#Hot wheels collection plus#
#Hot wheels collection series#

Craftsman tool chests double as storage units for rare diecasts. The Hot Wheels whalesīruce Pascal’s home office in Potomac, Maryland, is a testament to his obsession.Įnormous 24-foot orange “race track” beams run the length of the room.

A 1976 Z Whiz drew 28 bids and sold for $6.5kĪs one dealer told The Hustle: “The right model can pay for your kid’s college tuition.” But first, you have to find a collector crazy enough to shell out for it.

A 1968 custom Barracuda Bronze sold for $15k.

One set of the original 16 redline cars sold for $31k.

On eBay and other auction sites, certain iterations of these cars - old or new - can sell for thousands: Around 90% of these collectors go after the newer models, or “ mainlines.” The remaining 10% - almost exclusively made up of men in their 50s and 60s - is focused on the lucrative “ redline” cars produced between 19.

Mattel says there are some 15m “avid collectors” who average 1,550 cars each.

Every second, 16 cars roll off the production line - and since 1968, the company has released more than 6B cars in 20k different models. In 2019, Hot Wheels brought in a record-high $926m in gross sales for Mattel. Today, this collector’s market is alive and well.

Those who were forceful enough to snag one for a few bucks could flip it on the collector’s market for $20-$80. Grown men were soon barreling over kids at JCPenney outlets, fist-fighting over mini T-Birds, Camaros, and VW Bugs.

#Hot wheels collection series#

The company also debuted a “ Treasure Hunt” series in 1995 - runs of limited-edition cars that were randomly stocked on department store shelves around the country. Mattel capitalized on this new demographic, launching its own paid membership club for collectors, which later grew to 100k members. Newsletters, price guides, and Usenet trading groups followed. In the late ‘80s, a traveling food salesman named Mike Strauss - widely regarded to be the “father of Hot Wheels collecting” - organized the first convention for serious adult hobbyists. Unsubscribe whenever.ĭuring the ‘60s and ‘70s, some 41m children raced Hot Wheels cars down the signature bright orange tracks.Īs these children grew older and started having kids of their own, a market for adult Hot Wheels collectors began to emerge.

#Hot wheels collection plus#

Please try again!ĭelivered weekdays plus a bonus Sunday feature. That year alone, Mattel sold 16m of them.Ī promotional poster for the first set of Hot Wheels cars boasts of their speed, custom styling, and special “redline” wheels (via Mattel) The first set of Hot Wheels - dubbed the “ Sweet 16”- hit shelves on May 18th, 1968, for $0.59 each. So, they poached car designers from GM, Chrysler, and Ford and charged them with creating custom-made, brilliantly colored hot rods. How did one-time 59-cent toy cars become 5-figure collectibles? And what drives grown men and women to spend princely sums chasing them? How Hot Wheels became collectiblesįresh off the monstrous success of the Barbie doll in 1959, Mattel founders Ruth and Elliot Handler saw an opportunity in the market for mini toy cars. It’s a colorful group that includes an ex-BMX stunt rider, an auto mechanics teacher, and a man who owns a geese-removal business. Pascal is one of a handful of super collectors, dealers, and middlemen who pay top dollar for the rarest cars. Today, the children of the ‘60s are fueling a small but mighty collectors’ market that wheels and deals in obscure corners of the internet. Many are prototypes that were acquired from former Mattel employees, including a pink 1969 Rear-Loading Beach Bomb valued at ~$150k.įive decades ago, Hot Wheels were America’s hottest new plaything. The 59 year old owns what is considered the world’s most valuable Hot Wheels collection, a staggering array of 7k rare toy cars that are collectively insured for $1.5m. By day, Bruce Pascal is a successful commercial real estate executive who brokers multimillion-dollar deals in the nation’s capital.īy night, he buys $5k Hot Wheels cars on eBay.