The Great Super Treasure Hunt Experiment of 2014: A tip from a friend...

My mini-hot streak continues.  The last 3-4 weeks have helped my fill in some spots on my quest to find all 15 Super Treasure Hunts in the store, in the middle of the day.  Three weeks ago I came across the Super Twin Mill, last week the Chevy Nova Wagon, and this week the '69 Corvette.

The '69 Corvette was found yesterday.  In fact, I found two at the same store.  This wasn't as unique as my find last week at Alco in the middle of nowhere, but it wasn't a standard Walmart find either.

This came after a tip from a fellow collector.  A friend in Arizona, known on HWC as blackb13, posted on a forum I frequent that he had found the '69 Camaro Super at Dollar Tree.  That was a bit of a surprise, as Dollar Tree hasn't carried Hot Wheels for at least a couple of years.  But it appears they have changed their minds, as from what we have heard, all Dollar Trees are getting either Batch K or M in droves.

After Jason mentioned his find, I figured I would stop by the two Dollar Trees in the town I was visiting on business.  The first did have Hot Wheels, but it appeared they had been there for a few days.  The second Dollar Tree was bursting at the pegs.  Upon walking up I could see two Homers and a regular TH right up front.  It was definitely promising.

Peg after peg I went through, knocking my fair share on the ground (which I always put back, I promise), but only a few false hopes occurred when I thought I saw the Vette but it ended up being the mainline.  Ultimately I walked away leaving quite a few Homers and reg TH's.  Either someone just beat me to the pegs or the cases at that store were void of Supers.

That was Tuesday.  Wednesday I drove to another area for meetings, and had a few minutes to kill, so I decided to visit the one Dollar Tree in town.  I found the pegs were a lot like the previous Dollar Tree, bursting on every peg, with Homers all around.  So once again there was promise.

I was coming up empty after a lot of searching, and was starting to think that I just missed out when the third row from the bottom yielded a purple treat:

A few pics and it was in my hands.  I was more than happy to have the one Super, and was ready to leave when I decided to keep looking.  Sure enough, on the very last peg I checked, hanging right at the bottom:

Finding a second is nearly as fun as finding the first, but I rarely find two in the same store.  That was fun.

A lot of you have commented that I seem to find a lot of these.  Of course I have had my share of luck.  But it is not as crazy as you think.  That is why we are calling it an experiment to see if I can find them all without pallet-raiding overnight or door-warming every morning.  Most collectors that do that find Supers, find more than one.  I have happily found one here and one there, mostly by hitting rural stores, visiting certain Walmarts with toy managers that like to peg Hot Wheels randomly during the day, or randomly stopping by stores that are not on most collector's routes.

You might notice that I usually find Supers well after they have been released in dump bins at Walmart.  That seems to be the key.  Don't fret when the batches first hit, just be patient and see what comes later.  For example, the N case dump bins are hitting Walmarts around here, and of course when I found one the Supers were long gone.  I was happy to walk away with the Zamac Hakosuka Skyline and green Kenmeri.  Finding the Impala Super TH will come later.  If I am lucky.

Alright, the tally so far:

Chevrolet SS - Found at a rural Walmart at 11:30 am
Sand Blaster - Found at a nearby Walmart around 4:30 pm
Camaro Special Edition - Found at neighboring town Walmart around 3 pm
'71 Mustang Mach 1 - Found on a Saturday afternoon grocery run at Harmon's Market (I found two)
'07 Mustang - no luck
'55 Chevy Bel Air Gasser - no luck
'70 Chevelle SS - Found at two different Walmarts on the same day (one at 10 am, one at 5 pm)
Twin Mill - Found at a rural Walmart at about 3:45 pm
'64 Chevy Nova Wagon - Found at 5 pm at a rural Alco
'83 Silverado - Found at Target at 1 pm
'76 Greenwood Corvette - no luck
'69 Corvette - Found 2 at Dollar Tree around 11:30 am

With the Impala just hitting, I am only missing three.  Like I have said before, finding the Gasser and '07 Mustang seems highly unlikely, but I am holding out hope I can find the Greenwood. 

We shall see...

First Look: Hot Wheels '71 Datsun 510 Wagon Super Treasure Hunt...

A few of you have said we have been integral in helping set the hype on the Datsun Wagon at fever pitch, making it become the latest lust for scalpers and the like.

Ya' think?

Of course we have.  Not because we wanted to.  We didn't start out showcasing the Datsun Wagon last year with the Pitchfork-like intentions of creating hype.  We showcased it because it is easily one of our favorite Hot Wheels models...well...ever.  Any news on the Wagon, we report it.  Any time we are writing about a model that reminds us of the Wagon, we get it out and photograph it.  And anytime we learn that the Wagon is going to be a Super Treasure Hunt, we sure as shit are going to showcase it.

Like we said in our post earlier today, the Wagon would easily be a popular model because of the fact that it is well-done, unique, and part of a red hot car culture.  And those are the reasons we love this model.  But because of how hard the Boulevard was to find last year, and because of the resulting skyrocketing prices on ebay, the buzz around the Wagon took on a life of its own.

So if you look back at what we like to showcase, you will see an abundance of posts dedicated to models like the Hakosuka and Kenmeri Skylines, the Toyota 2000GT, the BMW E36 and 2002, the Porsche 993, and the Ford Gran Torino Sport.  But those models aren't living on the "rare" plain that the Wagon is.

So if we have inadvertently made the Datsun Wagon the next Drag Bus, Chevy Panel, or '67 Camaro, we are sorry.  We promise we didn't mean to.  We just like it a lot.  And we know many of you share that same opinion.

And speaking of hype, the 510 Wagon Super TH lives up to it.  When a friend of mine called me to tell me he had it, his first comment was how amazing it looked in person.  A couple of days later we had ours, and we cannot agree more.  This model is a beauty.

Sure, the Boulevard is a classic.  Having a soft spot for olive green, and for wagons, and for JDM, Jun Imai's Boulevard is an all-time fave.  But the Super is not as far behind as I thought it would be.  The spectraflame red is rich, the wheels menacing, and livery just right, and not just because it mimics the deco of Jun's real 510 Wagon (or at least did).

The Super gives the Wagon a whole new look, much different than the Boulevard, and the red mainline for that matter.  It emphasizes its stance and length more than anything, making you appreciate the casting just a little more.  Yes, it is a hot model because it is a Super, but what makes it great, especially when the hype dies down, is how good-looking it is.  I have no idea if our photos do it justice, but we will do our best.

We hate to say this about a model that is going to be very tough to come across, but it is a must-have.

Sorry...


Hot Wheels '71 Datsun 510 Wagon (2014 Super Treasure Hunt):

The family:

The Great Super Treasure Hunt Experiment of 2014: My most rural find yet...

There has been a Hot Wheels Wagon Super that has been getting just a bit of hype lately, well before its release.  Honestly we don't know if we have seen a higher amount of anticipation about a Super TH than what the Datsun 510 Wagon Super is getting.

Lost in all that, however, is the too-cool fact that there are two (TWO!!) Wagon Super Treasure Hunts in the 2014 line.  That fact alone makes the 2014 lineup of Supers one of the best yet.  Off-hand, we can think of three wagon Supers previous (Morris Wagon, Chevy Delivery, and Chevelle), so two this year is awesome.

And while we all watch the prices of the Datsun Wagon fly high, and as we watch the frenzy that will be Kdays in September, let us all pause and give some love to the other wagon, the '64 Chevy Nova Station Wagon.  There have been a lot of good-looking Supers this year, and this is surely one of them.  Yes, flames are kind of the universal symbol of Hot Wheels over-decorating their models, but there is a way to do it right, and this is surely a great example.  The brown works so well, and the flames are simple.  Definitely the less-is-more approach to flames.  And the perfect choice for wheels is the steelies.

We have an example here for our Lamley features, but the Nova Wagon was definitely a Super I wanted to find on the pegs, especially as part of my attempt to find all 15 Super TH's on the pegs during random daytime visits to stores.  The batch came and went at Walmarts and Targets, so smaller stores would be the best place to find one.

And it finally happened.

For me, while finding a Super is always thrilling, finding one at an unlikely location is even better.  I have found them at grocery stores, rural Walmarts, a gas station, and even by my neighbor on her first visit to the pegs (imagine when she texted me a photo of the Toyota 2000GT Super asking if that was the model I was looking for).

Today's story may be the best location-wise, because I found it in the most rural of rural areas.  I have mentioned several times that my work takes me all over a huge chunk of the state of Utah, from essentially Salt Lake south.  All the way to the southwest corner in St George, just north of Las Vegas, as well as southeast to Moab and the Four Corners.  This Super find happened in the town of Blanding, Utah.  You can look it up.  It is 70 miles south of Moab, and north of the Four Corners area.  It is a small town.  And like a lot of small towns, it has an Alco:

I don't know too much about Alco stores, but they seem to be small general stores, and only in small towns.  Here is the view from the parking lot:

I have been to this Alco in my travels before, because they do have a small toy section, and I have always wanted to find a Super at a store like this.  A collector I have run into near my home mentioned he had found a Super at this exact store several months ago while he was traveling, so I have held out hope.

At about 5 pm I had just finished a meeting with a client when I hopped in the car to start the 4-hour drive home.  On a whim, I decided to give the Alco a quick look, considering I am not down this way that often.  So a quick stop I made.

I arrived at the pegs, and they looked well picked-over (I took this photo after my find, but you get a sense of what the pegs looked like):

The cards were sporadically placed, suggesting employees were spreading the models out as more models were purchased.  The Snoopy suggested that while these pegs had been passed through many times, maybe no collector in the know had gotten to them.  So I perused.

Only a few pegs had more than 2-3 models on them, including that lower one in the middle.  From the left I noticed the rear model was a Nova Wagon that seemed a darker shade of brown, and a walk around to the right verified my hunch:

Yep, those are flames on that hood.

Finally, the Super I have really been hoping to find, and in a location I have really wanted to have some success.  It didn't make this exhaustive one-day trip worth it, but it did make it more tolerable.

My makeshift Alco checkout counter photo studio:

Isn't she pretty?  I am very happy to have this one.

So, the update on my Super TH attempt:

Chevrolet SS - Found at a rural Walmart at 11:30 am
Sand Blaster - Found at a nearby Walmart around 4:30 pm
Camaro Special Edition - Found at neighboring town Walmart around 3 pm
'71 Mustang Mach 1 - Found on a Saturday afternoon grocery run at Harmon's Market (I found two)
'07 Mustang - no luck
'55 Chevy Bel Air Gasser - no luck
'70 Chevelle SS - Found at two different Walmarts on the same day (one at 10 am, one at 5 pm)
Twin Mill - Found at a rural Walmart at about 3:45 pm
'64 Chevy Nova Wagon - Found at 5 pm at a rural Alco
'83 Silverado - Found at Target at 1 pm
'76 Greenwood Corvette - no luck
'69 Corvette - no luck

8 out of 12.  Not too bad, considering there has been no pallet raiding for me.  I have accepted the fact that the '07 Mustang and '55 Gasser are probably not going to happen, but you never know.  Plus there should be plenty of chances to find the last two Corvettes, and we will see if I have any luck.  And the Impala is around the corner, with the Harley Davidson and Datsun Wagon looming.  

Back to the hunt...