SMALL VEHICLES BIG MEMORIES
By Marcia Lane
Photo by Kate Gardiner
61 SAN MARCO AVENUE • 904-819-9899
Big Bill’s Die Cast may be a “toy” store that draws in more big boys than little boys.
In the shop on San Marco Avenue, you’ll find some 14,000 different diecasts of models, including cars, trucks, airplanes, and military vehicles. Mind you, those are just the unduplicated models. In a warehouse, storeowner William “Bill” Johnson has 20,000 more, which makes you understand why his sign reads: “If I don’t have it, they don’t make it.”
Diecasts get their name from how they’re made – molten lead or zinc alloy is poured in a mold to produce specific shapes. The method makes for sturdier models with more detail than plastic. It also creates longer lasting models.
Those models can be highly prized because of the workmanship, uniqueness, and sometimes, memories they stir up in people. Johnson, who has been at his current location for nine years, gets a variety of people coming in to look, buy, and even sell.
“I’ve probably sold to residents of virtually every country. These are big down in South America, and we have a lot of Canadians who come in.”
Some customers buy a model because it’s like the car they once owned or the one they always wanted to own. For some, nostalgia will prompt a purchase. “They have it as a sort of talisman,” says Johnson.
Johnson says he gets a lot of military types dropping by. In one case, he sold a certain airplane to a former pilot because the plane had the man’s “own personal number on it.” That, he concedes, is rare.
Diecasts also create collectors and collections. As he notes, “My generation, we were all car crazy. Man, we were nuts about cars.”
That “crazy” can lead to the collecting bug and, occasionally, new stock for Johnson. Sometimes, widows or children of one-time collectors come in hoping to sell collections. Sometimes, it’s a collector who is running out of space or having to get rid of his collection.
Johnson can sympathize. He got started in the business after collecting so many models his wife “got tired of dusting them.” She suggested taking them to a flea market. Johnson did, but, instead of getting rid of his collection, he ended up buying more, selling them, and expanding at the flea market in Jacksonville. He opened a store in St. Augustine after the couple moved here.
These days, the collecting of anything isn’t as popular as it once was. But Johnson’s not worried. While millennials may spend more time texting than eyeing cars, he notes that grade-schoolers and kids in early high school are coming in and gazing at replicas with renewed interest. So are some of their dads.
Interested in finding just the right diecast for your collection? Visit Big Bill’s Die Cast at 61 San Marco Avenue or call 904-819-9899.