You requested it so we rewind... Following up on our posts on the Drift King's birthday, some of our readers mentioned that they would be interested in seeing a sneak peek at some of the Keiichi Tsuchiya-related fanboy memorabilia that has been archived as part of the Cipher Garage Collection.

As some of our readers may or may not know, I've spent the past eleven years of my life chronicling as much as I could about the history of drifting in Japan, and its progress as it grew in the United States and spread to all the other countries of the world. As you might imagine, this has been an incredibly difficult and arduous process, and I've only been able to do as much as a single person without corporate/financial backing could possibly afford to.

However, because of personal qualities that include my relentless passion for Japanese car culture, my ridiculously resourceful/persistent/determined nature, and the fact that I often find myself (most of the time, accidentally) in the right place at the right time... I've been able to amass quite a collection of Japanese car memorabilia that some might consider historic. (I know I do.) Whether my personal collection of Japanese automobilia may be considered by some to be overrated or not... it is very personal to me. For every rare item in my collection, I have great stories to tell about how I found it and how it came to be in my collection. To me, THAT is the real treasure... even more so than the individual items in the collection.

Those who don't know as much about the subject matter may think it's just a bunch of magazines, stickers, toys, steering wheels, horn buttons, patches, and misc car junk stuffed into boxes, shelves, and cabinets... but over the years, I've come to realize that I've never in my life seen a collection like it - items related to Japanese drifting history... with much of it revolving around AE86s, TE27s, and vintage Toyota memorabilia. Please don't think I'm bragging - that isn't my intent at all. For the most part, I've kept all the items I own very, very private. I don't really advertise what I have or invite people to look through my things, as I never intended to collect stuff to "show off" to others. Instead, this is all just a bunch of things that I personally consider important or cool.   Read more...