im 54 ,i started collecting hot wheels when my son was born ,he is 22 now ,i have about 30,000 hot wheels of various kinds and about 600 treasure hunts plus all kinds of other toys.you can look at my profile pictures but they are about 2 years old i need to update them we have added a lot more stuff since then.
Damn-it man , i have enough to trade even up for a 5-window. And cash to boot. All the snake & mongoose race sets. "AND THE BOWTIE ROLLS ON"
About a year ago I sold over 200 of the originals redlines to a guy in California. Still have hundreds on the wall in Giovanni cases. Yep my obsession comes in all scales.
My son is now almost 13 yrs old and has lost interest in Hot Wheels. He still has interest in old cars and told me that he will always keep the "cool" Hot Wheels he has. I still check out the Hot Wheels display at the stores for HAMB friendy cars. It does make me a bit sad that my son does not want them anymore. Maybe he will like them again when he becomes an "adult" like me... A couple of pics taken a few yrs ago of some of the HW that "we" own.
AMEN, brother. That is the bonus to having a car crazy 4 year old.....I get an excuse to play with the hotwheels too!
I had a 1000+ but sold them off and just kept my redlines and the cooler ones I liked mainly Hot Rods and Ford related. I still have a bunch of Matchbox and Dinky'e etc.
I have 6 or 7 cases of them and would love to sell them all. I never see them, they are packed up. I would rather have a few dollars than store the toys. Cheap if anyone is interested.
I have 100 or so on display in my shop. At one point about 10 years ago I had over 5,000 of the damn things! Original redlines from the late 60's are my main collecting interest now.
They are special edition mainline cars. Mattel makes 10,000 of each car with fancier paint jobs (usually) and green signage on the right hand side of the packaging. 10,000 sounds like a lot but compared to the hundreds of thousands of other series of cars they are hard to find in the stores.
I have enough Hw's to buy my dream Hot Rod easy..... but i'm a hoarder when it comes to those damn things.....thousands would be an understatement. And the least valued ones are the treasure hunts... i have some really nice stuff.
I honestly don't know how many I have any more, I gave up trying to count 'cause you just get a sick feeling by the end. It's in the thousands, that's all I know. My dad and I started together, now he's into them more than me and I can't keep up. The whole treasure hunt thing is insane, finding one in a store on the shelf is near impossible now. My dad still does from time to time but he's some weird kind of superman like that. I worked at a department store a few years ago and almost had a fight break out once when we unloaded a case off the truck. The guys on the "inside" are about as bad as black market dealers sometimes. I'd really love to collect more vintage Redlines but that's alot more scratch than I can swing. I buy them occasionally at flea markets if I find a bargain though. Out the thousands I have they're still a minority. On another note, my son got a new criss-cross-crash track for Christmas and I think I've spent more time playing with it than him.
Funny story I almost forgot... about the whole "fighting for treasure hunts" thing. There was an older retired guy who used to go to several of the stores in the area and ask for permission to go through the cases and pick out the T-hunts. Now I could really care less if he does this, I'd do the same thing if I had the chance, first come-first serve I figure. Even when I worked at the department store, I ALWAYS got permission before opening a case, and usually only when I was stocking it on the shelf. But this guy was different; he was a real world-class ass-hat about it, thought he had some divine rights to t-hunts or something. He actually tried to get some poor gal fired for letting someone look ahead of him one time. There was a local grocery store that had a whole carton come in with several cases in it, and the manager there actually offered to let my dad go through it since he wasn't a big fan of this ass-hat. So my dad goes through it, and picks out at least 10 (!) T-hunts. Then, knowing full well that ass-hat guy is going to try to do the same, he takes all the cartons... and seals them back up with tape. I know for damn well that guy probably tried to open them later, and I wish I could have seen the look on his face when he did.
I've spent a lot of time in the past rummaging threw the bins of Hot Wheels at Wall Mart. When I find something interesting I build it full size. These are a few of my creations. There all electric powered and can be used a different car shows to get around on.
Might be a good way to get your bay window broken in to. In this economy I'd rethink that. Just saying.
i have about 8000, i stopped collecting when full grown men would argue and fist fight in wal-mart and target over these little things . I would love to get rid of them all
I still go after ones that I think are cool. But, my real Hot Wheels love is restoring old redlines. When they look like this, they're dirt cheap. I can make them look like this And if I get a wild hair, and decide to run 'em down the track, if they get scratched up, I'll just redo them again. Putting them back together with screws achieves two purposes- easy to disassemble if I decide to change color or repair battle damage, and if someone unscrupulous ever gets their hands on them, they can't be passed off as mint originals.
I have a few but got real tired of the stupid hype involved I dont care to be a hot wheel superstar. Now I keep what I want not to many kool ones produced anymore and never look for any treasure hunts or that stuff unless its cheap and not on the secondary market.
I've got over 1000 with about 25 TH cars all found at Walmarts etc 1990 & newer. I stopped buying a couple years ago but I still like to look at the new releases. My wife still laughs everytime we go shopping. The market is too flooded now-same with the NASCAR stuff (large collection of that too) Shoulda spent all that money on the full size cars
I like collecting Hotwheels, here are some of my favorites, my brother and I like taking extra cars, or certain loose cars and customize them a bit.
The hobby went sour here as well with people warming the doors and fighting over cases... i had fun for years... work brought me to areas with no collectors so finding treasure hunts was easy... today i find one every blue moon.. and a super hunt every other blue moon.. i don't discuss what i have in the cases.... but i have a lot of cases... 4 pickup truck loads of cases.. all unopened. I love Hot Wheels, but the people who get stupid and bitch and fight so they can e-bay them have turned me off from the hobby.
I am 50 and have a bunch of them including the ones I got when I was a kid,I am growing tired of collecting them since I cant seem to find any decent new releases so I am thinking about selling all but the originals I had all those years. I have been more into collecting old matchbox cars then the Hot Wheels so maybe its time for them to go on Ebay since the people at the flea markets wont pay much.
35 years old, collected since 97, have well over 50,000 1/64 diecast cars including many Hotwheels, cutting back on my collection and when I have time, I customize these lil diecast models.
I've got thousands also, including HotWheels, Sizzlers and Juice Machines, Speedline, JonnyLightning, Matchbox, Danbury all the old steel cast cars, and a boatload of track. Not to metion all the slotcars and track. I still roll em around on the kitchen floor. Don't care about the original package, I wanna play with em!
Can someone recommend a camera that can take good pix of these 1/64th scale cars. I am not looking for those $500-up. Thanks to my fellow Redline junkie friend in advance.
I had a bunch when I was a kid those are all gone. I started collecting them back in 1995 stopped collecting them in 1999 or 2000. I buy them once in a while but not as I did in the 90s .I got about 2500 + Hot Wheels and about 500 or so Johnny Lightning and few Matchbox..
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