Shell
Pro Collector
Chevy Girl
Speed Limit: 1,330
I collect:
M2's
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Post by Shell on Apr 24, 2013 12:21:13 GMT -8
In the Minds of Hot Wheels Collectors
Cash, Love, and Tiny Cars: Inside the obsessive-compulsive world of Hot Wheels collectors.
 February 2010 - BY BRETT BERK - PHOTOGRAPHY BY TED SOQUI Mark Fletcher taps the two tiny, chipped toy cars on the velvet cloth in
front of him: a gold ’68 Mustang and an orange-metallic ’68 Cougar.
“These are my childhood cars,” he says.
Fletcher, an unemployed Arizona computer salesman, is now 50. But back
in 1968, when he was eight and visiting relatives in Southern
California, his father took him and his brothers shopping for Hot
Wheels, only to discover that the local toy store was closed. Desperate
to avoid a mutiny, his dad found an old Hot Wheels package in their car,
located the manufacturer’s address on the back, and began driving in
that direction. It was late in the day when he arrived at Mattel’s
corporate headquarters, and hardly anyone was around, but a secretary
responded to his pleas. She rummaged in someone’s desk and grabbed these
two cars: handmade, chrome-plated demonstration models used by salesmen
to drum up department-store orders. “I was the youngest,” Fletcher
says, rolling one of the cars back and forth, tenderly, “so I got last
pick. I cried because there was a crack in the windshield of mine.”
We’re at the 23rd-annual Hot Wheels Collectors Convention. More
specifically, we’re in a small banquet room in the Los Angeles Airport
Marriott, at an invite-only party where the VIPs of the toy-car world
show off their rare treasures. Little vehicles, lovingly displayed in
custom mirrored cases, line the walls. All around us, middle-aged men
talk animatedly about their toys.
Fletcher lets us pick up one of his cars. It’s familiar—warm and worn
and with a satisfying heft—and a rush of nostalgia ensues. Many
Americans who grew up loving cars had cases filled with these as boys.
But it’s one of the only times we will hold one here.
 This hands-off policy makes sense. These toys have become a serious
business. When we ask Fletcher about the value of his childhood relics,
he estimates about $10,000 for the pair. We guess he’s not crying over
split windshields now. Or is he? They’d be worth four times as much, he
says later, “if they weren’t play worn.”
How did we get to the five-figure, museum-piece Hot Wheels? Having
conquered contemporary girlhood with the Barbie doll in 1959, the folks
at Southern California–based Mattel trained their sights on boys. Hoping
to improve on what he thought were bland toy cars being produced by
Matchbox and Corgi, intrepid company co-founder Elliot Handler asked his
designers to develop a superior line of stylized, little metal vehicles
that would run quickly on smooth surfaces and capitalize on the
burgeoning local muscle-car and hot-rod culture. (Company lore has it
that the brand name came from a comment made by Handler about one of his
designer’s rides, a chopped El Camino: “Those are some hot wheels!”)
The toys were an instant smash when the first 16 models were shown in
1968, eliciting millions of orders from national retail chains and
handily outselling all rivals. Their success was attributed equally to
the tweaked realism of their designs, their garish candy-metallic paint,
their sub-$1 price, and their advanced engineering: The cars all had
lightweight, aluminum-zinc alloy construction; integrated suspensions;
and low-friction wheels that allowed scale speeds of up to 200 mph on
the brand’s customizable orange plastic track. (Sold separately!)
 But like the classic muscle cars on which they were often based, the
first generation of Hot Wheels—now known as “redlines” for the thin red
band that runs around their tires—were made only through the early
1970s. Their demise was caused by some of the same factors as those of
their roadgoing counterparts: inflation and the spike in oil prices.
(The little cars didn’t run on gas, but the big industry that built and
transported them certainly did.)
The cars were also victims of their own groundbreaking uniqueness. Their
complex stampings, buffed metal bodies, and flashy paint made them
increasingly difficult to produce and sell profitably for less than a
buck. Manufacturing was moved overseas to save on labor costs, designs
were simplified to save on production expenses, and the paint formula
was shifted from its pricey (and lead-rich) metallic to cheaper enamel.
Hot Wheels held the line on pricing, but sales still fell.
Handler attempted to diversify his way out of the slump, expanding the
Hot Wheels line to include die-cast motorcycles, trains, airplanes, and
bizarre human-machine hybrids. These items generally met with a lukewarm
reception from consumers. However, the company’s licensing department
found a means to succeed without the risk of inventing new toys: Simply
place the corporate seal on existing products. Hot Wheels has since
stamped its logo on almost anything that will take an imprint:
lunchboxes, headbands, sheets, coffee cups, yo-yos, toothbrushes,
watches, cake decorations, laptops, even hair gel. Still, Mattel has
continued making little 99-cent cars. And 41 years later, it’s the No. 1
toy-car brand in the United States, having produced over 4 billion
vehicles.
Until last year, affable hot-rodder Larry Wood was the company’s head
designer. “For the first 15 years, I just did my job, and no one cared,”
says Wood, now 67, when we visit his Long Beach garage, where he walks
us through his huge collection of tiny-car memorabilia (and his larger
collection of life-size vehicular retirement projects). “Sales went up.
Sales went down. Then, about 20 years in, the kids who’d bought the
original cars started to become dads, and these dads started buying the
cars for their kids, and things just went through the roof.”
 This same nostalgia has fueled the remarkable escalation in the toys’
collectibility. Thousands of adult fans now attend local and national
collector conventions. Hot Wheels are consistently the most populous
eBay category, with an average of 25,000 vehicles up for auction at any
time. And sites such as diecastspace.com, redlinesonline.com, and Mattel’s own hotwheelscollectors.com allow legions of collectors to exchange information and millions of dollars’ worth of ?little cars.
But as the hobby has become more commodified, it’s grown away from the
toys’ humble $1 roots. Rare, original redlines—those that look new, were
produced in limited numbers, or feature bloopers such as mismatched
wheels—now routinely trade for thousands of times their original price.
There have been forgeries, where unscrupulous dealers create fake
rarities by repainting vehicles in uncommon colors or carefully
installing desirable “errors.” It’s created a layer of “pickers,” who
scour flea markets and grandmas’ attics for hidden gems to resell. And
it’s caused divisiveness in the collectors’ world where, as postal
worker Rafael Cerillo says, “It’s not a question of what you want to
collect anymore. It’s a question of what you can afford to collect.”
What you can afford certainly figures prominently in the “rooms,” the
commercial hub of the collector conventions. Arrayed throughout various
floors of the host hotel, and advertised by hand-drawn signs and
propped-open doors, the rooms are a serial bazaar for Hot Wheels
hoarders. Inside each one, cars for sale shimmer on every surface: “in
blister” or “loose” (in their original packaging or out); on dressers
and chairs; in velvet cases and under shop lights; and, ubiquitously,
covering the beds.
There are toy cars here for $5, $50, $500. There is a Classic ’31 Ford
Woody for $9000, a VW Beach Bomb for $12,000, and a pink Superfine
Turbine whose owner simply laughs when we ask what he’s asking.
Sid Belzberg, a Canadian software CEO, is here, looking to fill holes in
his collection, a million-dollar hoard that includes the first Hot
Wheels ever produced. “We’re category killers,” Belzberg says of himself
and his wife Alicia, describing how they’ve dominated markets in tin
toys, ancient coins, and pocket watches. “We collect until we get
everything there is.”
And there’s puckish, 48-year-old real-estate broker Bruce Pascal from
Washington, D.C., who, in addition to being a walking toy-car wiki and a
member of the Diecast Hall of Fame, is famous for owning the most
expensive Hot Wheels ever purchased: a pink 1969 VW Bus for which he’s
said to have paid about $70,000 in 2000. While he suspects that things
have come down from the peak of the market, he feels confident that the
high end remains strong. “There’s still money in the hobby,” he assures
us. By way of example, he relates the story of a picker who paid $56,000
in cash for a set of cars the day before. “The guy he bought them for
will part them out on eBay a few pieces at a time and will probably
gross around $80,000.”
But even in this acquisitive environment we uncover another sentiment,
one based less on picking, parting, or killing and more on affection.
“When I’m looking for a car,” long-haired, longtime L.A. collector Mark
Randall says, “I’m attracted first to what’s pretty. It’s like a girl.
You see her across a room and you know you like her, but the person next
to you might have a totally different opinion.” He opens a small padded
case. Inside is evidence of his passionate obsession: a rainbow of
pristine, loose “Heavy Chevys”—a rodded-out, first-generation Camaro.
“Which one catches your eye?” he asks. We point to a spotless,
olive-green F-body, a color we believe few others would find pretty. But
Randall smiles, generously. “You have excellent taste,” he says,
nodding like a sensei. “That’s the most desirable color for this
casting.”
This obsessiveness runs even deeper among customizers, the
fastest-growing segment of the hobby. These folks spend days chopping,
welding, and painting these tiny cars, just for fun and show. Generosity
is another hallmark of this sub-subculture. When customizers meet at
conventions, their signature act is to give away a car they’ve
decorated, an object and action they call a random act of kindness.
“We’ll leave here with 100 cars,” Chicago customizer Brian Thorby says,
introducing his wife and two young sons. “Guys in the rooms will see the
kids and just let them pick out a car for free.” Why this outpouring of
benevolence? Biological imperative. “They’ve got to keep the kids in
it,” Thorby says. “It perpetuates the hobby.”
 Intrigued by this statement, we follow Thorby’s sons briefly as they explore the convention floor. They lead us to one of their favorite features: a glass-fronted machine near the merchandise room, about the size and shape of an average household aquarium. We watch as they feed a Hot Wheels car into a hole in its side. The car rolls down a ramp and stops on a platform. Then, the boys push a button, and a heavy steel press descends, crushing the toy into a flattened disc of plastic and metal. The young perpetuators of the hobby squeal with delight. We finally locate the collectors’ collective heart at a meeting of the Blister Pack Liberation Army. This group formed about 10 years ago and is coÂordiÂnated by childhood car hoarder Fletcher. The gathering is ad hoc and surreptitious—occurring off the convention’s agenda, at 11 p.m., outside the hotel’s shuttered ballrooms—but is open to anyone who brings a classic redline, still in its original 40-year-old package. (Such a seal multiplies a car’s value three to ten times.) Fletcher tells the 20 or so persons gathered there: “Introduce yourselves by answering two questions: Which cars did you give away as a kid, and why?” The Liberators take turns presenting. While nearly all of them have a heartwarming tale of receiving a car—from a beloved grandma, from a resentful sibling, from a friend at a convention—being innate collectors, few have stories of giving one away, even as children. Their anecdotes also Âpoignantly reveal the Liberators’ distance from the toys’ elemental nature. “The last time I opened a blister pack,” Belzberg confesses, “was in 1969.”  Finally, each holds up his or her tiny package. Onlookers cringe and
shout offers to buy them, intact. But every member liberates each little
car from its brittle prison—though they all do so with care, like a
bride opening wedding gifts.
And as they linger and chat afterwards, they share a vital, if hermetic,
camaraderie, as if they’ve been liberated as well, freed to revel in
the cars’ innocent joys.
"Everyone thinks we’re stupid, taking a valuable package and ripping it
open.” Fletcher says, standing behind a table littered with cardboard
and yellowed plastic. “But we spend five days here trading cars for
money, looking for the perfect piece. This event is about reminding
ourselves that these cars weren’t perfect, even right out of the
package. It’s about having a beautiful thing that you can touch and hold
rather than just value.” He rolls a car in his hand, studying it
beatifically. “It changes your relationship to a car. It becomes yours.”
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