Even when one is no longer attached to things, it's still something to have been attached to them; because it was always for reasons which other people didn't grasp . . . Well, now that I'm a little too weary to live with other people, these old feelings, so personal and individual, that I had in the past, seem to me -- very precious. I open my heart to myself like a sort of vitrine, and examine one by one all those love affairs of which the world can know nothing. And of this collection to which I'm much more attached than my others, I say to myself, rather as Mazarin said of his books, but in fact without the least distress, that it will be very tiresome to have to leave it all.
Charles Swann
Marcel Proust - Cities of the Plain
My own eclectic diecast collection is housed in ten green lacquered display cases which adorn the walls of my office and as Proust has Charles Swann say it exists for reasons which other people don't grasp and for that matter never will, but it brings me immense pleasure daily and our visitors seem surprised and delighted to see all these miniature vehicles displayed like this. And for those of us of a certain age who can remember toyshops of long ago where models were often displayed in glass fronted cases which could be opened and the chosen model taken out and put in a box and handed over to the eager child for whom this toyshop was a little paradise I hope Ruby Toys will bring back some of that excitement.
