Anyone collect Hot Wheels?

[Billy F 1988]

Does anyone here collect Hot Wheels diecast vehicles? I just like to bring that up because I do. I've collected them on and off since at least 2006.

I'll name a few that caught my eye:

Knight Rider Firebird
IROC Z
Mustang Boss 302 Laguna Seca
Camaro ZL1
Challenger SRT
'12 Corvette Z06 "Anniversary" edition (celebrating Chevy's 100th anniversary)
'04 Corvette Z06 "Le Mans" edition (celebrating the C5R era)
'63 and '11 GS Corvettes
'95 and '09 ZR1 Corvettes
Firebird 400
Porsche Caymen S
Ferrari F12 Berlinetta, 250, 288, 355, 412, 430 (and 430 Challenge), 458, 575, 599, Enzo, FXX and F50

I'd like to name more, but, it'd take too long to list. The Ferrari collection is quite small compared to my Chevy collection. I'm big on Chevys, but I also like Pontiacs, Dodge's, some Ford's here and there, and pretty much any authentic Hot Wheels car that catches my attention, not those fandango fantasy cars, though, I do admit collecting a few which really closely resemble what you see on the road or on the racetrack.

[Alps]

I have about 700 cars, mostly thrown together at this point because I don't have the space for them. I have far too many favorites to list them. My rule is, the more metal, the more I like the car. Preferred full diecast.

[Duke87]

As a kid, I had gathered up several hundred of them (maybe like 400). But they are all sitting in a box in my parents' attic now and have not been touched in years. Most are not special enough or in good enough condition to be worth displaying even if I had the space. They were played with a lot.

I likewise preferred the metal ones, simply because they were more durable. I had a lot of cheap plastic ones that broke.

[kphoger]

I didn't really collect them, but I had plenty as a kid.  I once stabbed myself in the knuckle while busting all the windows out of one with a pocketknife.  Boys think the strangest things are fun, don't they?  My parents kept the cars in a box, and now I get to enjoy watching my sons playing over at their house with the same cars I remember playing with as a kid.

[1995hoo]

We had a lot of them as kids. I have no idea whether any of them are still in our parents' basement. They have some of our old junk down there somewhere. Like Duke87, we played with them a heck of a lot; on a number of occasions they got left outside overnight (another sign of how the world has changed....kids today don't play outside).

[Alps]

I didn't really collect them, but I had plenty as a kid.  I once stabbed myself in the knuckle while busting all the windows out of one with a pocketknife.  Boys think the strangest things are fun, don't they?  My parents kept the cars in a box, and now I get to enjoy watching my sons playing over at their house with the same cars I remember playing with as a kid.

Yeah, I used to smash mine into each other to turn them over. Whichever car turned over the last of all the other cars won. You'll see a lot of chipped and missing paint on a lot of my cars...

[formulanone]

Like the rest of you, my brother and I played with Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars from the ages of 4-5, until I was about 10; crashing them into walls, other cars, rocks, peeling/cracking/chipping them, and giving them all sorts of outdoor abuse that would make purists cringe.

As I became fascinated with real cars, I noticed that many of them resembled makes and models of sports cars that I'd read about, so I cleaned a few of them up and put them on my bedroom windowsill for show. I couldn't stand the imaginary way-out stuff that didn't look like a real production or racing car. The all went in a box by the time high school rolled around, and eventually found a home when my sister's kids were ready to play with our stuff. My two nephews had literally hundreds of cars between the two of them, and loved showing them off. And now that they're both over 10, they've ditched their cars, and they too sat in a box.

My brother and I were the eventual recipients of some of the cars, so we could give them to our kids. Probably 10% actually still rolled, let alone had four wheels on them! But we could recognize a few of them from our youth, with the permanent marker on the undersides, denoting our first initials, since our property was marked as such in those territorial years, or when we each received duplicate items.

My daughter took a heavy interest in cars for a little while (thanks to the movie Cars), and I'd buy her one as a treat every once in a while as a reward. To be honest, I would point her in the direction towards cars I'd really prefer and let her have the final say (Lotus Europa or Porsche 914?, Dodge Challenger or Chevy Camaro?, Tyrrell P34 or March 85G?), although she had an natural inclination towards 1960s-1970s machinery. My son is starting to roll them around a little bit, and my daughter was generally pretty kind to her cars, and shares them with her brother.

Maybe if they're nice to me, I'll inherit them back when and if they lose interest. I steal a glance at them at the toy aisles every so often, looking for a car I once owned, or would have liked to have own/drive, but I've never had much of anything exotic that one might make into a desirable toy car. And I have little to no room at home for collecting any more stuff, except under the guise of "for the kids".