This was once a quite common sight on the sides of our roads and highways, but not so much anymore. So when I saw this genuine metal hubcap laying near an intersection close to our house, I had to stop and investigate, lest it be a really vintage one.
I don’t know what I was possibly expecting; a 1952 Chevy’s with a blazing blue bowtie? No; a Chevy, yes, but one of millions used on their trucks and vans for what seems like decades. I flipped it over and left it there; perhaps the owner will come back looking for it. Right…some guy who drives a fleet Chevy van for a plumbing or electric company that never even noticed it flying off. And why did it come off?
When I had a set of used tires mounted recently on my ’66 Ford F-100, the guy seemed almost afraid of putting on the dog dish hubcaps, with repeated rather gentle pushes around the circumference rather than the hearty single whacks! we all gave them back in the day, with the palm of our hands, or the sole of our shoes, if necessary. Unless that nice metallic kalunck! rang out, I didn’t trust them to be on securely. I’m sure he was afraid of possibly denting it or such. No worries of that back then; the hubcaps were durable, and took that kind of abuse. Or if not, who cared? Dog dishes were low-status, and easy to replace if one really did get dinged or lost.
The full wheelcovers were of course a different thing, and required a bit more body language to get them on securely. A rubber mallet was often employed, over a shop rag, and tapped around the circumference to make sure it wouldn’t fly off at the next bumpy curve or intersection.
And if it did, two things would happen: some kid would pick it up and either keep it or sell it to the local hubcap shop. And the driver would go to the hubcap shop and buy it back, or another one, if the kid happened to keep it. Back then, hubcap shops y were a fixture in any town, and played the key middle man in this economic circle.
Like many things, they’ve become scarcer. We used to go to Stephanie’s hometown, Arcata, CA, at least once a year, and there was a terrific hubcap shop there, with a truly impressive inventory. Since I was on vacation, I’d sometimes stop in and just peruse. Looking at hubcaps is a powerful way to conjure up visual images of the cars they once graced, as well as a mental challenge to bring up the right one.
That shop isn’t there anymore, and I thought maybe some giant on-line seller might have bought up the inventory. But no, it just moved, and Hirsch Hubcaps is still in business. I’m guessing that their inventory has increased in value greater than the rate of inflation.
Did you ever collect hubcaps? I never did actively, but came into the possession of one or two at various times. A ’63 Chevy Impala SS was a brief treasure. Bet it’s worth something now.
Good old “dog dish” hubcaps. If you had one of those on hand, a bag of kibbles and bits, and a hungry dog – you could make that dog very happy.
My Dad would pick them up from the side of the road back in the 60s and 70s. My personal faves were a complete set of Oldsmobile disc style covers with the Olds rocket logo in the center. I currently have one of his finds on the wall in my office. A hubcap from a 1967 Mustang.
I collected precisely 1 hubcap. When I was about 10 years old, someone sightseeing in their brand new Cadillac shed a wheel-cover while circumnavigating the cul-de-sac in front of my house. I set it up against the curb for a couple days, in case they came back. Then it wound up outside our back door for the next decade or so. On the other hand, I contributed at least 10 hubcaps to the scavenger cause due to overzealous cornering in my ’71 Scamp(2 full sets lost) and my ’85 Jetta, which had the anachronistic full polished wheel covers available that model year.
There are a lot of things I miss about cars of the 60s and 70s, but hubcaps (whether full-wheel or dog dish) aren’t one of them.
Steel wheels are inherently flexible, especially under hard cornering, and this flex makes hubcaps fly. No film or TV car chase scene of the era is complete without a flying hubcap or two.
The first thing I did when I got my new (used) 2005 Scion xB home, was to remove the wheel covers. Not long after, the steelies were replaced with alloys.
If I had any vehicle that came with plastic wheelcovers, I’d just run the bare steelies all the time, just to hear what the neighbors would say.
http://blacksteelies.com/
Man… I thought it was going to be a link for buying black steelies. 🙁
Just what I do on my cars.
Alloy wheels are stiff, but fragile: in a situation when a steel rim just bents, they crack, or at least would develop fatigue cracks eventually. And plastic wheelcovers… I lost one the first day I owned the car with them. Some people fasten them to the disks with plastic clamps, but that’s just stupid IMHO.
I don’t save hubcaps, but an older white painted (with gold bow tie) Chevy truck hubcap landed in my yard 25+ years ago and I’ve kept it on the garage wall even after 2 moves. And there’s another bright metal one I found 10 years ago keeping it company.
A guy at work found a hubcap to a Chevy Rallye wheel; he wasn’t into cars and I asked if I could have it. So I hung it on the garage wall. About 5 years later a cable TV truck drove by one day and came to an abrupt halt. The driver hopped out and asked if I would sell the hubcap, so I asked for $25. He hesitated, then pulled out the cash. Maybe I should now hang my painted hubcap near the door and try for a little extra cash.
I never had the chance to pull honest-to-God steel hubcaps out of the ditch, but I’ve found more than a few plastic wheelcovers. Two weren’t from the same car, but could’ve been, since they were the ones Chevy used on all their cars and minivans in the late 90s/early 00s. I even found the plastic hubcover from a late-model GM truck in the middle of a disked field, hundreds of yards from any road. What probably happened was somebody drove out when it was a hay field to pick up a load of hay, the cover fell off, then managed to avoid getting run over by the plow, the chisel plow, the planter, the packer, the sprayer, the combine, the stalk chopper, and the disk before I found it again the next spring.
Sitting in the garage at home are all the real steels my dad and uncle pulled out of the ditches from about ’69 to ’84, squirreled away in an old shed, then promptly forgot about until we tore it down this past summer. There’s a couple nondescript dog dishes, and at least one Chevy identical to the one you found, of course, but also one with the crown logo Ford used in the 70s and 80s, and the crown jewel of my collection–a red-letter DeSoto. No idea how that got there, but I’m not complaining. Thanks for reminding me about them–figure next time I go home, I’ll pull ’em out, pound out the dents, maybe polish ’em up and hang ’em on my wall.
What was the last American car to have steel hubcaps, anyway?
Last with steel hubcaps…hmm. My guess would be an early 90’s GM A-body. I seem to recall some of them rocking metal covers long after most others went to plastic. Just an off-the-top-of-the-head guess though.
I met a pair of pair of truckers in the 70’s that made some tax-free cash by picking up hubcaps on the side of the Interstates and selling them to a shop in their hometown. One of the guys said he could spot a hubcap 100 yards out.
Many years ago an acquaintance of mine missed one hubcab of his old Opel Ascona. Left front, chrome, with the Opel Blitz in the center. So he went to the nearest trailer park. And here a trailer park means scrap metal dealers and car dismantlers.
“The Boss” ordered his kid to get one, they had it in stock, and he had to put it on the car right away. My acquaintance went into the trailer to pay for the hubcap and he got a cup of coffee while inside. He left the trailer, he saw his Opel had a nice and shiny original hubcap on the left front wheel. Thank you guys !
Once at home he noticed that the hubcap of his right rear wheel was missing. The damn kid just changed it from rear right to front left….
And you don’t drive back to a trailer park “to settle the score”. You won’t get your money back. Instead you get a free orthodontic correction.
Sounds like the sort of thing the knackers do in Cork Eire.(In between wife beating,stealing car stereos and dog fighting)
I wouldn’t say they’re wife beaters. You remember the movie “Snatch” ? Something like that, but on a bigger and more professional base. Big trailers that look like houses. Pavement, no muddy terrain.
Let’s say these are very tight-knit communities. Everybody knows you’d better not mess around with them.
I used to pick them up and sell them on ebay around the turn of the century…even the more modern plastic ones go very fast as new ones are quite pricey. I remember getting $50 for one from a Maxima and about $40 for one from a Golf/Jetta. The key is them falling off and not sliding on their face…Good weekend mad money!
Paul, there was also a store in San Mateo near where your sister-in-law lives until the late 90’s or mid-2000’s. It shared space with a great burrito place and then the building turned into Jack’s burgers, next to the car wash south of Hillsdale.
The place in San Mateo …
In the mid 70s I bought a new Audi Fox. Because I FOOLISHLY did not read and memorize the owner’s manual, I did not know the hubcaps were held on with 4 clips that looked like they were made from recycled tin cans. Nor did I know that EVERY TIME a hubcap was removed all four of those clips MUST be thrown out and new ones installed before putting the hubcap back on….or the hubcap fell off as soon as the car started moving. I lost 3 hubcaps before I decided to read the owner’s manual to see what I was doing wrong when I changed a tire. Back then, each clip cost 75 cents…or $2 or $3 in today’s dollars, so changing a tire cost $3 just for the 4 clips back then and rotating all 4 tires….
I never lost a hubcap on any of the other cars I owned.
There used to be a franchised business called Hubcap Annie’s in most large (east coast?)cities, they are long gone, except for the ones that “branched out” into alloy wheel and tire sales.
I miss classic hubcaps…I would run some on my Panthers but unfortunately noone made 16 inch steel wheels in the 60s and 70s…I do have the stickout center caps on my CVPI. Does anyone know of any 16 inch Mercury full wheelcovers from the earlier era?
It bugs me that Ford went to 16 in wheels on the 98 panthers. If they’d just stuck with the traditional 15’s you could put any classic hubcap on you want and I would probably have a selection of white walls to put on my Bbody for years to come.
I worked with a skinflint who collected them and knew which other cars they fit.When he had 4 the same he advertised them in the free ads paper and sold them.
Have about 8 for my room as decoration. I would like to grow my collection. These days, you have to go to junkyards to get hubcaps.
This article sure brings back memories of my paternal grandfather in the 50’s. He collected everything and if alive today would be a great candidate for American Pickers. He once owned a filling station and hence had a great collection of automotive-related product signs and other (what we would call today) memorabilia. I especially fancied the ashtrays for Firestone, Goodyear, etc. that looked like miniature tires, as well as the ballpoint pens representing oil companies that had a sample of oil floating in a sealed compartment on the end.
He had a huge collection of hubcaps and wheel covers mounted on the walls of a shed that fascinated me as a kid. I especially loved the Cadillac “Sombrero” wheel covers and those featuring Chief Pontiac or the Olds Rocket. Grandpa was retired as I was growing up and if someone came by needing a particular model and looked as if his pockets were not very full, he would just pull the cap or cover off the wall and give it to him or charge very little for it, a reflection of his kind and generous nature. When he died my grandmother had a huge box of IOUs going back to the days of owning the filling station. Good times.
When I was about five, I was at my grandparent’s house; well, the shed to be precise. Anyway, there was a hubcap off a ’67 to ’70 LTD hanging above the doorway. Fascinated, I grabbed the hoe and knocked it off the nail using the handle. In turn, the razor blade sharp attachment nearly removed my left eye. Since then I’ve had a mild scar just to the left of my left eye but the emergence of laugh lines has diminished it.
However, I have collected a few hubcaps that I don’t really want. I have a few from Chevrolet B-bodies, one for a Chrysler Newport with 14″ wheels, a ’60s era Chevrolet pickup, and two (yes, two) for a 1971 Ford Galaxie / LTD.
Those things are like giant 5 lb Ninja throwing stars. Once there was a collision near me as I was crossing a street and one of those things went whizzing by my foot with the steel retainer edges spinning like a circular saw blade. Another time one flew off an old 67-68 Ford wagon just ahead of me as we drove over railroad tracks, it flew over my hood just past my windshield. My door glass was rolled down, another 2 or 3 feet it would have flown right through the open window,
Years and years ago when my folks had their 1996 Century(a few weeks before it was totaled by a drunk) my dad was driving through Laural MD and at the intersection a puddle hid a well formed pot hole. His hubcap flew off. I went back to look for it a few hours later and in the ditch, there must have been at least 100 or so hubcaps due to that pot hole. I found his and took it home. It was one of those heavy buick hubcaps that were made of metal.
About 2 years later after I got my 1989 Buick Century wagon, I was driving the parts pick up truck that belonged to the dealership I worked for on my way to pick up tires for the owner’s Vette. On the side of the road on RT40, I spotted a Buick century hubcap and stopped off at the side of the road and ran back to get it. It is always good to have a spare.
As the former owner of a ’91 Corolla, I didn’t collect hubcaps, I contributed hubcaps to other people’s collections.
I pulled over into the parking lot of a long abandoned store so as to not lose the cell phone signal while in the middle of a long conversation. After I was done, I saw something shinning in the overgrown brush. It was a nice, thick, high-quality hubcap. Then I found another… and another! Of course, only three. I researched the wreath and three cat-like things and found out they were from an early 70’s LTD. Hadn’t seen one of those in a while. Why the hubcaps where there was pretty strange. I felt a little guilty taking them so I posted a lost hubcaps as on Craigslist and got no answer. I planned to make clocks out of them but they got pushed to the back of my shed after moving out of an office (why I’m using another website’s pic). I may still make a clock. How else can one make money from 3 early 70’s LTD hubcaps?
I always complain the $15 shipping cost is more expensive than a $10 plymouth volare/dodge aspen hubcap and usually they come one by one from the seller
You day you need Volare hubcaps? 🙂
Ah, yes, the hubcap memories. These day’s I can’t use the palm of my hand as a hammer because of the pain that comes from too many years of abuse, mainly from hubcap and wheel cover installation. As Paul said, the dog dish style were easy as they were tough for the most part. But the full wheel covers required more expertise. I often would hold the bottom portion on the wheel with my knees, and then would pound in the upper part with my hand. Today I use a rubber mallet, as my hands are bad and I can’t squat anymore.
I do have a few old metal wheel covers in my shed that I found while out walking. Someday I may see if I can sell them on ebay.
I wish car makers still used the dog dish style for poverty caps. Today’s plastic wheel covers look so ratty after a while, partly because they show too much of the wheel that has very little paint on it. It isn’t long before the paint wears off and the wheel begins to rust. The latest VW Beetle does have a throwback to the dog dish style. I have never seen one up close, so I am not sure what they really are, but they look decent from a distance.
> Today’s plastic wheel covers look so ratty after a while, partly because they show too much of the wheel that has very little paint on it. It isn’t long before the paint wears off and the wheel begins to rust.
That bugs me too. What`s the point of wheel covers that look like imitation 5-spoke alloy wheels but don`t protect the steel wheels behind them from the weather?
Once when I was about 5 years old I did pick up a Ford hubcap left in a grassy area next to a parking lot. I was hoping to start a collection. That collection stayed at 1 before going to zero after the Ford hubcap was thrown out in the garbage by someone other than myself several years later.
I still have some old hub caps , 1930’s Packard and so on , I used to pick them up by the side of the road in the 1960’s , find them in long abandoned houses , garages and trash heaps .
In the late 1970’s my Son was born so I repeatedly schlepped my ’46 Chevy 3100 series pickup out to The (long gone) Azusa Swap meet and sold hub caps and artillery wheels etc. for $2 ~ 5$ each and never made less than $400 / load after gas , food and entry fee ~ I had *so* much old Automobilia it was amazing , I’d wanted to create a ‘ Man Cave ‘ in my garage but didn’t buy my first house until almost 1980 .
I still have lots of oddball stuff hanging from the rafters or nailed to the walls , I told my Son to take whatever he wanted and sell it off , I’ll never use any of it now .
-Nate
My high school shop teacher once said that if you ran your car without hubcaps and the lug nuts rusted, god would not help you.
Only to collect them for scrap. I have an old Saab hubcap from a pre-900 Saab from one of the family cars and I think that is it.
I usually spot plastic hubcaps on the grass by the side of the road around my work area. They would make good Frisbees, but I don’t see the point of collecting them unless I have a whole set that I can use on a car. I had kept an old set of plastic 14″ 1990 Pontiac hubcaps which came off an old family car that my dad owned 10 years ago. He wanted to throw them out this year because they’ve being lying in the garage for so long. The ones on newer cars must either come off or break off very easily and plastic loses its finish over time. I have seen Taxi cab owners use a couple of zip ties on each hubcap to keep from losing them I suppose. I hate parts that fall off including the centre caps/covers on rims.
I have examples of almost every hubcap available for 1966 Chryslers, including a couple of dog dishes. Trying to sell some of them. The misc hubcaps that I found as a kid are hanging on the wall in the garage at my parents` house.
Never did collect hubcaps, I do have a small collection of center caps from alloy rims though. I’ve been keeping my eye out for a hubcap like the featured one to make a clock out of. The very first truck I remember riding in was my dad’s ’85 Chevy Custom Deluxe & it originally had white steelies with these hubcaps before he replaced them with a set of rally wheels off an 80s Chevy G10 conversion van. I was all of 4-5 years old at the time. Funny the things we remember. (And a lot of those things for me involve my families old cars lol)
I walked to school a lot, so I had plenty of opportunities to come across the spoils of a car wreck (emblems and trim lying in the gutter) or the lost hub cap. They ‘decorated’ a wall of my bedroom. Many of the hub cabs were the small dog dish variety, not the full wheel covers.
But even as a ‘gutter picker’, I knew I’d ‘arrived’ when I found a ’70 Eldorado hubcap. Proving that even the pieces of a Cadillac were once desirable.
Keepin’ a stamped metal hubcap of a 1978 Monte Carlo which came across the Atalanic Ocean from Canada…to Europe. As the car was driven lately by a childhood buddie of mine, I had helped his dad who really brought it from Totonto a decade or more earlier, to part out the car after his son passed away as an innocent passenger in a motorbike accident… I have kept a hubcap and the reg. plate as a memorabilia…
A few years ago I helped a mate collect one that fell off his car (luckily off the front wheel so I saw it) that had gone down into a gully. I currently need to collect one as I lost one from the work car a couple of weeks ago (dented the wheel on a pothole), first time that has happened to me.
There’s a couple of versions of this particular cap, a half-ton version and a larger diameter three quarter and one ton type.
I had never really paid attention until I bought a 1987 G-30 Chevy van and needed a replacement.
I bought a slightly used dark blue ’85 Ford Tempo with hubcaps that matched my friend’s ’84 black coupe. My buddy Ed bought his Tempo brand new, and only owned it a couple of months when he lost one front wheel hubcap. He said it came off when he was cornering the on-ramp on to the freeway. He never bothered replacing it. I always thought it was odd that a relatively new vehicle was missing something that really detracted its appearance.
When I stopped by to show off my new ride (which, other than colour, was pretty much identical to his), he casually said, “I’m going to steal one of your hubcaps someday.” I laughed off his prediction.
A short time later I was over at his place on a Friday night and had a few too many drinks, so being a responsible citizen I left my car there. I went to retrieve it the next morning and was out and about stopping in here and there around town doing errands. When I came out of one store I noticed my left front hubcap was missing. “&$@^&**#!! Ed!!!”
I proceeded to drive directly back to his place and confront him at the door.
“Ed, give me back my hubcap.”
“What are you talking about?”
I was really irritated that he actually went ahead with his foretelling, and my hangover was quickly changing my mood to anger as I heard him feign ignorance. I reminded him that he clearly told me he was going to do what he just did.
The conversation degraded into a war of words. “Bill, I think you should go and look at my car before you accuse me of this.”
I went out and looked at his car. Three hubcaps. Front left still MIA.
I felt terrible. I went back to his door and apologized. My mind started running through how and where I might have lost my hubcap. Ed and I sorted through some scenarios.
“Did you jump on the 403?”
Why yes.. yes… I did! The freeway cuts a swath right through the city so many locals use it as a quick cross-towner. I must have lost my hubcap the same way he lost his… doing the freeway on-ramp loop…
“Hey, I’m really sorry, man. I’ve got to get back to that on-ramp.”
I searched all around the area of the on-ramp; I even peered out over the interchange bridge to get a longer and wider view. Nada. Nothing.
As the months passed, my annoyance of also only having three hubcaps on my car began to wane. I checked out the cost of a replacement; they were pricey, and Tempos were still relatively new to the market so used ones were hard to come by. Now I understood why Ed didn’t replace his. We were both in our twenties and money was tight. A full set of Ford Tempo hub caps were a “nice to have”, not a “must have”.
One day I was sitting at his kitchen table, nursing a coffee and discussing nothing in particular as the setting afternoon sun filled the room. The stainless steel appliances on the counter began to gleam brightly. Suddenly, something shiny caught my eye between the fridge and the portable dishwasher.
I reached in and pulled out my missing hubcap. Ed began to laugh hysterically. His wife jumped in and proclaimed, “You finally found it!!! Do you know how many times you’ve sat right in that chair, drinking a beer or a coffee, and never noticed that $%%$#* thing sitting there???”
Road grime accumulated on my finger as I ran it across the disc. Ed had laid down the house rules. It was to just sit there, dusty and dirty, leaning against the fridge, in the same condition it was the night I left in a drunken stupor and he pulled it off my car.
“
Now that is hilarious!!
And true 🙂
One of my prized possessions as a kid was an early 80’s Cadillac hubcap (red center with finned edges) that was given to me by my uncle. He was a cop, and he noticed it fly off while he the Caddy he was chasing slid around the corner and chirped the curb, and went back later to pick it up for me. Unfortunately, it lived in the garage because my mom wouldn’t let me display it in my room as I desired.
We lived near a busy intersection, and I had also obtained a Ford LTD wagon after it was left by the owner involved in a minor accident. I kept it for many years as well, but recently parted with it since it was visabily damaged.
I do have about a dozen+ hubcaps in my garage. Most from old family cars, a VW dog dish, 79 Malibu, 83 Pontiac 6000 and 93 Lumina. It’s been close to a decade since my last decent roadside score. I was driving to a friend’s house and noticed a hubcap at the side of the road. As I passed it, I saw that it was a late 80s Oldsmobile wire wheelcover. I immediately slammed on the brakes and cut the wheel flying into the parking lot and circling back to it as a group of ricers in the adjacent Auto Zone watched intently. I threw it into park, popped the trunk, jumped out and grabbed it and resumed on my way. I kind of miss those oppurtunities. Any more, if I do see a hubcap it’s one of those crappy plastic ones and often not even OEM.
BTW: I loathe the hubcapless black steelie look that is so popular. Back in my day, that meant your caps were stolen. On modern cars, it just draws attention to the fact that it’s a low end model without alloys.
This was how I spent my early teen years. I earned a PhD in hubcap and wheelcover from the School of Bad Roads. One day I picked up a hub cap along the side of the road. One thing led to another until my best friend and I would actively search for hubcaps and wheelcovers. We eventually got up to over 100 of them and sold the lot to a local junkyard for $40. We were 14 or so and felt like the Midas twins. This was our collection on what turned out to be picture day in maybe 1973, fairly early in our collection.
The dog dish poverty caps were hard to find, as they usually stayed on. Our perennials were from 1964 and 1965 Fords. We even had a couple of Mercedes wheelcovers in two different shades of green. I cannot tell you how many of these I took apart and cleaned in my mother’s kitchen sink. But she probably could. 🙂
I still have & display in my garage a ’57 Chevy hubcap. Although the ’57 has been gone 39 years, I enjoy seeing my last memory of it.
While all of you smart people are on here, can someone tell me what this hubcap came off of? It was in an old Chevy van that my father-in-law purchased, and he (we) have no idea. Thanks in advance!
Late prewar Oldsmobile. A web search found one just like this that someone identified as a 1939. Not sure of the year, but definitely an Olds.
Thanks JPC. I really would have thought that it would have been a car make that started with an “M”, but maybe that’s not an M on the cap? And what’s with the 3 water drops?
Thanks again!
There were a lot of metal hubcaps about in the 80’s when I was young, but I never brought any home because I knew my neat-freak mother wouldn’t allow such a thing to stay in the house. And at that time we didn’t have a shed or outdoor storage as we lived in an apartment. By the time we moved into a detached house with a shed in the early 90’s, most found wheel covers were plastic and not worth picking up. Very often cracked.
So, the only hubcaps I actually collected were ones that went flying off our ’79 Malibu while on the road. That car had the base level stamped metal wheel covers, and we probably had close to 10 fly off over the years. If we saw it go rolling away, I’d get dispatched to chase it down and bring it back, so only 3 or 4 times did we have to go to the junkyard for replacements.
I always thought the covers that had a more positive retention system were smarter. Our ’86 Parisienne had the fake wire wheel covers (factory), but under the center cap I seem to remember there being a clip, screw, or *something* to keep them from flying off while driving. And on the ’91 Accord was the best system–the hubcap was held on by the lug nuts! That sucker wasn’t going anywhere. Also explains why you can sometimes see ’90 to ’93 Accords with broken wheel covers that are still attached.
Here in Richmond we still have a “hubcap dealer” attached to a tire shop that is basically a vacant lot with stacks of hubcaps sitting in it, behind a fence. It changed hands recently and now carries the tire shop’s signage, but until then, the sign on the fence proclaimed “LOT OF HUBCAPS”. Yes, there were quite a lot!
I was just a lttle boy in the early 1950’s but my father always stopped for a hubcap when we lived in Los Angeles.Still have some,even full sets.Hubcap guy just north of me,might still be in business.
I’m collecting hubcaps since 2002.
Before collected stickers,stamps, play tokens,calling cards but everything ended. No interest in stickers and tokens anymore.Calling cards doesn’t exist anymore as everyone got his own phone.
But hubcaps..they are still on car wheels.
I am from Latvia.When I was kid I always watched American movies and there were moments when in chase some cars lost hubcaps and also spot walls or fences decorated with these shiny things. And always wanted find some for myself. Once I was on age 13 I went home past school with my classmate and spot a plastic hubcap left at fence on corner.OMG what a find! I was so happy. My classmate didn’t understand and asked why do I need that. My answer was:” For collection! ” So it started. On way home after school I started look around maybe will spot any more. Found few. But the best time came when I get my own bicycle. Almost every time after ride I had any find.
At moment I have over 600 different hubcaps.There’s genuine ones and aftermarket too. Plastic and some metal ones. In my collection are hubcaps from 50 different car brands. Special ones are old Americans as here in Europe they are not common and especially nowadays.Most of them are found at road sides,some from trade with other peoples,some saved from scrapyards but just few bought. Now it’s not so easy anymore to find hubcaps I don’t have but time after time I found any.
That’s my hobby!