Documenting Collectibles is anything but easy and it takes a while to get it right.  We now have more than 180,000 different entries for Model Cars, Model Racing Cars, Model Trucks, Model Buses and Model Military Tanks & Armored Vehicles (here now in short just Model Vehicles).  In the beginning, we had the notion of lots of filters for cool things such as the number of engines or the number of wheels  –

But every field added was also more work, slowed the site down and often did not make sense for the vast majority of models.  For example, the Baseplate color is really only needed for models that say have a green and a black baseplate (like some early Matchbox Regular Wheel models).  Those models are always Subvariants and as such, they have the Subvariant Title and Details photo which here would say “Green Baseplate” / “Black Baseplate” and show an image of those green and black baseplates.  Here an example of good Subvariant explanations  –

That is why we have been removing these fields for all Model Vehicle Types  –

• Baseplate Material
• Baseplate Color
• Window Color
• Interior Color
• Wheel Type

This is a big step for Model Vehicles on hobbyDB!  Other projects ongoing or planned are  –

1. We have not yet finished the Subvarianting (mostly an exercise for Hot Wheels and Matchbox) and have kept a backup for those rare case where models that need subvarianting have not been done yet and the difference cannot be seen from the photos (say interior color or those baseplates again!).  We are about 60% done (a big thanks to everybody who is helping here, in particular to Rob Graves here!).
2. Merging Year Series Subjects like Hot Wheels Mainline 2013, Hot Wheels Mainline 2014, etc into Hot Wheels Mainline.  This was possible through the introduction of the Released Year filter and is an ongoing exercise (we are about 40% done – again thanks to all that help here! with a special shout out to Canal Noises).  More here.
3. Concatenating Related Subjects – merging fields for Related Driver, Related Character, Related Event, etc into just one field called Related Subjects and create a Filter for it.
4. Simplifying colors to a much smaller number and add a Color Filter.  We currently have 9 Red tones  –
5. Combining Types (for example combining Model Cars and Model Racing Cars as it is often not easy to identify what all variants of a casting are).