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 dupes. 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 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.
