I am a collector. I’m a collector now, and as far as I can remember I always have been. Depending on what I collect, I range from completist to theme or focus-based collecting. When I was young I collected matchbox cars. I took great care of them, never crashed them together, kept them in their boxes in nice little rows.

Then 1977 happened, and Star Wars hit. I was 7 then, but it wasn’t until I was eight that I got my first Star Wars toys. They were Darth Vader and R2-D2, the shortest and tallest ones. At that time, there were only 12 characters to collect with 9 more coming out in the next couple years. I’m not sure, but I think it wasn’t until Empire Strikes Back that I fully caught that collecting bug. I had to have all the characters. I asked for them for my Christmas and Birthday presents, and spent most of my pocket money on them.

All other fads came and went. I didn’t touch Transformers, TMNT, GI Joe, Star Trek, Marvel Superheroes or any other toy line. Every Christmas from 1978 had at least one Star Wars gift for me.

Now that I’ve, uh, grown up my Star Wars collecting focus has narrowed just to a few key characters. They are Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker.

Why only these guys? They’re actually two sides of the same coin so to me they are the same character. Star Wars is the story of Darth Vader. Every other character exists only to tell his story. Also, with all the product around nowadays, there is no possible way that I could keep up if I was a completist; I simply do not have enough time,  money or storage space for one of every item. I seriously do not know how other collectors I know keep up with it.

So within these bounds (Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker characters only) I can almost afford to be a completist. Even within this focus I have about 300 individual pieces, more than enough to keep me busy, poor and cramped on space. Since the middle of last year I have caught up on all the previous releases and international cards so I’m left twiddling my thumbs until the next lot is released. There’s a bit of a void for me right now, and the void needs to be filled.

Enter Minichamps 1:43 Formula 1 models. For some reason, I’ve been watching a lot of Formula 1 racing lately, courtesy of One HD. Coincidentally, Australian Mark Webber has been doing not too badly, accumulating a fair share of points. He had his first podium finish this year, and managed second place in the Chinese GP behind Sebastian Vettel. So, putting two and two together, you get a guy who wants to start collecting Mark Webber race cars. It was either Webber or Jacques Villeneuve, but because Webber is still active I’ll go with him. Besides being expensive little buggers, it’s a safe item to collect because there’s only one or two cars per year for each driver, and Webber is near the end of his career and isn’t going to be racing forever. They’re highly detailed and very attractive. It would be good to have them all lined up and see the evolution of the car shape. I’m still tossing up whether or not to collect them, but I sent mum an email and a link to an ebay auction for the 2002 Minardi which was Webber’s first race. Maybe she’ll get it for me, maybe not. If she does, I’ll see if I can continue to collect them all. These are the models I want to collect sorted by year, along with the serial numbers.