Jlcollector.com
Title
Wyatt's Index
Description
0ver 1200 pictures of Johnny Lightning cars, grouped by sets and individual cars and their variations.
Contact
- Robert Williams
-
- Cumming Georgia
- United States 30041
-
- 770-886-2345
Additional Information
In 2000, diecast collector Wyatt Davis took pictures of his Johnny Lightning diecast vehicles and built a website on his local hard drive to view his collection whenever he wanted. He belonged to a bulletin board at www.hobbytalk.com and figured his fellow collectors would like to see the work so he hosted the site on a free server. All went well until he ran out of room on that server. He found another server that provided more space for storage so he uploaded all of my pictures and recoded all of the html to use the pictures from the other site. Eventually, the server where he had the pictures hosted decided to cut the amount of storage back or charge more for the service. Wyatt was locked out because he was already exceeding his alotted storage capacity due to the rule change. In July, 2001, Wyatt posted on the Hobbytalk bulletin board that he was in need of a better free service and a fellow collector/online dealer offered for Wyatt to use some space on the server he had secured for his business. He also let Wyatt host the html on the server as well making the code writing much easier. In March, 2003, Wyatt's Johnny Lightning funding was cut back drastically and he became overwhelmed with trying to keep up new releases financially. In addition, the local stores had dried up and said they were not getting any new Johny Lightnings in to stock. Wyatt posted a message on the bulletin board that he would not continue to update the site without some kind of sponsorship. A good friend/fellow collector was the next person to post stating that he would sponsor the website. The partnership has been going on since then. In the summer of 2004, RC2 purchased Playing Mantis/Johnny Lightning which led to a great opportunity for the the website. In October of 2004, before the headquarters were moved from Mishawaka, Indiana to Oak Brook, Illinois, an employee and friend of Wyatt's offered to fill in the missing cars from the website by taking pictures of the cars Wyatt was missing. The walls of the Indiana offices were lined with 99% of what Johnny Lightning had ever made so the inventory, photographing, and html writing began. Sometime during November of 2004, the work was finished and again, the website was near complete in the goal of picturing every Johnny Lightning available. In December 2004, circumstances led to the sponsor suppplying a domain name and server he had secured, jlcollector.com. JLCollector has been going strong ever since with support from various friends in different ways and will continue for as long as possible. With over 5,000 pictures of the offerings of Johnny Lightning, JLCollector.com has become the most popular website for the Johnny Lightning collector resulting in millions of visitors per year.
