, I gained two different racing Fords from MiniGT: the Le Mans-winning Ford GT LM and the more exclusive Ford GTT Mk.II, a circuit-racer special of the road-going 2017 Ford GT that is not eligible in any racing series. Gosh, is this what the 0.1% of society does? Because I tell you, it only gets more bougie from here.

I can confidently say that Tarmac Works is one level higher than MiniGT: their cheapest cars start AT 500 pesos, and their GLOBAL64-branded toy offerings go from Php750 and up. This is a brand aimed squarely at the moneyed collector, the type that will put a replica of their real car on their office desk. As a writer whose income is strictly so that I never have to ask money from my parents, it's not for me.

Unless it's a car I want to have so badly.

Tarmac Works, fortunately, did offer a Pagani Zonda R and Koenigsegg Agera RS once. But after getting sniped out of the former in a listing that priced it at Php750, I knew I couldn't dawdle on the latter should anything come up. I bought a yellow example of the Agera RS. Impressed is an understatement.

I can finally understand why Tarmac Works has risen in the ranks of die-cast brands as a "bridge" of sorts between midrange and premium. Their castings are accurate, down to the texture of the carbon fiber. It's got a removable engine cowl to let you show off the well-rendered engine, and yet it still rolls smooth enough for rough play. No wonder some collectors have come to exalt this as much as Kyosho, the original player in the superpremium diecast space.

Because Kyosho used to be the final word in 1/64 diecast: millimetric accuracy in detail, exacting construction, and excellent choice of cars, all in a package that won't break the bank. Nowadays, however, they've all but left the 1/64 space, leaving the likes of MiniGT and Tarmac Works, among other new players, to take their place.

Bloody shame, too, because Kyosho used to be my genuine aspiration as a young collector, especially for Ferraris. Profile after profile showed off Ferraris by Kyosho, which are actually model kits that require some assembly to get around Ferrari's strange licensing requirements. That extends to their Formula One replicas, which seem impossibly small and fragile on a scale already notorious for making replicas more fragile than they are in real life.

Imagine my surprise when I saw a seller hawk Kyosho Ferrari F1 cars for less than Php400 a year ago.

This was it! The culmination of everything I ever wished for was about to come true in this listing. Yes, the models have had their paint jobs chipped; otherwise, the build quality still holds up. Having grown up as a fan of Ferrari's F1 team, the cars he has on offer were precisely what I wished for.

And I got it. They're as glorious as I imagined them.

I had a tiny replica of Niki Lauda's Ferrari 312 T2 and Michael Schumacher's F2003-GA, both title-winning machines. The wheel axles on the former were bent out of shape enough to hinder movement, but otherwise, they're as sensational as I thought. I took snapshot after snapshot, and the two of them even spurred on a manic few days of drawing race tracks.

I lost them and a bag full of my clothes and art supplies when we were forcibly evicted from our old apartment.

Heartbreaking, especially because that bag also contained some mini toy versions of the Ferrari FXX-K Evo from Bburago, a flatbed tow truck from Majorette, metallic brush markers, and my fancier clothes. It must have gotten misplaced in the garage where our belongings were stored. I can only sigh as I try to remember.

That's likely what it felt like when Kyosho's 1/64 offerings died down. Fortunately, more brands will follow in its footsteps.

I only have one replica each from Schuco, a long-standing Germany-based brand, and Paragon (aka Para64), another fresh-faced player in the premium 1/64 space. But thanks to some timely discounts, I managed to snag the former's Ferrari 458 Italia and the latter's RUF CTR Yellowbird replicas. As expected, they're stupendous, but it's clear from handling both that they're not meant to be played with as a 5-year-old would.

Thus lies the ultimate question: how worthy are all these diecasts?

CHAPTER 4: Equation

I call it "cost-per-detail," a comparative metric for just how close a cheap toy can get to a superpremium replica. It has no rubric; instead, it compares a toy model from, say, Hot Wheels to a replica of the same car from a different price bracket. This is especially important for me, a collector with a limited pool of money to work with, because if the cheaper option is still within 90% of what the expensive one can muster, I say it's good enough to buy.

This is the other guiding principle for my hobby. With money being this hard to find, I can't splurge on many cars or one expensive one. I can only take so much because I'll run out of space on my desk. So the calculus is simple: if I love the car in real life, I'll take the diecast replica that best represents it for the money I have. That's it.

Here's the thing: I averaged out my diecast expenditures by brand and found that the mainline Hot Wheels cost me about Php141 on average. Contrast that with some Tomica that costs twice as much and MiniGT that costs four times as much, and it becomes clear just how expensive this hobby can get. It's not a fiscally sound hobby for anyone with a low income, and even for the cheapest good replica (Hot Wheels), they're still expensive enough to take a chunk out of one's paycheck.

And now that I'm unemployed again, collecting toy cars seems even more of a silly endeavor to pursue. A large part of why I grew this collection stems from the fact that my basic needs are already well-met: I have food on my plate, clothes to wear, and usable internet. Like I said above, my Driivetribe income was just for me, and I didn't spend it all on diecast -- most of it went to food costs, phone load, and medicine. In an economy like this, I'd look stupid for carrying on with collecting cars. And yes, at some level, I am.

The fact that I can write about this puts me in a position of privilege that many children in my neighborhood don't get to enjoy. And for all my gripes and quibbles, I'm lucky even to be here discussing the economics of my hobby. But that's why I'm writing this: it's a gut check, a test to see how far my passion can take me and whether or not I have enough fuel to sustain that fire. Rationalizing all this requires self-introspection and the ability to reckon with a rapidly-changing world.

EPILOGUE

It's why this inventory is unlike anything I've done before. I write this to quantify and qualify every new part of my collection and the entire collection as a whole. It's a confrontation of my biases, my mores, and my desire against my needs. This is an accounting.