OFF THE SHELF: Harvey Goranson collects what he likes (Part II)

(Picking up from Part I)

From France, Harvey went to England by Hovercraft, picked up another rental, visited London, stayed in Windsor, and had dinner with Mike and Sue Richardson of Modellers’ World. It was there that Harvey heard the advice that has guided his collecting ever since. How do you decide what to collect? Sue’s answer was simple… “Do we like it?”

That line stayed with him because it clarified something he had already been moving toward. There is always a temptation in collecting to buy by the numbers, to complete a manufacturer’s sequence, to pursue something because a list says the sequence is unfinished. Harvey has tried to resist that. He wants his collection to reflect his own eye, not simply a numbering system. It is one of the reasons the title fits him so well. Harvey Goranson collects what he likes. Underneath the plainness of that statement is a lifetime of choosing against compulsion.

The years that followed brought an explosion in the hobby. Resin kits from France began to overshadow older white metal efforts. Transkits appeared, allowing collectors and builders to transform humble diecasts into subjects nobody else had made. More magazines arrived. More swap meets. More one-marque books. Harvey traded with collectors in Eastern Europe behind the Iron Curtain and built up a noteworthy group of Russian diecasts. New European diecast makers such as Brumm, Box Model, Rextoys, and Vitesse entered the field with collector-focused models that carried forward some of the spirit older brands had lost.

Life, meanwhile, kept getting fuller. In 1984, over the span of just two weeks, Harvey got married, became a stepfather, moved from Nashville to East Tennessee, and changed jobs. Later came children and the financial realities that make even the most devoted collector reconsider his pace. The collecting did not stop, but it adapted. In the 1990s inexpensive 1:43 models from big-box stores helped satisfy the itch while money was tighter. Then came the internet and, with it, a transformation even greater than mail order had once represented.

By the time eBay took hold, Harvey was there to watch the change in real time. Early searches for Dinky or Corgi produced a few dozen or a few hundred results. Later those numbers ballooned into the tens of thousands. Scarcity changed. Access changed. The hunt changed. So did the economics of the hobby. At the same time Chinese production, led by brands such as Minichamps, began delivering detail at a level once unimaginable for mainstream diecast. Harvey saw the shift coming and sold off many of his kits in anticipation of what the new era would bring. He still has only a few kits now. The finished models won.

The twenty-first century brought its own reshaping. Harvey bought a new Miata in 2000, later watched his wife Kay realize her dream of owning a Jaguar, and over time continued refining both his 1:1 and 1:43 worlds. Spark emerged and became especially important, given its focus on Le Mans and racing subjects that fit Harvey’s long-running interests. Forum43 and Countryside shows brought him back into a more visible community of fellow collectors. He renewed old acquaintances, made new ones, and found himself impressed by how far the hobby had evolved, even down to the once-unthinkable practice of reworking mint Brooklins into Code 3 creations he came to admire.

He made one final career move in 2009, joining Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a staff fire protection engineer. Ten years later he retired. Retirement did not reduce the intensity of his engagement with the hobby so much as shift its shape. There were rallies with his daughter through the Lane Motor Museum, a Porsche 911 added to the garage, Facebook groups to help moderate, more writing, more reflection, and more interaction with the growing web-based effort to catalog the hobby itself.

That last point matters to him. Harvey has always cared about documentation, whether through books, magazines, his own record keeping, or broader cataloging efforts. He knows print becomes obsolete the moment it appears, no matter how valuable it remains. Websites are the living answer to that problem. He admires the work of hobbyDB in particular, with its ambition to catalog not just model cars but collectibles more broadly, and he has even agreed to curate a few brands there. It feels like a natural fit. Harvey has always been part collector, part historian, part custodian.

(hobbyDB's Christian Braun partnered with Brooklin on a limited issue of 24 1961 Pontiacs in this color)

These days he sees his collection in practical as well as emotional terms. He belongs firmly to the school that considers little cars assets, not expenses. He prefers mint boxed examples and rotates cars through salvaged Corgi store display cabinets to control dust, fading, and tire flattening. He has kept detailed spreadsheets to help him understand what is common, what is important, and what his heirs may someday need to know. Age sharpens that perspective. He has already begun trimming the collection, letting go of sectors that matter less to him now. Airplanes, many trucks and vans, military pieces, fire engines, some larger scales. The task is difficult because one deletion can make the next piece feel more meaningful by association. Like fellow collector Steve Williams, Harvey sees his collection as a kind of history of the motorcar, which makes removing a historically significant replica feel like erasing a line from a larger story.

There is grief in the room now, too. Kay died in September 2022, and Harvey is still moving through the house, still sorting what stays where, still slowly deciding how to reorganize the life they built together. The display cabinets he means to move into his car room remain where they are for the time being. He admits he is a procrastinator. The admission feels almost affectionate, a small shrug after a life spent in rigorous attention to detail.

Ask him about favorites and the answer stretches across eras and materials. He still loves the old diecasts for their rugged charm. Dinky, Corgi, Solido, Tekno, Politoys. In white metal he gravitates toward Max Kernick’s Top Marques and the latest Brooklins. In resin he admires EMC, B & G, and VDM Cadillacs. He still has grails. He still scans the horizon for the Ferrari 330 P3s from Le Mans 1966 that somehow got away.

Ask him for advice and he returns to the principle that has anchored the whole story. Collect what you like. Then, if you are just starting, choose a scale or a theme and stay with it long enough to give your collection coherence. Be patient with the holy grails. They tend to appear when you least expect them.

In the end, Harvey Goranson collects what he likes, and that turns out to be the clearest way to understand both the man and the collection. Across decades of changing tastes, changing markets, and changing stages of life, he kept returning to the same instinct. Not what completes the set. Not what someone else says matters. What do I like? What remains is a collection shaped by memory, judgment, and affection, the kind that could only belong to one person because it tells the story of what caught his eye and never really let go.