Pssst . . . don’t tell the wife where you’re headed after breakfast.
Slip out quietly, sneak over to Ma’s house and dig for those Mattel Hot Wheels cars you squirreled under the basement stairs when you went to college in 1974. There had to be at least 40 of the little buggers, and now they’re worth a few bucks to collectors who buy, swap and/or customize the rare Red Line examples produced between 1968 and 1976. (Red Line, of course, refers to the Goodyear Polyglass Red Line tires used on 1960s muscle cars.)
Elgin’s Jon Bertolino understands.
Bertolino, a 31-year-old packaging sales rep, has dealt Hot Wheels collectibles on the side since 1988. His www.toizrit.com functions as a clearinghouse for Hot Wheels fanatics, and he has done historical consulting for Mattel.
Where does Bertolino scare up Hot Wheels stock?
“Like everyone else I originally started with garage sales,” he admitted. “Ten years ago I’d hit older neighborhoods around Chicago. People in their 60s and 70s were selling out and moving to condos or going to Arizona or Florida. I’d stop at a garage sale and find a shoebox filled with Red Line Hot Wheels left over from 30 years ago.
“Unfortunately, that good stuff is all gone now. I still find Hot Wheels at the occasional flea market but not often. My best sources are word-of-mouth and eBay. And guys’ll hear about the Toizrit Web site and contact me when they decide to sell their collections.”
Web sites aside, are there any practical tips for novice Hot Wheels sleuths?
“If you’re interested in Hot Wheels, look at your co-worker in the next cubicle,” said Bertolino. “If he’s between 30 and 45 … ask him if he has any Hot Wheels he wants to sell. You’ll be surprised by how often you find cars this way.”
Bertolino said Mattel doesn’t know how many Hot Wheels models it has produced since 1968. He points to multiple castings of specific cars, all with subtle variations. Nobody kept track of the total, though he estimates 1 billion cars were pumped out between 1968 and 1999.
The more collectible Red Line models go for $50 to $500. Pull up eBay, type in Hot Wheels and you’ll find approximately 9,000 listings. Typical is a pink 1968 Red Line Camaro advertised for a minimum bid of $365. There’s also a wild Red Line concept car called the Open Fire 5881 for $160.
Does Hot Wheels have an equivalent of the mythic Honus Wagner baseball card?
“You’re describing the 1969 VW Beach Bomb,” said Bertolino. “But not just any casting of the Beach Bomb, and this is an important point to make. If you find a 1969 VW Beach Bomb where the surfboard is removed only through the rear window, you have a car worth between $10,000 and $20,000. Only 22 examples of this casting are known to exist and the last one was found in Milwaukee. The more common production run had a surfboard held by slots on the side of the car. If you have this car it’s only worth between $50 and $100 in mint condition.”
Bertolino estimated that there are 50,000 Hot Wheels collectors worldwide. Most are purists going after specific models, castings and colors.
But lately, he has seen increased interest in gussied-up Hot Wheels. Artisans such as Roselle’s Rich Stillmaker are snapping up junk Hot Wheels for $3 each, drilling apart the bodies and re-building them as customs.
Stillmaker, owner of a garage-door firm, is a former drag racer who began tinkering with Hot Wheels several years ago after unearthing his original collection from a train set box in his mother’s basement.
He now owns 2,000 cars–mostly from the Red Line Tire era of 1968-1976.
“I started researching Hot Wheels,” said Stillmaker. “I learned how Mattel tumbled the die-cast [tossing a bunch of fresh castings into a drum and tumbling them together to knock up the imperfections] and quick-chromed these cars, and then added Spectra-Flame lacquer paint jobs over the chrome and later polished the finished product.
“My toughest challenge was finding original candy-apple automotive paint produced by the Metal Flake Corp. in the 1960s. I drove all over Chicago looking in older automotive parts stores and body-shop supply houses–any place that might have a few quarts of Metal Flake lacquer gathering dust on a basement shelf. I found storeowners would cut me a deal if I’d agree to buy all of their old stock. So now I mix my own paint, working from my own inventory of 30- to 35-year-old candy apple lacquer paint. That’s the secret to my finishes. It’s all in the paint and the two coats of nickel chrome I use.
“When I run out paint … I’m out of business.”
Stillmaker’s cars are chrome-dipped twice using nickel chrome, not blue zinc as per original Hot Wheels specifications.
“My chrome guy does about 150 cars at a time,” he said. “Dipping the Hot Wheels twice in nickel chrome makes them absolutely glow, and we don’t get the `toning’ that happened with the original blue-zinc process. Toning is where dark spots bleed through the paint after a few years. It usually happens when the finish has been nicked up or if the car has been stored in a damp area. The spots bleed through, but it doesn’t happen with my chrome process.
“I also have a source for Mattel-approved reproductions of tires and plastic parts, and the tiny rivet heads I drill out when I open up a car. If I’m using a standard color, it’s about impossible to tell one of my cars from a mint-condition original.”
Building a collection
Joe Juzkiw backs Stillmaker.
Juzkiw, a trucking industry executive, admitted to owning 500 vintage Hot Wheels cars, most Red Line models. He returned to collecting as an adult and employs a variation of Bertolino’s “ask your middle-age co-worker” theme.
“I go to people with kids my age [31] and ask if they have any old Hot Wheels lying around the house they’d like to sell. I also buy people’s childhood collections and do a little trading on eBay. That’s where I found the aqua 1970 Porsche 917. I’d say that’s my most desirable car.
“I don’t know about other collectors, but I think if you get away from big cities you have a better chance of finding Hot Wheels at antiques stores and flea markets. There isn’t the competition that you have around here.”
Juzkiw owns four or five of Stillmaker’s custom reproductions. His favorite is a companion to the 1970 Porsche 917, an identical car done over in original-specification purple lacquer. “Rich is accurate in matching original colors,” said Juzkiw. “I’d say his reproductions are better than most originals. I’d have to pay $500 for the original purple Porsche 917, but for a fraction of that amount I have a quality reproduction to display in my collection.”
Stillmaker charges $50 to $100 for custom painted and restored Hot Wheels cars–not enough to quit his day job, but enough to make the effort worthwhile.
He’ll sell you a reproduction for $25. It takes two weeks for a customized Hot Wheels car. Stillmaker does 200 cars per year, but he expects that number to rise to 300 thanks word-of-mouth.
Once a month he meets with Juzkiw and a group of enthusiasts from the River Grove area. They are gathering with fellow fanatics at the Hyatt Oakbrook Hotel for the local Hot Wheels convention, which runs through Saturday. “We rent rooms and spread our cars out on the beds, and everyone goes from room to room to buy, sell and trade,” said Stillmaker.
And to search for that elusive 1969 VW Beach Bomb with the rear window surfboard option?
Nah, not at this convention.
But keep watching “Antiques Road Show.” Because eventually, you just know some kindly old granny will plop down a box full of her son’s Hot Wheels.
And she’ll have that VW Beach Bomb.
