Little toy cars bring big bucks on eBay

Topeka Capital-Journal, The, Aug 15, 2006 by Bill Blankenship

By Bill Blankenship

THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

Some "Need for Speed" Hot Wheels Festival-goers are driving the little cars given away at the event into tiny fortunes on eBay.

On Aug. 6, the toymaker Mattel Inc. sponsored the daylong festival in the north-central Kansas hamlet of Speed. The Phillips County village of 37-year-round residents swelled to a one-day population of more than 10,000.

One of the things that drew the crowd was a giveaway of a limited- edition of the model cars die-cast to commemorate the event.

The 5,000 Hot Wheels Classics commemorative-edition cars were 1/ 64th-size replicas of a 1934 Ford Coupe. Each had a hot rod paint job, a festival insigina on the trunk and on the rear window a decal of the logo of Rod's Restoration, a body shop in nearby Glade that helped organize the event.

No sooner than the festival was over than the little cars began showing up on the online auction site, www.eBay.com, drawing what those outside the world of Hot Wheels collecting might think are outrageous prices for toys that can be purchased for about a buck each.

Run-of-the-mill commemorative cars from the festival in unopened, factory-sealed packets were drawing bids of $50 to $80 on Monday.

One car packaged with a $12 commemorative T-shirt from the festival sold Monday afternoon for a high bid of $133.58.

Commanding even higher prices were those commemorative cars in packages autographed by Larry Wood, a Hot Wheels designer since 1968, whose nickname is "Mr. Hot Wheels."

Wood was in Speed for the festival to sign autographs.

After standing in long lines in the sweltering sun to get one of the commemorative cars, some festival-goers got into another line to get their car packages signed by Wood.

Some of those folks were converting their sweat equity into cool cash by selling their Wood-autographed Speed Festival cars on eBay for prices approaching $150.

However, the biggest price tags were on those Hot Wheels that rolled off the Mattel Inc. assembly line with mistakes.

Like double-struck coins or the 1918 "Inverted Jenny" postage stamp mistakenly printed with the biplane upside-down, factory flubs command a premium among collectors.

One car with a blotchy paint job sold for $100 over the weekend, and bids were up to $1,000 on Monday for one with a missing engine.

Even a 12-foot section of Hot Wheels track sold over the weekend for $20.51. It was free for the taking at the festival after more than a mile of track was disassembled following a failed attempt to set a world record for distance traveled by a Hot Wheels car.

Bill Blankenship can be reached

at (785) 295-1284

or bill.blankenship@cjonline.com.