What Drives Hot Wheels Collectors?

I know what it’s like to be in the shoes of my neighbors that stare in bewilderment while I labor night and day on full-scale Fords. Since I am courteous enough to turn off the air compressor at 10:00pm and I never have a car on jack stands in the driveway, I know their stares are not out of frustration. The fact is, most of my neighbors are harmlessly asking themselves…”Why is he so fascinated with those things?” A question I find reasonable coming from a non-car person and directed to a serious car person. Really, I can’t blame them for asking the question after all the ridiculous measures I employ while working on these Fords.

Now that I’ve demonstrated that I am both compassionate and understanding towards those who question my favorite hobby, it’s fair to ask… “Why are they so fascinated with those things?”… after reading a story like this one from the Orange Country Register about men who collect Hot Wheels.

Memories, Imagination Drive Hot Wheels Collectors
By Teri Sforza, The Orange Country Register

I look at these things and see tiny metal cars. You can open their little doors and hoods and trunks, you can admire their little tail fins, you can roll them across the floor. I see toys, and that is all I see. I am of the wrong gender. I simply do not understand.

On eBay right now, there are 82,810 auctions involving Hot Wheels cars and their accoutrements. Unless you are a particular type of male – or the mother of one – you will surely be surprised to learn that there are Hot Wheels surfboards, Hot Wheels sandals, Hot Wheels thermoses, Hot Wheels Christmas ornaments, bedsheets, wristwatches, computer games – goodness, even Hot Wheels underwear. Vroom, vroom. The cars themselves range in value from a few cents to $8,500 for a collection of 126 “vintage” cars – enough to buy, say, a real car.

On display at Los Angeles’ Peterson Automotive Museum is a tiny, pink, rear-loading Volkswagen Beach Bomb with surfboards sticking out its rear window. A collector paid more than $70,000 for it.

If the rule for effective storytelling is “write what you know,” buckle up, kids, this may be a bumpy ride. A guide is needed in this alien landscape, so I turn to Jon Melin, owner of Way 2 Fast Toys and Collectibles in Orange. Jon is a quiet guy whose basement shop is an explosion of candy- colored cars that’s drool-inducing to the addicted.

Why? I ask. What makes people pay thousands of dollars for old toys?

“It’s a guy thing,” he says.

I probe further, and as best I can tell, it has something to do with recapturing the magic of youth (most collectors have vivid memories of racing cars around the house as kids), the powerful mythology of the automobile (its promises of freedom and independence), and flat-out, full-blown fantasy.

“A lot of guys like cars because they’re crazy looking – like this one, the Turboa,” Melin says, showing me a car that’s essentially a coiled green snake on wheels.

“And a lot of guys like the old classics,” he says, such as ’64 Mustangs — things they can’t afford in real life.

So toy car collecting is an act of willful imagination. Of deliberate whimsy. Sort of like those people who plunge into ice-cold water in their underwear every New Year’s Day. OK. I can grasp that. Sort of.

David Castillo is a grown man. He is searching for additions to his toy car collection. You don’t have to spend thousands to be a collector: For less than $40, he walks out with a red ’69 Camaro, a blue ’69 Chevelle and a ’46 Ford flatbed that could tow them to the nearest service station.

“I just like old cars, classic cars,” Castillo explains.

Same with Melin. He was dealing in antiques near the Plaza before the niche of cars and collectibles revealed itself. He still deals in Pez dispensers, bobblehead dolls, old movie stills, tin signs, license plates and chocolate molds shaped like bunnies (the wife’s passion), but the cars just took off and took over. He opened Way 2 Fast two years ago and personally collects toy cars – dozens of favorites are mounted in display cases in his office – and license plates, of which he has “a couple of thousand” in his garage.

Oh boy. This doesn’t clear things up. It simply creates more confusion. The underlying question screaming to be answered is, Why the heck do people collect things at all?

A very brief review of the psychological literature reveals that there are many motivations for collecting, including the desire to leave a legacy, build an empire and revel in the thrill of the hunt. You need that 1969 Beach Bomb, and the struggle to possess it is just plain old caveman-tracking-the-wooly-mammoth-through-the-brush fun.

When you stick it in a display case on the wall, people like me see a little car – but you see a collection of memories entwined with tales of triumph and loss, tales you can tell your friends at parties – or, in the case of Hot Wheels collectors, at the annual conference (held for years at the Irvine Hyatt Regency), because your friends probably don’t want to hear it.

Educators say collecting sharpens critical thinking skills. Collectors must identify, classify, evaluate, select, arrange. My gut tells me there’s also a primitive hoarding instinct involved.

We go to Murray Goodings, a mild-mannered bricklayer/ stonemason who lives on the outskirts of Vancouver. He opened the bidding on five mint-condition Hot Wheels cars at $150, igniting a bidding war that topped out at $721.11, leaving him in the cold.

His obsession began about six years ago, after he bought his son a Hot Wheels collector’s book for Christmas. He decided he must collect a full set of everything. For his son. Of course. He’s not sure exactly how many cars he has now, but figures it’s close to 10,000. Two rooms in his basement are completely filled. As are a fleet of storage cabinets. And walls of display cases.

“When you first start, you buy one of everything. Then you’re like, ‘Geez, I don’t like this stuff. It’s worthless and taking up space.’ That’s when you start migrating to older, nicer, more limited stuff,” Goodings said.

Hot Wheels hit the market in 1968, and some 40 million kids have grown up playing with them, according to Mattel. The lure of nostalgia cannot be underestimated. Dennis Valentine, a 39-year-old accountant from Austin, was recently interviewed by hotwheelscollectors.com:  

“What’s the first thing any Hot Wheels collector should know? It’s just fun to have the cars and hold and roll them. Let your imagination free and you can see the whole world through these little toy cars.

“Fondest Hot Wheels memory? When it was cold or rainy outside, I would take out all my cars and line them up one after the other – sometimes around 200 cars. Then I would slowly drive the whole line from one end of my house to the other. We had a long house, and it would usually take me the whole day from when I woke up until I went to bed.”

OK, I get it. Whatever can make you feel that feeling again is magic.

“Some guys’ passion is girls,” Melin said. “Some guys’ is cars.”