My Big New Toy- A Dukes of Hazzard Dodge Monaco Patrol Car

Well, the deal went through today and I am the proud new owner of a 1977 Dodge Monaco Dukes of Hazzard patrol car! I am a huge Dukes fan and have a ton of the 1/64th scale Monacos, so it's crazy sweet to have one in real life! I bought it from Bob, a super nice guy over in Indiana. He even brought his General Lee with him to our meet up. It was a surreal day to say the least!

For you fellow Dukes fans , never fear! I have switched the red and blue lenses to the correct sides! I am also getting the white-walls turned around soon!

This is Bob's General and my new patrol car parked at Steak and Shake today.

Bob's General was awesome! He took me for a ride in it and it was so cool how people took pictures everywhere we went. He even got Enos (Sonny Shroyer) on the phone while I was test driving the patrol car and I got to talk to him! It was the highlight of the day!!

The patrol car is autographed by several cast and stunt crew members too! Including Jerry Rushing, the real life "Duke" boy whom the shows premise is modeled after. If you haven't seen his movie, Moon Runners, you are missing a piece of Dukes history!

New finds 8/24/2012

Stopped by a local Wal-Mart tonight and found a few more cars to add to the collection. It seems like out of all the stores that carry Hot Wheels, I have found that Wal-Mart consistently has the best selection of cars. It's probably because they have a bigger selection than other stores, but they always seem to have at least one car I want to pick up.

The first few I found tonight are from the 2012 Hot Wheels new models and HW Performance line. I found a really cool, vintage looking Baja Blaster van. It has retro looking paint with a cool Goodyear symbol on the side. Just a really simple, throwback paint job. I also found three more SRT Vipers, two more BMW Z4 Ms in black and a red Subaru STI. I already have the Z4 in white but it looks good in black. I have the STI in blue but I had to get that red color variation!

The next two are also newer releases. The one on the left is a Hot Wheels Hot Ones 1985 Honda CRX and the one on the right is a Matchbox 1971 Pontiac Firebird Formula. The CRX is a new casting and has an interesting interior as it looks like the motor is in the rear. It also has the late 80's, early 90's wheels on it but Hot Wheels managed to pull the look off well. Not my favorite car but it is a unique new casting. I have the Firebird in gold and blue but this Firebird has an awesome black paint job with a Phoenix bird graphic on the side. Very 1980's-ish!

The next Hot Wheels is a rockin' Monster Jam 30th Anniversary Grave Digger monster truck. This model is 2012 specific as it marks the 30th year of the Grave Digger truck. Hot Wheels has been going nuts with the Grave Digger 30th and have put the "30" logo on almost all Monster Jam packages this year. There are two different, normal line, black Grave Diggers that have been released this year- this 30th truck and the "regular" Grave Digger with no 3 on the side. The 30th version is the harder one to find though! I have a ton of this year's special Grave Digger's 30th series and will be posting them soon!

I also found more Johnny Lightnings! Wooo!!! I found two more of the new 1977 Dodge Monaco Taxi and plain jane green version, and the other two are different versions of the Jeep Cherokee. One is a white version with a small front bumper and lite winch and the other is an Army green version with a large front bumper, big winch and off-roading snorkel. These are very accurate looking trucks!

Hot Wheels Mars Curiosity Rover new model!

This is a brand new, Q case 2012 new release. It is awesome! This is going to be a hard one to find and they are going for $60+ on Ebay as we speak! Thanks and copyright to UPI.com and Mattel for the sneak peak photo!

Hot Wheels Toy Show Finds 2

Okay, now back to the toy show finds! 

These three are from the 2003 Muscle Machines Japan GT series. They are pretty hard to find and are really detailed. From left to right: Daishin Advan Silvia S15, a Amemiya Matsumoto -Kiyoshi Aspara RX-7 (LA-NA2) and a Takata Dome NSX (LA-NA2).

The next 16 cars are technically all the same. They are Johnny Lightning Forever 64 series 1977 Dodge Monacos. I have dozens of these cars in all the variations made so far, including the newest yellow cab and plain green versions. The versions shown here are the black squad car with gumball light, yellow cab, CHP patrol car, light blue Dukes style patrol car (it even has the same light bar and gold sheriff tampos), Blue Bossard patrol car with double gumball lights and the plain-jane green one.

The next trio is straight from Hollywood. The A-team, Green Hornet and Starsky and Hutch are some of my favorite classic TV shows. These are all original run vehicles. The A-Team van is an Ertl brand version from 1983. I have quite a few of these but this one was really cheap so I had to pick it up. The Black Beauty is a Johnny Lightning chrome-green version with gold wheels. I have the standard all black Black Beauty MOC, but am glad I could add the chrome version to my collection. The third is a Corgi Jr. Starsky and Hutch Ford Gran Torino. It has some light scuffing but the stripe is in really nice shape. I also have several of these but the stripes always seem to either be dirty or in bad shape.

The next set of cars involve my favorite car ever made, the GENERAL LEE! I have collected dozens and dozens of the Ertl General Lees, mostly the original 1981 versions, but I also have many of the 1997-2005 re-releases. The ones showcased below are all original from 1981, except for the odd ball Yatming "Dixie Special" Dodge Aspen/Dart with opening doors as I am not sure what year it is from. The Cooter's pick-up is the fleetside version with a tow hook and decals still intact. There is also a step-side version but it is much more rare. The Daisy's Jeep is in close to mint condition and looks great. A lot of the Jeeps have bent window frames but this one is untouched. The Boss Hogg's Cadillac is the Hong Kong made version with the smoked windshield. It has some paint chips but isn't in terrible shape. The General Lee is the Singapore made version and is very rare because of the decals it has on it. The 1981 General Lees were made in four locations: Hong Kong, Tiawian, Singapore and the USA. Each countries Charger body mold was different and each country had different style stickers. This Singapore version is rare because it has the USA version stickers on it with an orange background. Every Singapore version I have seen or own, including my very first General Lee, has clear background stickers on them. It's always cool to find a rare decal variation!

The next find  is a 1981 Ertl Dukes of Hazzard car carrying case. It is in remarkably nice shape with very little splitting on the case. The trays were still there and are the correct heavy blue ones. This makes my 9th Dukes case! Going for that even dozen!

The final set of cars from this past weekend is a lot of Ertl and Johnny Lightning Dukes of Hazzard cars. The first few is a Ertl three car "Pursuit set" from the 2005 movie release with an odd package. This package of cars is interesting because it says "Rosco's Patrol Vehicle" but includes a Boss Hogg Caddy instead. The red and white Chevy Malibu from JL is an "undercover" tv car. It was used as the Hogg's Hellcat racer in the episode "Happy Birthday General Lee" . Johnny Lightning has been making movie and TV cars and including them as just "normal" line cars.  

The other 8 cars are Johnny Lightning Dukes series cars. They are the Molly's Plymouth Racer, two Carnival of Thrills Vegas, Cooter's Plymouth Roadrunner, the General Lee from DOH the Beginning, Lucifer Mustang, Enos' race Monaco and a Springville County patrol car. I sold a lot of these JL Dukes cars to my buddy Larry over at the Dukes Collectors site, but as my motto goes, "you can never have too many" haha!

New Hot Wheels Toy Show Finds

I found a TON of good stuff at the toy show today. It's always hard to stay within the budget when there are isles and isles of cars! I like shopping at the toy shows better than Ebay because you get to interact and barter with local people.

I found quite a bit of awesome Batman stuff over the past few days. I found the new limited line of Batmobiles at a local Wal-Mart and bought a dozen or so 1966 Batmobiles and a few Batmobile Affinity's.

Then at the show, I managed to find a few of the new 2012 Hot Wheels THE BAT  from the Dark Knight Rises. They are super hard to find and look really hardcore. From what I have been told only 1 THE BAT comes in each case of Hot Wheels...so that is a very small ratio of BATs being released. They did the same small release strategy with the KITTs and Ecto-1s.

 I got a great deal on a 70's Corgi Jr. Batmobile and a Hot Wheels Batman Begins Batcycle set too.

I picked up two Hot Wheels Monster Jam monster trucks at Wal-Mart too. I found a nice Black Stallion and Aftershock. I have quite a few of the Grave Diggers from this years Monster Jam series and these two  just looked too good to pass up.

These are a few of the higher end Hot Wheels series cars. A '84 Hurst 'Olds from the Hot Ones series, a Porsche 914-6 and '77 Pontiac Firebird from the Boulevard series and a few of the Dan Wheldon tribute treasure hunts, DW-1.

The Boulevard cars look great! The Porsche has an very intracate roll cage and the Firebird is a dead ringer for the Smokey and the Bandit Trans Am. 

I saw the Dan Wheldon wreck live on TV and it was really hard to watch. Very, very sad. Dan's testing of the next gen Indy car resulted it the chassis being named DW-1 in his honor. The team at Hot Wheels did a great job of honoring him with this special edition car. They even made a donation to Dan's foundation as well.

The next three cars are just normal main line Hot Wheels cars. The new SRT Viper is hard to find in stores so I picked up some because they were cheap and available. The other car is a Nissan Skyline H/T 2000. I have some of the Skyline but you can never have too many of one car!

These are four newer cars from Johnny Lightning. A Dodge 330 drag car, a 1950 Chevy Panel Delivery fire dept. truck, a 1967 Plymouth Fury demo derby edition and a 1972 Ford Torino Sport. I love the old Mopar drag cars so the 330 is my favorite out of this group.

The next is a early 90's Racing Champions Richard Petty car and figure set. I have another one of these but it's been opened so it's nice to have a carded one.

These are only a part of the weekend scores so stay tuned until tomorrow for the rest!

Hot Wheels Show in Dayton, Ohio 8/19/2012

I found some really nice cars at the Hot Wheels Show in Dayton, Ohio today. They have Hot Wheels shows at Hara Arena, a local venue hall, every six months and they are usually very busy. Today was no different. I found about 80 or so cars there today, and a lot of them are new cars but some are older. Here is a group picture of all my finds this weekend. I will be posting individual pictures later today so stay tuned!

New finds 8-16-2012

I went to Meijers and Target tonight and found some a few new cars. Nothing too exciting but it's always nice to add to the collection!

The first three are Hot Wheels main line cars. The first is a orange and yellow '72 Ford Gran Torino Sport, the second is a lime green '68 Hemi Baracuda and the third is a lot of three A-Team 1983 GMC Vanduras. I probably have 50 or so of the A-team vans now!

The next four cars are Matchbox main line cars. A 1968 Ford Mustang GT/CS from the Old Town series, a Lamborghini Miura P400 S from the Heritage Classics line, a Volkswagen Beetle 4x4 from the Desert line and a Bobcat/loader called Skidster from the Airport line. Matchboxes may not have the selection Hot Wheels has, but they make more of the industrial, city and odder year sports/muscle cars that are available.

The next three are special series cars. The first is a Team Hot Wheels '70 Dodge Hemi Challenger I got at Target, the second is a Hot Wheels DC Universe Batman Batmobile that someone at my work got me at a local Meijers store. It is pretty cool looking and doesn't resemble any of the mainline Batmobiles that have been made so far. The next is a Greenlight Hollywood Series Dom's Dodge Charger from Fast Five. Besides the lack of wider slicks on the rear, the car looks great and very authentic. Dom's Charger is in the same line as the Two-lane Blacktop GTO from a few posts back. The Greenlight cars are so of the most accurate cars you can get without spending a fortune.

Real Wheels 5

Pictures from the Englewood, Ohio Arts Festival Cruise-In, August 12, 2012.