FM and DM catalog

@david-green I will wait, i could always gett a lot of information there. I am glad that diecast.org is still here and i joint this forum with pleasure. 

@robert_kalkman I like your avatar and your videos! Welcome to the forum.  

@robert_kalkman  your videos are superb Robert, well done!

@chav Thank you 🙏 

@geoff-jowett thank you 🙏 

A great deal of the mozaic, above, is correct. There are but a few missing pieces, that, while not extremely germane to the current discussion, bear mentioning.

Jay Olins started the club as an astute collector of diecast autos. He affiliated himself with certain persons at The Franklin Mint and later, the Danbury Mint, so that he could get a better handle on which models were released and which were coming in the future. 

Realizing the value in his lists of scale models, he started a newsletter under the heading of the DieCast Car Collectors Club, or D4C. It was just him in the early years but joined by Dr. George Dill, also out of Jay's home state of California. George kept the car lists on his computer.

Jay met with Michael Knab who owned Priva, an ad agency and together they put the car lists on the internet in the late 90's. I joined Jay and George and became Jay's Assistant Editor for the newsletter and Diecast Zone website. I was, initially, the loan forums moderator and between Jay, George and me, we posted reviews of the newly released models. Mike Martin was Jay's original photographer until he and I both covered the myriad of models that both Mint's were issuing.

Jay's affiliation with TFM allowed him to commission model repaints and renovations to be purchased by our members and the LECC (Limited Edition Club Car) was born.

The original team that picked the cars to do were Jay, George and me. At the time that Raffi took over the reins at TFM, we included him in our picks.

Just before Jay's death, Mike Knab exited the website and his own addition, Legacy Motors. At that time, the two owners of Mint Models, bought that entity. After Jay's death, they continued his work at the website and are now into renovating it into the 21st century.

The car lists and reviews and auction facilities, I have been told, are archived so, hopefully, they will reappear once more. I have no knowledge of the actual postings of old and whether or not they, too, will resurrect. Time will tell. 2020, obviously was a hard year for everyone and that rode on the backs of the site developers as well. Let's all hope for a better 2021!

@robert_kalkman

Hi Robert, welkom op t forum. Heb je filmpjes al gepromoot 😉

gr. henry

@perrone1,

A great summary of the D4C's history.

@perrone1

Great summary of the Club, Tony. I've been lurking in the shadows for a few years.

Wow Tony that was a fantastic summary of the history of all of the dedicated pioneers that made this hobby what it is today.  I feel like I was just given a tour through a car museum.

Thank you

Very interesting beginning history of D4C, I have been visiting this site since it was fairly new, sometime in the late 90s, I can't recall exactly when I found it but I know it was prior or during 1998. 

thanks Tony , I learnt a lot.