Does anybody here collect Hot Wheels?

I started collecting Hot Wheels cars when I was 9 or 10, and kept at it up until a couple years ago. Having them falling apart in the packages decided it wasn't a hobby for me anymore.

I've got an idiotic amount of them, but as far as I can tell, most aren't worth much more than what I paid for them, if that. As far as rare ones go, I've got a few of what are known as "Treasure Hunts", which are twelve cars released each year that are extremely rare. I also have three that are upside down in their packages, and one that is the wrong car for the package it's in. I also found a "Mystery Car", which is in a black package, so I don't have a clue what it is.

Does anyone on here collect them, or used to collect them? I ran into far fewer collectors the last couple years I still did it, and heard from some that the hobby as a whole was dying.

 

No, but here is a link that might be useful.

Hot Wheels Accessories - The Ultimate Guide at http://www.pitstop.net.au/view/models/page/query/plu/17881/

A google search for Collecting Hot wheels at http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images
turned up lots more links. Hope something here will help you value your collection.

Regards, Bazza

 

Re: I very muck enjoyed your great opinion here

Who's opinion. Not mine ! :confused Bazza

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Re: I very muck enjoyed your great opinion here

Hey Bazza! In future please use the report a post button http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v173/star17abby/MG/report.gif in the upper right hand corner of the post so we are notified of the crapolla. By quoting the post, you just add to what we have to clean up b/c the links are no longer 'just' in the spammers post(s), but your too. Thanks!

 

Thanks for the links, Bazza! Turns out I've got the tow truck on the book you linked to :-D. I'll have to see if I can find the book at the local book store.

It will be good to finally find out if all the hours I spent looking through racks of them has amounted to anything.

Thanks again,
Horsey

 

Re: I very muck enjoyed your great opinion here

Sorry AbbySue. I did not realise it was spam. :-o Despite seeiing the nickname. It did not register with me. Normally I would report spam using the triangle as you suggest. Apologies again. Bazza

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How about that. :-D You might try your local library before parting out with $$$. If it is reasonably recently published book, search for it on the Web at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc., or secondhand on eBay.
Let us know how you go. :major Bazza

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Well, that tow truck is worth between $8 and $10 even though it's opened. The car that seems to be worth the most is a lime green, unopened AC Cobra, with $400 being about the lowest it's sold for nowadays :eek . Nothing else I've checked is worth more than $30.

Good to know I haven't lost money buying them . That "Ultimate Guide" book had well over 75% of my collection in it.

I ran into a fellow at the library whose uncle collects Matchbox cars, and he has every single one ever made! They're all still in their original packaging, too. :cool

 

Thanks for the update, Horsey :cool

Bazza

 

hell yeah I do.
only the hot rods & muscle cars though.
Just tonight doing the shopping I grabbed a rat Rod , 69 torino,70 buick gsx and 69 super bee

 

Wow! They must have finally figured out that warped-looking cars and new vehicles don't fly off the shelves like their hot rods and muscle cars. It's been years since I've ever seen someone find more than a couple "normal" Hot Wheels cars in one stop. Almost makes me want to head over to Wal-Mart and see what this year's collection looks like.

 

I collect cars of popular and not so popular manufacturers starting in the 80s. But I am of the "liberator" kind, that is, I like to open the packages. (Although I often keep them in the package after opening.) I do keep some as I found them, but normally I like them better out. After all, if it weren't for us liberators, the still-packaged cars wouldn't be as rare.

 

LOL I opened a fair number of my own too. :-D They look better outside the plastic.

 

My brother and I also have Hot Wheels stunt tracks which we set up to have downhill racing competitions. We have boosters, (including an old manual booster, which works by pulling levers to set springs,) but often don't use them. We like to be able to race a greater variety of cars than the boosters were designed for. When I was a kid, I raced a collectors' NASCAR model on a large outdoor track, and it did great until the last race, when it was then lost in some woods. I found it later, with a rusted axle. I am more careful now, but sometimes still risk a good model on a somewhat dangerous track in an important race, or for excitement.

I also collect, and sometimes race, 1/64 scale trucks, tractors and farm implements.

 

Me and Hot Wheels stunt tracks go a long way back. :-D I used to have a bad habit of creating impossible jumps with them. Funny thing is, I've only ever had one stunt track set, your basic single loop and a jump, with the cars launched off a track piece/clamp combination.

Thanks to living next to brothers whose father ran a scrap metal shop, we expanded the set a bit by folding aluminum strips into track pieces. Then came the mildly psychotic part - since we lived in an old house with a monster of a backyard, and since my second floor bedroom, with a nice, thick window ledge looked out on said backyard, that ledge is where we clamped the track onto. We ran it on a slight slope to the ground and then on to the loop, and stacked bricks or whatever we could find under the ramp to make the cars jump ever higher. Sending a blue '69 Camaro over an eight foot fence, and having it land upright, and on the track, on the other side was just the beginning.

Our ultimate goal, over the five summers we lived next door, was simple: we wanted to jump a car over the old, partly collapsed garage at the back. But, me being as insane as I am, was not satisfied with a simple car jump. I wanted something more. Something...like a Matchbox Kenworth COE pulling a low bed trailer with a helicopter mounted on it. :-D

The result of my crazy thinking:

She held herself together and landed upright, skidding sideways down the length of track on the other side of the garage. Man, did the wheels on that thing ever sing as it shot down the track! :cool

That old blue Camaro, and of course the Matchbox truck, have sat on whatever desk I have had up to now. They're not just great examples of the die-cast of the early and mid-nineties - they're something far more.

 

Great story, Horsey! I'm so impressed that I made it the first post I voted rank up!

As for me, I once got a truck with 2 trailers (piggyback) over a small, maybe 2ft. jump with all but 1 of the wheels landing in the track. I also had a jump where most of the cars landed upside-down in the track, and we measured how far they skidded as a competition. There was also an alignment competition where we shot them off the end of a track onto a smooth, level surface, trying to get them to run up on another piece of track or into some other goal. There were hazards on the sides off which the cars sometimes ricochetted back into line.

Also, great idea for expanding the track. I've used aluminum to expand electric train sets before, but never thought of doing that with Hot Wheels.

 

Thanks for the rank up! :cool

Thinking about all I had done with that old track set years ago got me thinking about throwing it back together again, but, alas, the old clamp apparently broke apart during one of our many moves. :cry Oh well.

 

When I was a lil boy, I had god a lot of hot wheels, but then I grew up and stopped playing with them)