You hear about these goofy hot wheels collectors that troll toy departments. You ever meet or know one IRL? You always hear tales of them online like they're humpback whales you encounter in the wild. Going through pallets and snooping in backrooms... total mark behavior. Hassling some stressed out minimum wagie for you bootleg matchbox. Some would even put up displays for the inconvenience.

Not Hot Wheels but I know sandylea had to deal with those type of people with Funko pops, they’d come in and wait for her to open the deliveries and things of that nature.

A mate of mine collects them. He has hundreds. He's a hardcore car enthusiast, so it fits that he collects the muscle cars.

I do look at Hot Wheels collectors with more respect than the grown men buying Funko Pops or " action figures " and 40 Year of Virgin'ing their house. At some point.. grow up.

The other thing is, supermarkets particularly have Matchbox and Hot Wheel cars cheap. There's value in buying up the more valuable cars and reselling them. It's low risk, and it's low reward mostly, but it's something.

I'm loosely familiar with said kinds of people (like System mentioned, Funko pops - I'm not a fan but know people who are) but really, that's just collectors of any kind and some are more socially accepted than others.

Like, really, what's the difference between them and sneakerheads or people who wait for the newest iPhone (if that's still a thing)?

Dignity.

You can wear shoes

A guy I work with is one of these guys. He told me he just spent 6K on a collection from the US. He customizes them. Different strokes for different folks I say as I sit across from a wall of Marvel & DC statues looking at me like