Wuddup collectors!
I've been collecting diecast cars lately. With so many brands, scales, and variations available on the market today, a diecast collector have to focus in order not to get off-track with his/her collection.
In my case, I choose to collect 1/64 scale Hot Wheels diecast cars. I began collecting about 4 months ago.. I know it's only been a short time, but it's sooo easy to build quite a large collection in only a while. Therefore, I have to focus more on collecting only the things I like.
I collect 2011 & 2012 lineup of cars. I have some older ones (2010 and 2009) but not a lot. I have a couple of 2012 Treasure Hunt cars, some cars from movies, some Nostalgia Collection, and some Premieres & New Models from 2010 - 2012.
It is very hard to resist not opening them, but I've managed to keep some in MOC ("Mint on Carton") condition. The rest weren't so lucky. But I do try to keep each in mint, opened condition by storing and displaying them in displays.
So enough yapping and let's enjoy some pics, shall we? =)
Display case
In my mind, focusing on my collection included how many cars I want to collect. So I came up with an acrylic display case that can fit in 49 pieces of opened 1/64-scale cars. Why the exact number? So that I can decide/control whether to stop or continue once I reach that number =)
In case you're wondering why each slot is so square, the maker kinda make a mistake.. but it turned out great. Now I display my cars slightly sideways so that I can see both front and side views of the cars, as you can see on the top picture.
My First 4 cars
Below's my first four cars. Randomly picked, simply because the looked great =) As I progress, I learned that Hot Wheels have Series within their basic car lineups. For instance, the top car at the pic below is a HW Racing '11 69 Pontiac Firebird, below it is a HW Performance 11 Buick Grand National, and so on.
Movie Cars
Turns out Hot Wheels have a few cars from popular movies. I was fortunate enough to have some of them, but my goal is to get the Ghostbusters Ecto-1 car.
That's pretty neat.
Treasure Hunts
All right, we're getting into the rare ones one =) Considered rare in the Hot Wheels basic cars line up is the Treasure Hunt series of cars. According to
http://hotwheels.wikia.com/wiki/Treasure_Hunts , Treasure Hunt (sometimes
T-Hunt) is a line of
Hot Wheels cars which were introduced by
Mattel
in 1995. It consists of 12 cars every year; one released per month. It
is either 12 or 15 t hunts. The original production run started at
10,000 pieces worldwide, and has since grown due to the demand and
increasing popularity of Hot Wheels collecting. As of 2007, 157 Treasure
Hunts have been released.
I was fortunate enough to get a couple of these bad boys at reasonable price. Below's what I got so far..
2011 Factory Sealed
Not quite sure how you qualify or become elligible to receive Factory Sealed cars, but I hear one has to become a dealer to get them. Or something like that. All I know is that they have a "seal" or a sticker as a marker, and they cost a bit more than the normal basic series packs. I managed to get a couple of them while out hunting in local toy fairs..
Maybe this video can explain it better =) I didn't make this video, by the way..
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxuNQ4SDtxE
2011 Hot Wheels Nostalgia Wave 1, Masters Of The Universe
Growing up, I was a huge fan of He-Man and the Masters of The Universe (MOTU). Everything in that cartoon series were either bad-ass or kick-ass. Hot Wheels did a great, great job on capturing these ass-kicking essence on this special wave of cars. Awesome.. just awesome.
I managed to get a couple of what I thought were the coolest of the bunch, the Dairy Delivery and the Dodge Van. Dairy Delivery cars are basically iconic in the Hot Wheels universe, and the fact that one of the car in this wave is a Dairy Delivery only makes this wave a future classic.
Check out these videos-that-I-didn't-make below to get a more close up look.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AljgPeO1H_s
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnwKIXExqF0
Others
I've also managed to get my hands on a
Hot Wheels Car Case. It's made of tin material, quite cool.. can fit up to 18 cars, and best of all there's a
'10 HW Premiere "Bread Box" car inside in factory-mint condition. Hah! Whatta great catch.
Well that's it basically, I have some more that you can see here:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150728906221411.462904.562981410&type=3
Overall I think diecast cars are great collectibles and investment. Just gotta keep a more focused collection, coz this is kinda different than collecting Star Wars or action figures. If you're or I are not careful, there's gonna be a lot of little cars lying around all over the house, and that's something we'd all like to avoid =)
Thanks and keep collecting, everyone.
Regards,
Master Deejay Yoda
