Hot Wheels racing away! The $1 addiction that is expensive
Oct 4, 2019 8:26:56 GMT -5
shaxper likes this
Post by brutalis on Oct 4, 2019 8:26:56 GMT -5
Soooo, any Hot Wheels/Matchbox collectors here in the CCF? Recently (as of last Christmas) gotten the pocket car bug and been selectively purchasing these little 4 wheel beauties. Growing up I might have had a handful of cars and i don't really remember them at all as most of the boys in my neighborhood weren't into them. Jump 40+ years to 2018 and a friend bought some Disney Hot Wheels collector sets for my birthday and Christmas along with some of the current Marvel collector cars (featuring Iron Fist, Captain Marvel, Thanos, Cap, Iron Man, Spidey, Thor, etc) so I begin to take notice of the toy aisles whenever grocery shopping. Just looking more out of curiosity than anything else but after a few weeks of browsing during December 2018 Christmas season with all of the overstocked stocking stuffer's of the cars I ended up buying a couple of Batmobiles.
From there I was doomed. It quickly becomes a fascination and addiction poring over the pegs and digging through the Wal-Mart dump bins in search of elusive cars you hope to find. I made a conscious decision/choice to NOT get overly addicted and limit myself. I seek out Batmobiles, classic muscle cars of the past, flame paint jobs, sport cars and occasionally creative and unique emergency vehicles and fire trucks. In the last 10 months I have managed to build my fleet of pocket racers quite quickly amassing nearly 288 cars and trucks. Thankfully there is a plastic thread container I found out about which perfectly houses 48 cars to individual compartments and they are stackable with carry handles while fitting into the corner of the closet rather nicely.
The curse of this new hobby is that you may search for weeks at a time finding nothing or just a single vehicle among the empty pegs on shelf or digging through 3 foot deep dump bins filled with zillions of crap cars and nothing you want. Then one day "whammo" you find 2, then 3 then 4 cars and while finding all of the newest issued collector cars your basket is filled as if by magic with 15-30 of the damned cars! For myself, if it is PURPLE or a Batmobile then it is an instant buy.
Then you start researching and reading and following on Reddit to see when new makes and models are coming out. I find there is a store across town (than God it's not closer) which sells past cars. his place is stocked to the ceiling and he has folks out searching out cars all across the valley. His prices are very reasonable, most new fresh of the shelves of other stores $1.19-$1.50, most cars from last year being $2.00 and then going up from $3-$10 based on current pricing guides and collect-ability. Also his shop features a big 75Cent shelf filled with all of the overstocks. So if you can't find what you are hunting for in the regular stores each week you can pop into his shop and find or request things. I have gone twice this year and each time spent around $40 easily while only purchasing the $1-3 cars. Really fun wy to spend a couple of hours as he shelves everything by makes and models of the cars. So you have rows of muscle cars, rows of Porsches, rows of Batmobile's, rows of trucks, and rows of higher end collectibles.
It is a fun and fairly inexpensive mind pleasing way to enjoy the thrill of the"hunt" and far nicer on the old pocket book than buying old comics! This year alone has seen me finding 18 different Batmobile versions from television to cartoons to movies in various paint jobs from flames to racing stripes to Scooby Doo recoloring. You can readily justify spending a buck on a pocket fantasy car. So easy to let this justification provide incentives for stockpiling!!! Howzabout the rest of you out there?!?
From there I was doomed. It quickly becomes a fascination and addiction poring over the pegs and digging through the Wal-Mart dump bins in search of elusive cars you hope to find. I made a conscious decision/choice to NOT get overly addicted and limit myself. I seek out Batmobiles, classic muscle cars of the past, flame paint jobs, sport cars and occasionally creative and unique emergency vehicles and fire trucks. In the last 10 months I have managed to build my fleet of pocket racers quite quickly amassing nearly 288 cars and trucks. Thankfully there is a plastic thread container I found out about which perfectly houses 48 cars to individual compartments and they are stackable with carry handles while fitting into the corner of the closet rather nicely.
The curse of this new hobby is that you may search for weeks at a time finding nothing or just a single vehicle among the empty pegs on shelf or digging through 3 foot deep dump bins filled with zillions of crap cars and nothing you want. Then one day "whammo" you find 2, then 3 then 4 cars and while finding all of the newest issued collector cars your basket is filled as if by magic with 15-30 of the damned cars! For myself, if it is PURPLE or a Batmobile then it is an instant buy.
Then you start researching and reading and following on Reddit to see when new makes and models are coming out. I find there is a store across town (than God it's not closer) which sells past cars. his place is stocked to the ceiling and he has folks out searching out cars all across the valley. His prices are very reasonable, most new fresh of the shelves of other stores $1.19-$1.50, most cars from last year being $2.00 and then going up from $3-$10 based on current pricing guides and collect-ability. Also his shop features a big 75Cent shelf filled with all of the overstocks. So if you can't find what you are hunting for in the regular stores each week you can pop into his shop and find or request things. I have gone twice this year and each time spent around $40 easily while only purchasing the $1-3 cars. Really fun wy to spend a couple of hours as he shelves everything by makes and models of the cars. So you have rows of muscle cars, rows of Porsches, rows of Batmobile's, rows of trucks, and rows of higher end collectibles.
It is a fun and fairly inexpensive mind pleasing way to enjoy the thrill of the"hunt" and far nicer on the old pocket book than buying old comics! This year alone has seen me finding 18 different Batmobile versions from television to cartoons to movies in various paint jobs from flames to racing stripes to Scooby Doo recoloring. You can readily justify spending a buck on a pocket fantasy car. So easy to let this justification provide incentives for stockpiling!!! Howzabout the rest of you out there?!?
