Record Prices Set for Vintage Hot Wheels (Really!!)

Do you have any of these Hot Wheels?

• 1973 Pink Ferrari
• 1969 Blue Redline Olds 442
• Yellow Redline Cipsa Mexican Sand Witch
• Ice Blue Redline Olds 442
• Dark Purple Mustang Boss Hoss with black roof

Because if you have one of those five vintage Hot Wheels, you have $2,000-$3,000 if the little thing is in good shape.

California born Hot Wheels survived now for four decades. Believe it or not Hot Wheels  made more cars than Detroit’s “Big Three,” since Detroit started making cars. How many? Hot Wheels has made 4-billion cars. Mattel‘s site brags that if you placed all Hot Wheels made in the last 40-years you could circle the Earth four times, and that 41 million kids have grown up “driving” Hot Wheels. The highest price paid for a single Hot Wheel was, in 2000, $72,000 for a 1969 Volkswagen Beach Bomb, pink, 1:64 scale, and some of the large collections of the die-cast cars are valued at more than $1 million. If you want to attend the 33rd Annual Hot Wheels Collectors Convention this October in Los Angeles, I hope you already purchased your ticket because it’s sold out.

To Sell or Not to Sell

Lucky JF of Santa Barbara collected, and has a pristine (condition is everything) collection of late 60’s and early 70’s models, and I bet he’ll feel thrilled to know that HotWheelCollector.com has 275,000 users anxious to pay tons (approximately what we will see later). He has also a few good ones from the 1990’s, including the Treasure Hunt Series. The Camaro goes for $300 and the VW Bug is second most valuable in the series at $100. I suggested to JF that now isn’t a good time to sell his collection. Firstly, the cultural collectible market is down, and, secondly his collection is not complete. I suggested he goes back to his childhood and start to fill in some of the holes in the collection so that when the market picks up, he can sell a “set.” Sets are always worth more than the sums of their parts.

Questions:

• Where does he go to find missing models and years?
• And once the set is complete, who can he sell the set to?

Here’s the geeky news

Hot Wheels enthusiasts who are grown men have clubs. Really! Locate the one closest to by searching HERE. Those in Santa Barbara can travel to the SoCal Playdays Hotwheels Club in Whittier.

Why do grown people collect toy cars? Because nostalgia is a powerful force. Each generation has something they played with which defines them, and about 40-years makes that defining thing collectible. Not only that, Hot Wheels has gone beyond the fantasy toy and is now making full-sized cars and placing them in fantasy venues. I give you this example: The Full Scale Darth Vader Car, The Empire Strikes Back, unveiled at San Diego’s Comic-Con, with a high performance 526 horsepower engine, F1 A-arm suspension, 6-speed manual transmission, Mag wheels and a grill to match Darth Vader’s breathing gill on his helmet.

The founder of Mattel, Elliot Handler, also invented Hot Wheels in 1968. Having success with the girl toy Barbie Doll, he wanted a boy toy, and Hot Wheels, designed by a car-industry veteran, Harry Bentley Bradley, began.

More about gender and toys

The first 16 castings of the 1968 line featured ‘Spectra Flame’ paintwork, bearings, redline wheels and working suspensions, so that the cars could go up to scale 200 mph. Search your drawers because the infrequently used hot pink was considered a girl’s color. So if your Hot Wheel casting is hot pink, it’s worth 10 times what any other color is worth to a collector.

So JF your collection of 40 or so is worth $800 to a Hot Wheels collector, and much more if you fill in the holes.