John, Ive got collections of books like us all I suppose. I used to collect anything and everything with a Motoring theme, but it all got out of hand and I started to slim things down to 1 or 2 subjects.

We had, in Hamilton way back, a dealer in Antiquarian books, and he, unlike many old book dealers also had an interest in car books.......Crows Nest Books.....gone now I'm afraid. Once a year he held an auction of books with a sporting nature, cricket, rugby, golf, etc etc and Motoring and Motorsport. I unloaded box's full of general motoring titles to his auctions. I have to say I didnt make a fortune out of these, so they could hardly be called investments, but they provided a bit of cash to re-buy stuff that I was interested in.

I already had a good number of publications on the LeMans 24hr race so decided to only buy in more of them. Did a lot of dealing with book sellers in England, and even did some trades from stuff I had bought here in NZ. There was a particularly interesting book shop in Devonport which occaisionally had some gems, so I was a sucker for those, and managed to pick up some rare-ish titles.

In conjunction with the LeMans stuff I also purchased books on, and by racing drivers......SCH Davis being the most prolific, but have a number of others...Fangio, Hawthorne,Frere,Setright,Nye, Moss, etc etc etc......and stuff with mainly photographs......Frostick, Klemantaski, Skilleter, Moity, again etc etc etc.........

Jaguar and Bentley are my first loves in vintage and post vintage titles, and have a few well thumbed copies of these marques and also a few rather nice signed limited edition prints of these and others, mostly with LeMans as a background.

My other place of interest is the Titanic, and have been collecting all sorts of stuff about that stricken liner for years....memorabilia, videos, books, puzzles,models, calendars and again etc etc etc.

Whether any of this will turn out to be 'colllectable' in the future, I dont know, but my two children are both keen on books so I think that the rather weighty collection is in safe hands, if not as a big money spinner for them.

I have to say I did not by them with their future value uppermost in my mind, but mearly because I wanted to read and keep them, rather than borrow from the library, or from friends........sometimes NOT a good idea.

See I didnt even mention the Mini!!!!!!!