Hotwheels

Mainlines, premiums and the chase cars hidden among them:

the three kinds of Hot Wheels car that matter when you price one. Mainlines are the basic cars on the peg, most with a plastic base and hard plastic wheels, made to be raced and lost under the sofa. Premium lines such as Car Culture, Pop Culture and Boulevard come on bigger cards with a metal base and Real Riders, rubber tyres on proper rims, and are aimed at adults who keep them sealed. Hidden in the ordinary mainline cases are the chase cars: Treasure Hunts, marked with a small flame inside a circle, and Super Treasure Hunts, the ones collectors cross town for. Monster trucks, orange track and City playsets are for playing rather than keeping. Remote-control cars and ride-ons have their own place under vehicles and RC, and hobby-grade models under RC cars.

Super Treasure Hunts and the peg they hang on:

a Super ships in an ordinary case and costs the same at the till as any basic car, which is why collectors here work through supermarket pegs before anyone else gets to them. Once found, a carded Super changes hands at around Q250 to Q800 depending on the casting, and the same car out of its blister fetches a fraction of that, because collectors pay for the card as much as for the car. Further down, the mainlines people actually want, film cars, Japanese classics and old muscle, go for around Q30 to Q50 each from resellers, two or three times what they cost new. Ordinary loose cars from a toy box sell by the bag, not one at a time.

A real Super next to a basic car with new wheels:

a genuine Super Treasure Hunt has every tell at once: Spectraflame paint, a deep candy finish over bare metal; Real Riders; and a small TH worked into the graphics, with a gold flame-in-circle printed on the card behind the car. A regular Treasure Hunt has a silver or grey flame instead and ordinary paint and wheels. Rubber tyres on their own prove nothing, because every premium has them and customisers fit them to basic cars. That wheel swap is the usual way a loose car gets passed off as something it is not. Turn it over: the base is held on by rivets, so a rivet that has been drilled, glued or replaced with a screw means the car has been opened. The year stamped on the base proves little either way: it dates the casting’s design, and a casting can run for years in new colours. Customs are a hobby of their own in Guatemala and a well-made one has its buyers, but it should be sold as a custom. On carded cars, run a finger along the edge of the blister for glue, lifting or a cloudy seam, since rare cars are sometimes opened, swapped for a common one and resealed. Creases, a yellowed blister and torn sticker residue all take value off a card. With a track set, send a car through every launcher and booster; a booster whose rubber wheels have worn smooth just stalls it.

Photographing a carded Hot Wheels for a buyer in Chiquimula or Petén:

shoot the card at an angle that shows whatever is printed behind the car, then the back and every corner, in daylight, because someone making that trip wants to see what they would see in their hand. For loose cars, photograph the base as well as the body. Say plainly whether each car is carded, opened or customised. Pull any Treasure Hunts, Supers and premiums out of a bulk lot and list them on their own; left in a bag of play cars, they sell for bag money. For a track set, list the pieces and say whether the booster runs and the connectors are all there. And hand a Super over in a plastic protector case, so it reaches its new shelf looking the way it left yours.