This is an extensive collection of 4,500 Hot Wheels cars that were amassed over a 30 year period. The vast majority of the cars remain in their original packaging, and the whole lot is now being offered for sale out of Rome, New York.
In the collection you’ll find an astonishing variety of Hot Wheels models, including some rare examples from popular film franchises including Back to the Future, Barbie, Fast and Furious, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Jurassic World, and Star Wars.
Hot Wheels cars became a staple of almost every child’s toy box from the year of 1968 onwards, and some of the 1:64 models would later be built in 1:1 scale. Image courtesy of Mattel.
Hot Wheels: A History Speedrun
Hot Wheels was founded by Mattel co-founder Elliot Handler in 1968 after he found his son playing with Matchbox cars, and realized there was room in the market for a competitor with more of a focus on wild concept cars and custom vehicles.
As it turned out, Handler was on the money, and the first line of Hot Wheels models proved wildly successful, resulting in the team at Matchbox cars having to scramble to update their offerings despite their first-mover advantage.
Ellion Handler, and his wife Ruth Handler, worked together to develop some of the most influential toys in American history, including Barbie, Chatty Cathy, Creepy Crawlers, and of course, Hot Wheels.
One of the key reasons for the success of Hot Wheels was that the models were largely based on custom cars, rather than regular production automobiles reproduced in 1:64 scale.
This appealed greatly to the kids of America, many of whom had spent years reading their parent’s car magazines and seeing the wild custom cars being created in the 1960s, and that had been created in the 1950s.
Over the decades, Hot Wheels cars would become the best-selling toy in the world. The brand would partner with various films including the Spiderman and Batman film franchises, and release special edition model series based on video game and cartoon cars.
Some of the more wild Hot Wheels creations would be rendered in 1:1 scale, including Twin Mill, the Bone Shaker, the Darth Vader Car, Deora II, and many others. These vehicles were typically introduced at major automotive shows or Comic-Con events, before being displayed at major automotive museums.
The 4,500 Piece Hot Wheels Car Collection Shown Here
The collection you see here was amassed over a period of 30 years by an avid collector in Upstate New York.
It includes many of the most memorable special edition Hot Wheels cars of the last three decades, including Treasure Hunts, Car Culture Team Transports, Monster Trucks, Early Times, Classics, Neon Speeders, and Color Shifters.
The vast majority of the cars remain in their original packaging, and the whole lot is now being offered for sale out of Rome, New York.
The collection also includes a number of brand collaborations, including Batman, Spider-Man, Kermit the Frog, The Beatles, Castrol, Disney, Forza Horizon 5, Gran Turismo, Mario Kart, Motul, Kendall Motor Oil, Shell, Warner Bros, 76 and more.
The full collection is now being offered for sale on Bring a Trailer out of the town of Rome in New York State. If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can visit the listing here.
Images courtesy of Bring a Trailer
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.