Lifelong Toy Car Fan Becomes Mega Dealer

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

When I was a kid, I had a lot of hot wheels. I also had some matchbox. If you're not familiar with those terms, those would be toy cars. Toy cars, hot wheels, matchbox, probably some other brands. And the funny thing is I never actually got into real cars later. Like when I was a

teenager, I was excited about driving, getting my driver's license, but I never really cared about specific models, vehicles. It was just a kid thing. And sadly, I did not hold on to these toy cars for my retirement fund. I also didn't think a lot about them for many, many years, just because I wasn't into cars myself, perhaps until I worked on today's story. Today's story got me thinking, man, I wish I had held on to those toy cars, perhaps learned a bit more later on because this story features a virtual reality designer. He's actually getting close to retirement

and gets his wheels spinning reselling vintage toy cars. He's doing really well with it. He also didn't think much about the value of his childhood toys until later in life, even though he did keep up the hobby. But once he started thinking about reselling, collecting reselling, becoming a distributor, he really hit the road. What can I say? He's doing really well. Lifelong

toy car fan becomes mega dealer. That's the story coming up after this quick message from our sponsor. For Dave Gilbert, collecting toy cars has been a lifelong obsession. Even before he could take his first steps. In fact, infant Dave was already pushing around a gold 1959 10 Cadillac. There was

just something about scale model cars that fascinated him. And this interest persisted many decades later, even as he neared retirement. But it wasn't until 2018 that it turned into something more. At the funeral of his brother in law, one of the attendees was sharing about how he had lost his uncle recently. And that uncle had left behind an entire basement of toy cars. When

Dave heard that the collection would most likely end up in a dumpster, he immediately introduced himself and offered his condolences before offering to help liquidate the entire collection. Although those toy cars didn't belong to him, he couldn't bear to see them go to waste. Introductions were made. And two days later, Dave found himself standing in front of a basement looking out at a treasure trove of vintage toy cars. He offered $1,200 for the whole collection, not being sure of its true value, but suspecting it was at least that much. And to his surprise, the owner of the

stash immediately agreed. On the way home, however, Dave started to regret his decision. All he had wanted to do was keep a portion of the collection for himself, and then to sell the rest off to recoup his expenses. But now he worried he might not make any money at all. Still, after picking out the toy cars he wanted for his own collection, Dave began a huge task of listing the others on eBay. He had been dreading this task because of the sheer amount of work that was involved. But it

turned out that selling toy cars was actually fun. Each time a notification from eBay arrived that said you've got money, he felt a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. Unable to deny the dopamine rush, Dave started thinking more about selling cars and less about collecting them for himself. It didn't hurt that by the time he'd finished shipping out the last item from this first collection, he turned in a $10,000 profit. $10,000. So with the gears turning, Dave reached

out to manufacturers and distributors. This quickly turned into shipments from Italy, Germany, and China, which Dave was able to resell fairly quickly and fairly easily on eBay. The next turning point came when he realized that eBay fees and commissions were eating heavily into his margins. Having his own store would be essential because Dave wanted to control the look and feel of the customer experience. And the best way to do that was to start his own site on Shopify.

A quick Google search told him that the domain toycargeek.com was available. So he snapped it up. The only marketing he did was on Facebook groups, where he would spend hours in communities discussing car models, different years, lots of facts, and then sharing that he owned a business that sold them as well. He noticed a direct correlation between the amount of time he spends in these groups and the sales. And moving forward, Dave plans to spend more time on Facebook and start on Instagram as well. But perhaps most importantly, Dave knows the demographic he's

selling to extremely well, in no small part because he belongs to the group as well. Men who are over 55 years of age. He understands what's important to them and why they collect toy cars in the first place. Here's one quick story. A customer bought seven identical model trucks from him because they were the actual trucks used by his family in the 1950s. And he

wanted those models as gifts for his grandchildren to spread the family lore, or at least to remember. In that spirit, Dave never forgets that people buy his wares not because they need them, but because of emotional reasons. His business is not one where he's selling utility, but rather one where he sells memories and connection. Also a good bit of nostalgia. Now today, sales have crossed six figures annually. And while Dave is happy that his collecting

hobby has grown further than he could have ever imagined, he doesn't intend to scale the business more, at least not to the point where he would need employees. The additional income is comfortable enough. And to go beyond might turn a lifelong passion into something that's more akin to work, which is the last thing Dave wants at this point. Lots of good stuff in this story. I hope you enjoyed it as we were kicking off a new year, looking at lots of different business models, ways to make money by doing something that you enjoy something you have some skill or talent for. And it's also appreciated by others. And

you can see all those things, you know, very clearly in this story. The thing that I want to pull out, we could look at several things, but the thing I want to focus on is, you know, Dave was dreading the task of listing his toy cars, his new inventory on eBay, because he was just thinking, Oh, there's so much work that's involved. It's so tedious. But it turned out that it was actually fun. And I really relate to that because I just know like in the past, when I was doing reselling stuff, when I was doing other, you know, new businesses, it is fun, it's exciting, you know, and maybe eventually it becomes something that you want to do less of, or you want to get some help for or just find a way to optimize. You know, in those early days,

when you get those emails that say you've got money, you know, Dave said he felt a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. And that's what you're gonna feel if you haven't done this before. So maybe the thing that you're dreading, you actually just need to start doing it and realize, oh, there's some good things about this, there's some benefit, you know, to getting those emails. And it's not just the money, it's also the recognition, right, that you have made this thing happen. So I want to encourage you to not hold back because you think, oh, it's going to be a good amount of work, it might be some work, but that's okay. You know,

it might be some work that is actually going to be fun and lead you to something else. And, you know, in Dave's case, he's got this very healthy side income, doing something that he really, really enjoys. I will leave you with that today. Listeners, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. To find the show notes for today's episode, including links to Dave's site, anything else I mentioned, just go to sidehustleschool.com/1837.

That's 1-8-3-7. I've also got a new episode for you tomorrow and every single day after that. They're all short, they're all action packed, they're designed to get you thinking, hopefully give you some motivation and let you know that there's lots of other people out there who are all trying to create freedom through the form of a money making project. So I hope you'll subscribe or follow wherever you listen. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School.

From the Onward Project.