Point to a car enthusiast and chances are they have at least one, two, or maybe a couple of hundred diecast cars somewhere at home. Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars make car enthusiasm accessible for anyone of every age and it’s fun to build an awesome collection. A reader found one of the biggest Hot Wheels collections you’ll find outside of YouTube. Up for auction right now is an incredible collection of 4,500 scale model cars spanning about four decades and includes special editions and pretty much every conceivable automaker. There are so many Hot Wheels here that you’re going to need an entire room just to store them.
This tip comes to us from reader John T and I haven’t picked my mouth off of the floor yet. I think one of the coolest parts about Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars is that they’re so insanely accessible. You can buy one of these diecast cars with the change you find on the ground and it seems like every car enthusiast of all ages has at least some cars in their collection.
Hot Wheels cars are also a bit of a great way to unify enthusiasts. Car people are diverse from the big truck guys to the city car folks. We disagree and bicker a lot, but in my experience, the majority of enthusiasts can come together to love a good diecast. I had a couple of thousand diecast cars as a kid, which has been reduced to just a few hundred today as an adult. I thought my collection was huge, but it has nothing on what’s on Bring a Trailer right this second.
(Note: Mobile users may have to either zoom in on their screens or open the image in a tab to see a closer shot.)
What you’re looking at here is the collection of just one person. The Bring a Trailer listing notes that the vast majority of the collection features vehicles released since 1988. It’s also noted that the seller has several duplicates of the same cars. Thus, you’re looking at 4,500 cars here, but a smaller actual variation.
For example, look at this photo below:
I spot six of the same Star Wars-themed monster trucks, two Tesla Roadsters, three Ford Gran Torinos, eight of the same Mazda Miatas, seven The Beatles Yellow Submarines, and a whole 11 DeLorean Alpha5s. That sounds boring, but the collection also has a lot of single models, including one Dodge Li’l Red Express.
We’ll get back to the goodies in the moment. Let’s take a fun trip through history.
Why People Love Hot Wheels
Diecast cars didn’t used to be as fun as they are today. Several decades ago, diecast models were often relatively realistic interpretations of real-life vehicles. They didn’t really go fast and you didn’t really find them in vivid, sparkling paint. Back in the 1960s, Mattel changed that, from my retrospective:
As the story goes, Mattel co-founder Elliot Handler was looking for a way to improve the diecast toy market. It was the late 1960s and he felt that the diecast cars of the day were just too realistic. As Hagerty notes, there was an additional problem. Handler and his wife Ruth brought some 1:64 scale cars home from Europe. It’s not known what exact cars were brought back, but it was likely one of the scale real cars from Corgi, Lesney, or Matchbox. Either way, the grandkids the vehicles were given to weren’t happy with how poorly the toys rolled.
The look of what would become Hot Wheels was the work of Harry Bentley Bradley, a designer from General Motors with another portfolio of designing California Custom-style hot rods. Bradley is the reason the original Hot Wheels cars were adorned with massive tires, custom wheels, exaggerated proportions, chromed-out custom engines, and bold Spectraflame colors.
That alone was enough to give Hot Wheels cars the punch they needed to stand out above the comparatively plain European diecasts, but there was another trick. Mattel director of product development engineering Harvey La Branche was the lead inventor of a new way for diecast cars to roll. The typical diecast car of the day used solid steel axles that were hard-mounted to the car. Branche’s idea replaced those steel axles with flexible pieces of steel wire. These wires, which were guitar strings in the prototypes, were mounted in a way that gave the cars a durable sort of suspension at the axle ends.
Part of the magic of Hot Wheels, aside from the bold paint and hot rod bodies, was that the cars went as fast as they looked. Hot Wheels cars rode on plastic wheels and Mattel was so obsessed with making quick diecast cars that the wheels were aligned so that the cars “drove” straight. But then, if you looked underneath, you would find that a Hot Wheels plastic “tire” didn’t fully touch the floor. Instead, Mattel used camber to ensure an absolute minimum of the tire touched, further allowing Hot Wheels to outrun the competition. The original 16 Hot Wheels cars were inspired by the hot rods and muscle cars of the era and collectors will spend a ton of money for a good one.
Today, lots of Hot Wheels castings are highly detailed scale representations of real-life vehicles. The brand also sells elevated models in lines such as the Elite 64 and special cars through Mattel Creations. I recently picked up a Hot Wheels Elite 64 Freightliner Cascadia and the quality is fantastic.
On the other hand, loving Hot Wheels can get sort of disappointing, too, such as special models and Treasure Hunt that disappear in an instant thanks to scalpers. Oh and there’s also the bizarre Hot Wheels Virtual Garage, which sells collectors 1:64 diecast car NFTs.
I have more questions than answers on that one but I think the answer there is just “because money.” But hey, if you want to collect a ton of Hot Wheels cars in one shot, this collection might be the one for you.
When In Rome
This 4,500-strong Hot Wheels collection hails from Rome, New York, and reportedly features a mostly modern lineup.
I know you’re wondering, so I’ll tell you now. While it’s among the largest Hot Wheels you’ll find, it is not the absolute largest by a wide margin. American collector Mike Zarnock is often quoted as the person with the largest collection which includes over 30,000 cars in his lineup. Allegedly, YouTuber wtffor “O-Dawg” has 50,000 cars. Still, what you’re looking at here is almost certainly one of the largest collections you’ll find anywhere.
Something I’ve noticed about collections of this size is the fact that there are a lot of duplicates.
Car and Driver writes that Hot Wheels has produced over 25,000 different designs over the years, so the world’s largest collections are going to have duplicates. Without even zooming in you can see that this collection has a lot of copies of the same model as color. With that being said, Bring a Trailer claims that there are some unique cars in the collection, from Bring a Trailer:
The diecast vehicles are primarily rendered in 1:64 scale and depict hot rods and customs as well as vehicles from BMW, Bugatti, Chevrolet, Ford, GMC, Lamborghini, Nissan, Porsche, Toyota, and Volkswagen. A selection of slot cars are also included, and the majority of the models remain in manufacturer’s packaging.
A selection of track sets, cases, and signs are part of the sale. The collection features special-issue Hot Wheels series including Treasure Hunts, Car Culture Team Transports, Monster Trucks, Early Times, Classics, Neon Speeders, and Color Shifters.
Models resulting from brand collaborations with Batman, Spider-Man, Kermit the Frog, The Beatles, Castrol, Disney, Forza Horizon 5, Gran Turismo, Mario Kart, Motul, Kendall Motor Oil, Shell, Warner Bros, and 76 are part of the collection. Models from film franchises, including Back to the Future, Barbie, Fast and Furious, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Jurassic World, and Star Wars, are also included.
The Bring a Trailer community has complained that the listing lacks detail about exact examples and close-up pictures of the rarest vehicles. Weirdly, the seller agrees and claims that they did submit close-ups, but the person writing the listing for Bring a Trailer decided not to feature them.
That’s a bummer, so let’s use the power of digital zoom to see what we have here. Check out this photo:
On the left, you see a lineup of Hot Wheels Classics, an annual line that launched in 2005 and was themed after hot rods and other classic cars. In the center here is a bunch of cars from the Gran Turismo and Forza universes and to the right is a handful of cars from the Fast Saga.
In another pile here we see official late-1990s commemorative replicas of famed Hot Wheels cars from the late 1960s and early 1970s including Rodger Dodger and Deora.
From there, it’s hard to get an idea of what you’re getting here. There are enough cars here to fill an entire room and that alone is impressive. However, it’s hard to even guess a real value here without getting any firm details about the collection’s most special cars. The seller says he is working on having Bring a Trailer update the listing so prospective buyers can have a better idea of what they’re looking at.
Until then, bidding has stalled out at $5,555 with five days to go. At present, that means someone is willing to pay $1.23 per car. The auction doesn’t have a reserve, either, so they’re going to sell for whatever the BAT market thinks it’s worth. If you’re interested in instantly pumping up your collection, head on over to Bring a Trailer.
Duplicates aside, I’m impressed. A collection of this size takes years to build and clearly shows someone with a passion. I can’t imagine dedicating a whole room to just Hot Wheels, but I’m glad there are people doing it. Hopefully, we do get more images before the auction bows out. I’d love to just walk through here and take in the history.
I lived on Hot Wheels when I was 30 years younger. Never truly grew out of it. Would pick one or two up from time to time if something cool caught my eye. Now my 2 year old is getting into them so I had a valid excuse to dig my old collection out and start adding to it. Even my wife has started picking some up as she admitted to me its actually fun digging through them at the grocery store
My parents were amazing gift-givers when we were kids, but as an adult I’m now dealing with the ramifications. Today we pulled out of storage what must be on the order of a couple thousand Matchbox and Hot Wheels models from the turn of the millennium that they had stocked up for Christmases, birthdays, and whatnot from when we were kids.
A lot of them are unfortunately from the much maligned ‘Hero City’ Matchbox era and most of the Hot Wheels are fictional models so there’s not a lot of ‘real world enthusiast’ value, but I’m still having a great time going through and seeing New in Box examples of my favorite childhood toys that I still have albeit in playworn condition.
I’m currently cataloging all the unopened stuff in a spreadsheet but I really don’t know what to do with it since demand for early 2000s Mattel is basically zero, yet at the same time I feel a little weird donating such a well-preserved quantity of unopened 25-year-old diecast to Goodwill. Any ideas?
Hmm, yeah, the buyer of these wasn’t exactly smart. 20 pieces of a given model that isn’t rare or particularly special? The vast amount of recent stuff in countless duplicates, some still being available in store as I type this, is surprising. Looks like quantity, not quality. But it is impressive to see. Impressive but dumb.
I vaguely recall some figure toy collectors mentioning that when sets were/are sent to retail stores the quantities aren’t even as the manufacturers for either costing or to boost collectability would limit certain figures to 1 or 2 per case so collectors either had to somehow get first dibs on an unopened case or arrange some way to buy the whole unopened case to get the rare models, which meant also buying a bunch of duplicates of other figures.
I’m wondering if that may be part of what happened here, buying in larger lots to get certain models and therefore ending up with a bunch of duplicates (that they then didn’t get rid of), or if this person just impulsively bought whatever was on the shelf regardless if it was all the same thing, or that they already had multiples of that exact model already.
I have a small collection that i enjoy. My brother and i had tons of them growing up. I still buy one now and then, but i always take them out, pay with them for a bit, then hide it somewhere in the house. Someone with a collection like this will go a long way in keeping the wife from stopping me from getting “just one more”
Having been there back in the day, the early red line ones resonate with me, although I’m slightly odd because my first Hot Wheels was a Lola T70 race car rather than a hot rod. Then again the first Matchbox I bought was a Greyhound Scenicruiser.
I have some modern Hot Wheels that form a virtual car collection of Brazilian VWs, rotary Mazdas, and a Mk II Escort. (Hot Wheels made VW Brasilia of all things)
They did an SP2 as well, and a Brazilian Dodge Charger. They’re producing more and more diverse castings from different markets.
I have an SP2, and a Mazda REPU. Now I just need to find my Matchbox CX-5 that matches my real car, and the FD RX-7 I’m positive I bought at Safeway.
First Matchbox I recall actually choosing new myself was a Datsun 280Z, magenta purple. I’m guessing I was about 4. Little shop near my grandma’s house.
Sigh… I am old enough to remember being gifted original HW cars and track components as gifts and then abusing them as a fifth-grader would. We would take them to a park and run them down a steep, windy concrete slide and laugh as they slid and spun at points along the way. Kinda like putting a valuable baseball card in your bike spokes.
To be honest, I was more of a Matchbox kid. They were my intro to Unobtanium European icons. I was particularly charmed by the Mercedes ambulance and Unimogs. I just looked up both on eBay and they’re surprisingly affordable.
Yes – Matchbox Superfast line. They tended to be more accurate and detailed as well. Still remember a purple Datsun 280Z I picked new at 4 or 5.
Wow-Motherlode is right!!
This brings back memories-Hot Wheels,Matchbox,Playart,Majorette,
Tomy-you name it.
No diecast brands seem to make the NC Miata. I’d love to get one for my son to match his car.
A quick google says that both Hot Wheels and Matchbox make an NC3.
I need to sharpen my google skills, I have looked and only found models for $200.
I knew that they existed because I had seen them while searching (unsuccessfully) for my car, a 124 Spider. The google search I used yesterday was “miata nc hot wheels”. Happy hunting!
Every time my wife and I go to a store that sells Hot Wheels, I’m always sending pictures to my son. Although his collection isn’t nearly as huge as this, I always get the same response – “I already have that one.”
And yet I persist.
I love collecting diecast cars as it’s a way for me to “experience” cars I’ll never get to own but man have scalpers ruined it. Around me, scalpers know the exact day stores put out new shipments, they go in and buy them all up to resell online at $10+ a car. It’s made finding cool models in the wild almost impossible and I’m not spending $10 for a basic hot wheel. I’ve found some alternative stores that the scalpers don’t frequent but it’s a bummer that once again something fun has been ruined by people looking to make a quick buck.
Is there anything left that hasn’t attracted assholes trying to be scalpers?
Geology
None of these are open… my inner 8 y/o is sad.
For $5,556 you can feed that inner child the joy of opening 4500 hot wheels like it’s Christmas all over again.
I would totally do that.
Same… I’d also need about 1,000 feet of Hotwheels track.
Highly recommend mini GT and kaido house over regular hotwheels.
There is something to appreciate about a $1 model that is accurate and detailed but especially for rlc prices mini GT and kaido house mini GT are way better for the price.
Hadn’t heard of these but with the Premium line for Hot Wheels approaching $10 a model you’re absolutely right.
As an avid collector of anything 1:64 or ‘three-inch’ I’d say they just appeal to different demographics. Sure the premium Hot Wheels aren’t super ‘high end’, but they feature nice solid one-piece metal-base construction and roll really well. Most of the ‘hyper-accurate’ models from companies like Mini GT, DCT, or G.C.D. just don’t roll nearly as well and they are prone to having small parts break off, but obviously they’re a lot closer to the real deal.
Also, some of the premium die-cast stuff skews heavily towards a very Gran Turismo sort of product line (173 Skyline variants and some supercars), where the mainstream stuff gets a little more eclectic.
Yes and no—XCarToys just did a fifth gen Accord that I’m fiending to get my hands on (they have a Buick Regal and GL8 as well), and obviously TLV are king of the mundane. For sure some of the more ‘trendy’ Chinese brands like MiniGT are focused on higher end cars, but there are plenty that still appeal to my ordinary-minded collecting habits. BMCreations have been doing some ’80s and ’90s Mitsubishis and JKM have plenty of recent ‘mommy-mobiles’ like the Highlander and Touareg. Bburago/Maisto also released a 1:64 collection of modern Volvos that they’ve seemingly reneged on, so get them while you can.
I find the best-kept secret in diecast collecting right now is the Matchbox Moving Parts series. Higher standard of detail for an extra like… $1.50, and they’re doing a lot of mundane/obscure/Euro models that should be right up the Autopians’ alley.
Several decades ago, diecast models were often relatively realistic interpretations of real-life vehicles.
Jeeze way to make me feel old Mercedes – it wasn’t like this in the ’90s! More like half a century ago! 😉
Is it just me, but recollection of Hot Wheels were that they were not your standard stock cars – you got those from Matchbox.
Hot Wheels were usually like that “Beatnik Bandit” in the ad, engine popping out of the hood, painted in some metallic purple color with a flame job on the side. Something you’d see in a cartoon, not on the road. Maybe that was just the era I was getting them in – late 80’s, early 90’s.
You’re right they’re mostly gearhead kid fantasy vehicles, but HW does do real stuff, sometimes surprisingly deep cuts.
Among my favorites are not only my HW ’62 Mustang concept and also my ’63 Mustang II concept, a unique car (there’s a single one in existence in the real world; DT’s seen it up close but never gave us the story – boo!) that very few little kids would know about.
Just yesterday at the grocery, I saw a Ford GT40 race car that had the period, market-correct (UK) even Autolite contingency decal on the side. I’ll probably buy one next time I’m there, though I already have like 4 previous versions.
I think they changed focus in the ’70s -’80s. I had a few very realistic Hot Wheels growing up, as well as the crazy ’60s stuff handed down from cousins or yard sales.
Had a Twingo, as well as the Paddy Wagon one and the Red Barron (WW1 German Army Helmet). They got abused in the sandbox and such.
Sharkruiser FTW
Hot Wheels still tends to go a little more exaggerated than Matchbox, and with fewer mundane vehicles, but even in the 80’s and 90’s, they did some relatively normal stuff (they’ve done a reissue of their bustleback Seville in the past few years, they had a K-Car wagon in period).
To me, the fun of collecting anything, involves the hunt, the chase, the excitement of finding that one special car that you’ve wanted forever, then you find it! Only to immediately starting to search for another. I don’t see the joy of buying such a huge amount of toy cars all at one time.
The thrill of the hunt is 100% the best part of collecting. I’d be going for my favorite cars in all the various paint schemes the offered. The duplicates would drive me crazy.
I’m a collector, I basically have a small collection of small collections of stuff. I love collecting, and I get that some collectors like collecting different versions of a given item. I will never get the habit of collecting multiple examples of the exact same item. I once took two Yellow Submarines from the Hot Wheels bucket at the local Lidl store because I wanted to give one to my daughter and keep one for myself, and even that felt bad. Whoever buys this should set up an ebay store and make some money back selling off duplicates.
So about $4500 worth of Hot Wheels?
My kids got me a cool Hot Wheels for Christmas. It’s a Volvo 240 Wagon in green, but decked out like a drift car. My kids know me so well. Brought a tear to my eye.
https://youtu.be/8Ba3HWnxS-g?si=vrnDW0sVn-s2MSOv
I’ve got a buddy who drifts a black 240 wagon. He’s a great guy!
I find the 1993 Volvo 240 SE wagon in Gran Turismo 7 pretty fun to drive. Before “driving” it in GT7, I would’ve thought drifting a 240 wagon was weird. Now I totally get it.
I’ve got that one. Still looking for the Drift Camper version from the Track Fleet series.
https://media.karousell.com/media/photos/products/2024/8/17/hot_wheels_track_fleet_2024_vo_1723856816_2b6bf04b.jpg
I only have about 3600 to go, although basically none of mine are collector grade, and basically all live in the kid’s toy box (I have a few squirreled away to lice on my desk).
At the time of my comment, the bid is $5,555, or as Mercedes said $1.23/car. Very interesting. At my Walmart, regular Hot Wheels cars sell for $1.25/car.
I’m sure there are some unique or rare cars in this collection, but then there’s the whole hassle of picking up or shipping these cars. There are also lots of duplicates. I’m not one of those fanatical Hot Wheels collectors (I probably have a couple hundred HW & Matchbox), so maybe what I say next is wrong. I feel like the dupes and the collection size make it worth less than the sum value of all the individual cars. I’m wondering if the more astute collectors feel the same way, hence the current bid basically equivalent to Walmart retail price.
I would agree with that, plus I’ve always felt that small items (toys, plates, prints) made or purchased new specifically to be “collector’s items” go through a long period of base value being well less or even about half of original retail and may not ever recover in consideration of inflation. I myself normally avoid anything marketed as collectible (I tend to collect license plates, which originally served a function and each theoretically has a story) but I’m not here to judge as I do have one of every version Ferrari F-40 toy or die-cast I ever came across for some years, perhaps 15 cars, some cost $30 and some 99 cents.
BTW, the first Hot Wheels by my memory cost 69 cents each or $6.25 today so they were not cheap. Matchbox (genuine made-in-England) at the time were 55 cents.
The first Hot Wheels made a huge splash with third-graders like me. I would have 14 of the first 16, each costing two week’s allowance. Mom made me give away half-to-three quarters of my stuff every year so not much survived but I still have the red Mustang and the later 1969 chrome Mustang w/ hood-delete and big motor which was a premium deal you had to join the Hot Wheels club for. I met my wife in 1986 and of all things, she also had the exact same two cars she’d saved.
Met my wife and married in 1984.
When I saw her shoe box of Hot Wheels stuff, I knew she was the one.
I now own thousands of these darn things. And no one to leave them to.
But I don’t care.
Leave them to me!
Oh my god that freightliner is goooorgeous.
Friends, do not click that Elite 64 link or you’re in for some tough conversations with your spouse, your loved ones, or at the very least your wallets and purses.
Sadly, it sold out within 45 minutes of its launch. I sniped up my truck in the first minute of sales. Maybe probably worth the $50. 🙂
At least it’s a truck. I irrationally bought the Matchbox ’95 VW Harlequin Golf selling for $25. I think Harlequin Golfs are really cool, but I don’t know how I decided spending $25 on a regular-scale diecast of one was OK.