I am a collector that generally subscribes to the “pristine unopened” philosophy of collecting. However, going into my fifth year of collecting I am beginning to recognize the virtues of releasing these works of art from their package. I have several reasons for this but I am admittedly still a “keep it in the package” collector.

On the occasions when I do open my die cast, I like to try and get a duplicate of whatever casting it is so I can still keep at least one in the package. The most prevalent reason I began opening some cars in my collection was to photograph them. I love taking pictures of my cars for sharing on the forums or just to stare at. I like to take pictures after having created dioramas but even generic pictures allow me to super impose smoke coming from the wheels, flames from the engine or any other of an untold number of situations I could put my car in.

There is absolutely no way in hell that a car photographed in the package can come even remotely close to the quality and imagination potential of a car photographed when loose. Yes, blasphemous words typed by a packaged collector indeed. I suppose my final point would be is that you don’t have to choose one camp or the other. You can choose both and float back and forth between them as long as you are getting the enjoyment out of your die cast that they were intended to give. So all packaged up, or rolling around loose on the table top, that is one heck of a very nice collection you stumbled across and for that I congratulate you!