Soo... A few mos ago I stumbled into my hot wheels from 70's when I was a kid. I have numerous "red lines" which are good value in the collecting world today. I beat the shit out of cars as a kid. Many did not survive. Firecrackers and whatnot. But more than enough escaped my heavy hands looking damn nice 40 years later thanks to my mother storing them away. Most are worth between $30-$100 with most in the $30 range. At 53 yrs old now, I was curious how the cars are being sold these days. Amazingly, they are only .99 cents pretty much everywhere. I did a little research and found out that hot wheels adds one or two "treasure hunt" cars in the cases the ship out to stores. These treasure hunt cars are metal carriage like yesteryear, bigger rubber tires and some extra detail to make them "treasures". They are worth more than the rest of the cars in the case, but sell for same price. I read that if one is lucky, you might find one of these in any store that carries hot wheels. I thought wtf... Maybe I can find one and set out to walmart. Nuthin'. I also felt a like a bit of an ass sorting thru hot wheels in the toy section. Same week I had occassion to check a few other stores. Nothing again. Fast fwd a few weeks and I hit up walmart very early one morning right in the middle of covid to try and score some TP. So it's like 7 am and I realize that since I am there early, maybe I will get lucky on the car thing. I go to the fucking you aisle and start to take a look. Suddenly some dude around my age appears in the aisle and starts perusing the same stuff. He even made his way right next to me and was looking almost exactly at the same stuff as me... As if he was trying to find something before me. That, my friends, was the end of my curiousity. I left the store with my loot of paper product and put the interest in die cast "treasures" behind me. I mean wtf, one of the treasure cars is worth $30 if sold on eBay, but is it worth competing with dudes my age in the toy aisle at 7 am on a fucking weekday?
It opened my eyes though. Next time you are in walmart, target, or anywhere that sells that shit, look at who is in the aisle. I swear to God, now that I am aware of there being a competition to find these fucking cars, I cannot stop seeing middle age dudes parked in the aisle almost Everytime I look. They are out there grinding on hot wheels and sorting thru inventory. Believe it!
Next ... I saw that the sport card market is booming so I dug out my collection from 2007. That year I was picking up boxes of cards from walmart and target and amassed some pretty cool cards. It was just that one year and I recently went thru and found some of the cards are worth $400+ (adrian peterson /calvin johnson rookie cards). I thought, wow..that one year of collecting sure has paid off. Which lead me to take a drive to Walmart and check the card section out. Strangely, all the sports card "blaster" boxes were sold out. I made a point to check the card aisle anytime I went. After 2 weeks of all the stores being sold out, I went online and discovered that because of the recent boom in the card market (which is what got my attention in the 1st place)... People are stalking the stores and buying out entire inventories AS TO SHELVES ARE BEING STOCKED. It means people are doing the same fucking hot wheels strategy on the fucking sports cards. Researching a bit more online, I am reading about guys following vendors from one store to the next and cleaning him out as he stocks. It's much worse than the hot wheels bull shit by 10x. I would not be surprised if one of you motherfuckers on this forum are out there doing this shit. God Damn it.
Anyway, I posted this to let you all know about this underworld that has been going on right before our eyes but unless you are looking for it, you would never know it was going on. Some crazy shit man. And.. if you have any sports cards from the last 20 years... Auto, refractors, serials... Pull them out and see what they sold for on eBay most recently. The market is Watch the fuck up
It opened my eyes though. Next time you are in walmart, target, or anywhere that sells that shit, look at who is in the aisle. I swear to God, now that I am aware of there being a competition to find these fucking cars, I cannot stop seeing middle age dudes parked in the aisle almost Everytime I look. They are out there grinding on hot wheels and sorting thru inventory. Believe it!
Next ... I saw that the sport card market is booming so I dug out my collection from 2007. That year I was picking up boxes of cards from walmart and target and amassed some pretty cool cards. It was just that one year and I recently went thru and found some of the cards are worth $400+ (adrian peterson /calvin johnson rookie cards). I thought, wow..that one year of collecting sure has paid off. Which lead me to take a drive to Walmart and check the card section out. Strangely, all the sports card "blaster" boxes were sold out. I made a point to check the card aisle anytime I went. After 2 weeks of all the stores being sold out, I went online and discovered that because of the recent boom in the card market (which is what got my attention in the 1st place)... People are stalking the stores and buying out entire inventories AS TO SHELVES ARE BEING STOCKED. It means people are doing the same fucking hot wheels strategy on the fucking sports cards. Researching a bit more online, I am reading about guys following vendors from one store to the next and cleaning him out as he stocks. It's much worse than the hot wheels bull shit by 10x. I would not be surprised if one of you motherfuckers on this forum are out there doing this shit. God Damn it.
Anyway, I posted this to let you all know about this underworld that has been going on right before our eyes but unless you are looking for it, you would never know it was going on. Some crazy shit man. And.. if you have any sports cards from the last 20 years... Auto, refractors, serials... Pull them out and see what they sold for on eBay most recently. The market is Watch the fuck up
