There is no doubt the Japan Historics 2 series are the hottest Hot Wheels of 2018. Given the rabid enthusiasm for diecast JNCs, that’s not surprising. What is surprising, however, is that a Skyline C210 from that series has sold for — pinky to mouth — $10,500. That is not a typo. The new casting is a highly desirable model both in real life and in diecast form, but what could possibly prompt someone to pay real car prices for one?
Turns out, it’s basically a bit of paint, or a lack thereof. Specifically, the nose is missing a hit of black, giving it an all-chrome grille. That’s it.
Such “error” cars have long held say over some Hot Wheels collectors, like how similar mistakes have been sought by aficionados of baseball cards and other collectibles. For diecast, sometimes it’s a car with the wrong wheels, an unprinted tampo, or a car in the wrong packaging. They happen because the factory is churning out thousands of these cars a day. Some mistakes are bound to slip through the cracks.
In this case, it was enough to turn a five dollar car into something more expensive than many of the real Kidney Cars we’ve featured. What’s even crazier, there were eight bids on it, meaning there was more than one person willing to shell out ten large for a Hot Wheels car.
There have been other similar errors that have pulled high prices, but not even close to 2,100 times retail. In this case, it seems the demand of the Skyline C210 and Japan Historics 2 series in general helped boost the price to stratospheric levels.
And before you call this a fluke, there was a second auction for the same thing. This time, the ending price with a whopping 65 bids was $9,110. That’s not five figures, but still a ridiculous price for a Hot Wheels with a bit of missing paint. See the auction on eBay
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The world has truly gone insane.
That is crazy that people would pay that much for a hotwheels car. No way I would ever pay that much for a hotwheels car.
Maybe this Hot Wheels error might be owned by a celebrity which the bidders knew, sort of like someone buying the Jeep own by Elvis? ?
I wonder if the sales actually went through. Looks like the same winner on both auctions. Something just doesn’t seem quite right.
As a prolific collector of diecast cars (Hot Wheels, Tomica, Corgi) I have seen many a case where a car that cost 5 dollars was exploded into 150 bucks and skywards in price. Sweet Rods (Japan model) Nissan BNR32 Skyline, good old mate of mine sold one for some triple-digit number. But 10K? Shocking but only so far as it’s that the price is on a new casting.
I wouldn’t pay over list price for a defective Hot Wheels car. LOL
This is the a big reason why I’ve stopped collecting hot wheels.
Sorry for the pessimistic view of humanity – but how long until a HW factory line worker starts purposely creating defective cars to fund his/her early retirement?
People are already faking errors and they’re near impossible to verify so I’ve no idea why anyone would pay so much
Joy bidder??