There is a profoundly stupid thing happening in the diecast car world right now. People are actively ruining the fun of hunting for and collecting Hot Wheels cars by scooping up all examples of popular castings and charging oodles of money for them. I’ve had enough of empty shelves and not finding the castings I want, so I took a chance and bought a huge case of 72 Hot Wheels. After the initial thrill wore off, I decided it might not be something I do again.
I’m more or less reliving my childhood. For years, I’ve sort of just stopped collecting diecast cars to collect real cars. But now that I’m pumping the brakes on collecting real cars, I’m back to enjoying toy ones. Every time I go grocery shopping, I go straight to the Hot Wheels display to see what castings I can find. I bought a couple of neat dioramas to display some of my finds. I’m even working on my own custom job.
But I’ve also discovered the dark side of this hobby. I’ve been back into the Hot Wheels hobby for several months now, and I’ve noticed that most of the stores I go to are always cleared out of recent castings. My local Walmart has two pegs for Hot Wheels Premium cars, and there has never been a single time when I’ve seen a single car on those pegs.
The rest of the pegs aren’t great, either. Usually, those are filled with fantasy cars that everyone’s ignoring, or older mainline cars that have been sitting forever. I’ve lost count of how many Fiat 500Es I’ve found in the past few months.
Leeches Ruin Everything
What gives? Sadly, in my absence from collecting Hot Wheels, I missed the rise of a new craze. There are a lot of folks out there who are intentionally wiping out a store’s stock of desirable Hot Wheels cars just so they can resell them for several times their value.
I’ll give you an example. On November 14, 2024, Hot Wheels released a limited-edition Elite 64 series Freightliner Cascadia. I paid just $50 for mine from Mattel before they sold out within 40 minutes of launch. If you missed out, you’re basically screwed:
These flippers are aggressive in their strategies. Some people will buddy up with an employee at their local Walmart to know exactly when the next shipment of Hot Wheels cars comes in. That way, they can snag up all of the hot cars before the public even gets the chance to see them. Some flippers are allegedly even the employees of the stores, so it becomes more or less an “inside job.”
Don’t think you’ll have better luck on Mattel’s websites, either. While Mattel will impose purchase limits on rare castings, flippers have easy ways to get around them. Remember the Hot Wheels x MSCHF Not Wheels special casting that basically every car site reported on?
Mattel imposed a two-car purchase limit, yet that didn’t stop flippers from buying dozens at the same time and then trying to resell them for more than four times their original price.
Some people are still trying to sell the Not Wheels for $60 or more, or at least twice the original price.
That’s not even the worst of it. Some flippers get really scummy by buying up nice Hot Wheels Premiums, taking them out of their cards, and then returning the cards to the store with a car of lesser value inside. The people running the stores don’t know that the cars were switched out, so the flipper essentially gets a car for free that they then sell for multiples of what it’s worth. Some flippers will even make a fake of a premium car and try to sell that as an original for way too much money.
The rampant scalping has sucked a lot of the fun out of collecting Hot Wheels, and it’s not even just the rare cars, either. If there’s a popular basic car out there, it will almost certainly get scalped.
These are supposed to be cheap toys for everyone. The whole idea is that you’re supposed to be able to go through a store and come back home with a haul of your favorite cars. But a huge number of collectors can’t do that anymore because flippers have already taken everything and jacked up prices. It’s basically everything that’s bad about the concert ticket reselling industry, but applied to toy cars.
Now, if there’s a specific car you want, just forget about going to a store. You’re likely going to end up on eBay or some other site full of resellers, and you’re going to pay a lot of money for something the flipper paid $1.18 for.
Alternatives To Resellers
Thankfully, I have had some luck by skipping big box stores and going for local grocery stores not known for selling toys. It looks like flippers don’t go to stores like these, which means you’re going to find lots of cool cars just sitting there. Check out a recent haul (above) I got from one of these stores. They were on sale for 72 cents a car, too, which was awesome!
But there’s a catch-22 here. I was really looking for castings from very recent releases, but didn’t really find many, as the store sat on piles of older stock. If you want something from one of the latest Hot Wheels shipments, you’re sort of back to rolling the dice with Walmart and finding out that you lost the game before you even started playing.
This month, I decided to try something different. I’ve been watching Hot Wheels YouTubers lately and have found the concept of just buying a whole case to be interesting. Mattel releases 15 cases of 72 basic Hot Wheels cars a year, and those cases are generally distributed every three weeks. The usual recipients of these cases will be your local supermarkets, where the boxes will be opened up and the 72 cars put on the pegs for sale.
But some distributors have found that there is a market in selling Hot Wheels cases directly to consumers. You can buy sealed Hot Wheels cases from hobby shops or even from national dollar store chains. Cases from these retailers will usually cost just around what the cars inside are worth, about $100 plus shipping and tax.
These cases will contain a bunch of randomized cars and also releases specific to those cases. These cases will often have at least one Treasure Hunt or Super Treasure Hunt (limited-edition versions of otherwise basic castings) that are specific to that case. So, if you’re a hardcore collector or a flipper, you’ll likely end up buying multiple cases.
In my case, I just wanted to get a bunch of recent cars without having to fight flippers over them. So, I did what I thought was crazy and bought a case. I chose Case G, a case that’s been around for over a month. I’ve watched a bunch of unboxing videos, and YouTubers have pulled some sweet vehicles out of G Cases like a fuchsia and green GMC Syclone, a rad Optimus Prime casting, some great American muscle, some classic off-roaders, and a possible Super Treasure Hunt of a Porsche 911 Rallye.
72 Cars In A Box
My case arrived this week, and I was thrilled to tear into it. For a brief moment, I felt like one of those Hot Wheels YouTubers, and I was discovering a fresh box of excitement. I know, I know, they’re just cheap toy cars. But the purported magic of buying a case is that you don’t really know what you’re going to get, so you get surprised as you dig through the 72 cars.
I think I got a decent haul here. Sadly, I didn’t get a single Treasure Hunt or a Super Treasure Hunt, but I decided that about half of the cars were worth adding to my collection.
It’s hard to pick a favorite here because there are so many great cars in this pack. I love the Honda CB750 Café, the BMW 2002, the Chevy Blazer, the Chevy C10, and the Chevy Silverado. I dig the cute DeLorean, the McLaren W1, and the lifted Mazda Miata.
I’ve never seen a single one of these vehicles in the wild except at a local flea market, where someone was trying to sell them for ten times their original price.
So, I’m quite happy about all of these cars! I can’t wait to display them on my bedroom wall.
Lots Of Unwanted Cars
Then I realized that I still had half of a case of cars I didn’t want. This pile of cars consisted of duplicates like two extra Datsun 240Zs and the two extra Shelby GT500s.
I also don’t really care for the fantasy cars. Don’t get me wrong, the artists who designed these cars are brilliant and creative. The fantasy cars are great, too! But I’ve never been into fantasy cars, even when I was a kid.
So, my plan is to sell off half of the case I don’t want. I’ve bundled the fantasy cars together and hope to send those off to a new home. I figure if I price them similar to what you’ll find in a store, maybe someone will take them away.
But I’m also reconsidering that. Maybe the real winning strategy here would be to give the unwanted cars away. There’s a whole summer’s worth of car shows ahead. Maybe I’ll just place the cars on the windshield of my Honda Life and give them away to any interested party. That could be a ton of fun!
I’m also feeling conflicted. Buying the case was fun, but I’m not sure it’s something I’d do again. When I really think about it, I pretty much paid $120 for the 36 cars that I really wanted, which comes out to $3.33 a car. That’s much cheaper than what flippers charge, but still more than they’re worth. I also didn’t get to enjoy the hunt of actually finding these cars. Or, maybe I should just reframe it. I paid $120 for some cool cars I want and for other cars to give away.
But one thing I’m sure about is that scalping has made this hobby so annoying sometimes. So, if you’ve ever wondered why on Earth your local store always has the Hot Wheels cars you don’t want or maybe the store just never has any in stock, there’s your answer. Someone has snatched up all of the coolest cars. Maybe buying a case is the answer, but be expected to pay for it.
Top grapic images: eBay seller; eBay Seller; eBay seller; Mercedes Streeter
This has been going on for years. I worked at Target in high school 30 years ago now (sigh), and collectors always knew when our cases came in. They’d be waiting by the stock room doors for us on those days. I definitely had some coworkers who were in on it with certain guys. I wasn’t collecting Hot Wheels then, but I was certainly not above cracking open a case of the new Star Wars toys before they hit the sales floor!
I don’t collect much anymore. Just the special ones that are vehicles I’ve owned, or love.
However, I ran into this with the recent Forester STi casting. Looked for months every time I went in the grocery store with my wife and daughter and never came across it. Tons of them on ebay were in the $15-$20 range, and I just ended up biting the bullet because I HAD to have it.
Of course, after I spent $20 on the stupid thing including shipping, I came across it in the wild at Walmart a few weeks later…
https://www.hlj.com/productimages/mtr/mtrhrv74-9866_1.jpg?scrlybrkr=cefc026b
Dont shoot me here, but as a guy who works for a grocery store, i usually am the one who orders cases of these, about 4 every other week.
When we get em in before they get put out, ill look at one case or all to find only one treasure and super, along with the cool regular cars just for my wall, anything else i find goes to the floor for anyone else to pick from.
Collectors hoarding popular models is definitely nothing new. I worked at a Wal-Mart in the mid nineties as a stocker and it was super common for people to hound me to open any Hot Wheels boxes that were on the pallet so they could rummage through them for the desirable ones. It was common enough for them to unstack pallets and open any boxes they found themselves that I started hiding them until I got to that section to avoid the mess they made.
They didn’t just buy the one they needed to complete a collection either, they always bought every single one they found. The only way any popular models made it on to the shelves was if I finished restocking that section before the store opened, and then they’d always come and ask if there were any more.
It is such a bummer that almost every casual hobby has been ruined by money and assholes.
Tip for a casual collector of non-licensed Hot Wheels/Matchbox: DO NOT LOOK AT BIG BOX STORES. Go to grocery stores. They may be 1/4 a year late, but normally have the cars you are looking for eventually. I waited a YEAR for to get the Matchbox AMC Eagle Wagon.
That being said, I prefer “realistic” fantasy models like Muscle Bound, Fast Fish, ANY of the Metal Maniacs original designs from Acceleracers.
I work for a grocery store, and sometimes order a few cases at a time, and from what ive seen, the cases that come in are kinda weird on delivery.
Got 4 in tuesday, and was expecting e cases, but got g cases instead.
Listen, I am not gonna shit you for treasure hunts. as long as you snag for your collection, but put the rest on the pegs I’m fine. Treasure hunts are a PITA.
We have 6 big honkin dump bins we put em into, but ohh yeah, we put out for all to enjoy.
Least here lately the hunters are putting them back into the bins nicely after sorting them like color coded skittles.
I have a brown AMC Eagle and a black one and I think I got both of them at Walmart. I’m kicking myself for not buying the red Dodge Viper I saw at Target last year though.
I got two black eagles, and I was happy for one to keep on card and one to keep packaged.
You’re being way too nice, calling these guys “flippers.” We collectors call them what they really are – SCALPERS. I’ve run into these guys too many times, and some have threatened me for “coming into their territory.” One guy even threatened to kill me. He’s now barred from several big and small department stores across a wide area of Central Alabama, including Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, Selma and Montgomery.
Then they shouldn’t be doing limited runs of these. The artificial limit on supply is what makes them valuable. Nobody would bother buying up whole runs if they knew another would be on the shelves a week later.
I mean, I hate scalpers plenty, but in this case there’s a very obvious answer to the problem.
Also, I’m pretty sure most members would prefer to get a Hot Wheels gifted to them rather than a Yugo. Just sayin’. 😉
I bought that yellow 2002 just a couple of days ago from my local supermarket, it’s the most recent addition to my collection! They’re a bit expensive around here, I paid close to €2.50 (which could be like $1200 in a few weeks, at the rate the dollar is devaluing*). I wish we had sub-€1 Hot Wheels. 72 cents sounds like a dream.
*JK of course, I’m aware that the dollar has stabilised in recent days.
Unfortunately it seems like flippers have infiltrated almost every hobby, looking to make a quick buck. In my mind, excessive flipping is a side effect of a middle class with stagnating wages while the cost of living keeps rising, so people try to make some extra money wherever they can. If people could just work one full-time job and live comfortably, they probably wouldn’t be resorting to flipping toy cars to pay the bills.
Hell, there’s folks that have been buying up huge amounts of vintage cast iron skillets, cleaning them up and reselling. Now the flea market skillets that were $40 are going for $100. It is wild.
It’s certainly partially that, and also partially just the American selfish greediness that seems to be getting worse by the year. Why let other people enjoy anything if *I* can personally make a profit on it? Screw everyone else!
For sure, there are a lot of people who do it purely out of greed
I see a lot of parallels with the growth of highly speculative assets—crypto, NFT, sneakers, toy cars—and both “hustle culture” and financial nihilism. Basically, there’s no way to get ahead other than to risk it all on crypto/NFTs/sneakers/toy cars, etc.
I only pick up the <$2 cars on the pegs at the grocery store… and in general, I’m only ever looking for 3 kinds:
Batmobiles.classic/import race cars with numbers on them.cars that can be easily converted to Gaslands vehicles.Sometimes I’ll pick up a Subaru or 80’s-90’s exotic, just because those are cars I have an affection for.
Everything gets unboxed, and displayed on a shelf. IDGAF about collector value or speculation anymore.
How much for a toy Cascadia? The 1:1 scale Cascadia is a commodity truck and they’ve been coming off the assembly line for a decade and a half, if the scrap prices keep dropping pretty soon you’ll be able to buy a 1:1 Cascadia for HotWheels money!
I worked at a department store in the mid-1990s. There were serveral people who caught on that our delivery trucks usually arrived on Saturday mornings and demanded access to the stockroom to be the first to paw through the new cases of Matchbox or Hot Wheels cars. We, being high school kids, allowed them to do this. But then one Saturday morning two dudes showed up at the same time and there was nearly a fistfight. So that was the end of letting dipshits into the stockroom.
We had a few old guys that would hound us for when a certain shipper would come in to dig through them, which at first we didnt care to let them, but theyd leave a big mess of em everywhere, so we started to lie about when theyd be there by a few days, then would plop the shipper on the floor, let kids have all the fun.
Was great seeing the scalpers come in and see it on the floor and get pissed, and we’d tell em to get wrecked, they showed up earlier than we thought.
Hey Mercedes, I work for an OEM and every “bring your Kids to Work day” I hand out Hot Wheels that I purchased with my own money to the kiddies visiting that day.
And I know this is going to sound corny, but the look on their face always makes my day! They love them!! 🙂
You’re a gentleman and a scholar!
I usually pick up a couple of Hot Wheels whenever I go grocery shopping and bring them home for my 3 year old. His grandparents and even my wife has gotten in on the action and they now enjoy the hunt of finding something cool.
My kid knows who gave him each one so hell grab whichever one catches his eye that day and come running over and say “Pop pop’s Ford!” or “Momma’s race car!” Its just the best and its the simple things
Yes, for whatever the reason, kid just seem to love Hot Wheels!
(Some adults too! )
I don’t know what the draw could be, but I have it too, even as an adult!
“Monetize everything” has gotten out of hand. Then again we’ve been seeing something like this since the Beanie Baby craze. It does explain the Matchbox selection at Safeway, although I doubt any collectors are pawing through the bins at Winco.
I collect only what interests me so my only lament is the cost of replacing the Matchbox Mazda CX-5 I mislaid since it was a match for our real CX-5. I do have a Tomica CX-5 hand carried from Japan, but that is a road service car. I also have a Mitsuoka Buddy, because our son is a troll.
Things have not really changed from the late 60s and early 70s when I was a kid collecting them. Back then there were fewer places you could get them (toy stores and hardware stores being the main places). We knew what day the cases arrived and there would be a group of kids waiting to get in to get the best ones. Within a few days all the desirable ones were gone. Ebay changed everything by creating the flippers market, making it possible for anyone to just click a button to get what they want.
Now I need to curse you because the supermarket is where I get my cars and by letting the cat out of the bag you may have destroyed this last hunting ground.
You can give the ones that you don’t want to a random kid here and there. You’ll brighten his or her day, and maybe spark an interest that will last a lifetime.
I drag my kids to a couple of car shows here and there, the one where they give away Hot Wheels is always their favourite.
I was at a toy show this last weekend and all the dealers were selling cars you could get for a dollar or two at local stores for $5 minimum. I know its a captive market but the markups are just plain insane.
Meet the new Beanie Baby, same as the old Beanie Baby.