Man collects toy cars for 43 years

ANTALYA

A 51-year-old man from the southern province of Antalya who has been collecting toy cars for the past 43 years now wishes to donate them to a toy museum to make his name remembered.

“I first bought my toy car when I was eight with a pocket money I got from my uncle,” Mustafa Dere said.

His collection consists of more than a thousand toy cars of different colors and types.

“The economic value of my collection is around 125,000 Turkish Liras [$17,350]. But its sentimental value is priceless,” Dere said.

His toy cars adorn the shelves of his house, where he spends all his day cleaning and maintaining them.

When asked how the idea of collecting toy cars came to his mind, he said, “I used to buy cars quite often during my childhood, and with all that collection of cars, I thought to myself that one day, I would open a shop and sell them. With this idea, my interest grew, and I started buying even more.”

But he changed his mind over time and started collecting toy cars for his own personal collection rather than with the idea of selling them.

He also said that his own brother started criticizing him for his collection, saying that “What are you going to do with all these cars at this age?”

“My brother tells me to hand them out to children. I offered some toys to some children. It was like as if a piece of me was gone with it,” he noted.

Noting that he now has a dream to exhibit his collection in a museum, Dere said that he would donate some toy cars from his collection to Anatolian Toy Museum in the Kepez district.

“In due course, I will donate the rest of my collection. I want my name to live forever,” he added.