Aotearoa here

That's what the Maoris call New Zealand. Land of the long white cloud. So that's where I am. My name is Jan (pronounced Yan, not Jen) and that's a German short version for John. I grew up in East Berlin during the 80's and then I couldn't adjust to capitalism so seven years ago I left Germany for good and moved to NZ. Economy and attitude are slowly catching up with the people here but it's still far better than where I came from.

Anywho, I got back into collecting in about February 2011 and it's been hell ever since. Running out of money, out of space and there's always another car I want to buy. So recently I made the fundamental decision to collect nothing except Matchbox. This brand is my childhood love and if you stretch yourself over 60 years, there is plenty to collect. To narrow it down, it looks like I'm happiest with the era between 1960 and 1990, roughly. I've had the Hot Wheels mainline bug, the Siku bug and sampled other brands like Motormax, Greenlight and Tomica. But there's just nothing like Matchbox to me.

As far as Hobbytalk is concerned, that was my first die cast forum. I'm not ready to leave it yet, but I'm really there for the people. I don't blame the moderators for banning too much, I blame posters for having too short a fuse. The fires are lighting up everywhere lately, and that's not the mods fault. So I'm happy to be here as long as certain people are not here. If they sign up, someone needs to point me to the ignore/filter setting please.