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!

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!