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DFW Elite Toy Museum.com

DFW Elite Toy Museum.com is a toy museum located in Fort Worth, Texas. The museum exhibits toys collected by entrepreneur, small business consultant, and author Ron Sturgeon.

Over his 30+ year business career in auto-related businesses, Ron amassed a substantial collection of Tippco die cast toys, German driving school models, Conti models, and other one off scale models.

"As a person who enjoys collecting and takes special joy in automotive toys, I am pleased to share my collection with visitors to the DFW Elite Toy Museum located at 5940 Eden in Haltom City, Texas.

The museum is open from 9 to 5 on weekdays and 9 to 4 on Saturday. Admission is free. For those unable to pay us a visit in person, we have created online galleries of some of our rarest collectible toys.

Toy Collector Ron Sturgeon

Ron started collecting antique toys in the 1980s. He had always been a passionate fan of Mercedes and started out with the goal of collecting every Mercedes toy ever made.

"I was so naive when I started, but it didn't take me long to realize that collecting every Mercedes toy was impossible, so I settled on collecting antique toys and specializing in certain makers, such as Tippco," said Sturgeon.

Like any collector, however, Mr. Sturgeon enjoyed the search for the unique and interesting, and his collection includes scale models of Indy open racers, Conti models, and the largest collection of German driving school models in the United States.

"I was never afraid to pay a little more for an item with an extraordinary provenance or an item that I felt good about as a collector," said Sturgeon. When the prices of antique toys increased steadily during the 1990s, many of those purchases turned out to be great bargains.

"In the 90's, I started collecting antique automobiles, and my collection grew until it included 60 antique cars," said Sturgeon.

"The antique cars were terrific fun but expensive to maintain and store, so I sold most of them after Ford purchased my auto salvage business in 1999. "The toys," noted the Fort Worth collector, "are much easier to store and they appreciate in value every year."

In the 90's, I started buying select pieces of automotive art, including paintings and bronzes. These pieces are part of the museum's collection, but Mr. Sturgeon confessed that his first love is still the automotive toys.

Whether you are a collector or just re-living memories of favorite toys, we hope you will enjoy our collection.

The DFW Elite Toy Museum's collection is approaching 3000 pieces. Perhaps the most popular section of our museum is devoted to scale models used by German driving schools to teach new drivers how a car worked. Some of these models were used to help students get practice behind the wheel without leaving the classroom.  Visitors to the museum enjoy them because of their exquisite detail and technical accuracy.

E-mail Rodney Ross, DFW Elite Toy Museum Curator, if you have any questions, corrections, or a rare toy to sell.

One of Mr. Sturgeon's favorite quotations is by an old friend and renowned toy collector Al Marwick (1920-1999): "The fun is in the search."

Toy Museum Creator Ron Sturgeon

Ron Sturgeon is a DFW-based entrepreneur, real estate investor and author of How to Salvage More Millions from Your Small Business and Green Weenies and Due Diligence. Listen to a podcast about Ron's latest business book.

A small business consultant, Ron Sturgeon has created, successfully managed, and sold several large automotive businesses to Fortune 500 companies. He has extensive experience in every facet of the auto salvage industry. In 2003, with three investors, he purchased the auto recycling business of Ford Motor Company. Ford's salvage business had 25 locations in 15 states. At the time, it was losing more than one million dollars a month.

After making the right decisions to return the business to solid profitability, Ron and his partners sold this business to a public company, Schnitzer Industries.

Ron's current ventures include commercial real estate development, a luxury car rental company in Dallas, an exotic car sharing club, and a Dallas car storage company.

During his career, Ron Sturgeon amassed a large collection of automotive toys, a number of which are on constant display at the DFW Elite Toy Museum. He is well known in the automotive, banking, and real estate circles in North Texas. Ron Sturgeon has been building and running successful businesses for many years. To learn more about his books, speaking, or consulting visit Mr. Mission Possible.