APPRAISER: The Hot Wheels "Beach Bomb" came in to ANTIQUES ROADSHOW in our 2016 stop
in Salt Lake City. I've never actually seen a Beach Bomb in person. I've seen them in
magazines and in books and so it was almost like opening up a little diamond
for some people, you know, and the way it sparkled. And so it was, it was pretty exciting.
GUEST: This is a 1969 Hot Wheels Beach Bomb prototype.
I received this from my father, who was a foreman at Mattel Corporation in California at about that same time.
And he told me that this was a prototype that would fall off the track because it was top-heavy.
And he told me to put it away, it may be valuable someday.
So I put it in a trunk, and that's where it's been for the last almost 50 years.
APPRAISER: Okay, and you also today brought-- which was great for the provenance--
you brought a business card of your father's.
GUEST: Yes. I always kept it in the same place as the Hot Wheels.
APPRAISER: Very limited what we know about this prototype,
but it is the 1969 Hot Wheels Beach Bomb Rear Loader prototype.
Only out issued as a prototype. It was mass-produced in a small batch,
but then only in testing environments with kids.
They did find out that it did not work.
They went back to the drawing board and had to redesign it where it had the surfboards on the sides.
Do you know anything about how many of these are out there?
GUEST: I have read that there are 40 known in the world of varying conditions.
APPRAISER: Well, we've done a lot of research on this.
I have also spoken to one of the expert Hot Wheel collectors in the country today.
And what we know about this actually is that there's 40 different variations of the prototypes from this line.
All various colors. However, the most popular one being the pink.
The red one, however, seems to be in a little more limited quantities.
Other indication that it's a prototype, because this was reproduced.
What we know from inspecting this and from your provenance, this is an original prototype.
But the prototypes also came with the clear windows, which the redesign did not.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: Inspecting it all around too, it appears to be in near mint condition.
We use the term holy grail loosely in collecting.
Sometimes at shows it'll just fly out of somebody's mouth.
In this case, this is the holy grail of Hot Wheels.
GUEST: (chuckles) That's nice to hear.
APPRAISER: When I say holy grail for Hot Wheels, just the rear loader prototype.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: Of course came in different colors, is considered without question,
the holy grail of Hot Wheels.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: Now, you've done some reading, I'm sure. What have you found for values?
GUEST: They've been kind of all over the board,
but anywhere from $40,000 to $125,000 is what I've read.
APPRAISER: We'd put a value on this one at auction for between $100,000 to $150,000.
GUEST: That's nice to hear. Thank you. That's great. (chuckles)
APPRAISER: For a little car.
GUEST (laughing): Yes.
APPRAISER: When you're gonna put a figure like that on something, you have to really feel
comfortable with it, confident in that. So we had our peers at the table, at the
collectables table and sports table that talked and I even phoned one of the
country's leading experts in vintage Hot Wheels, to come to this consensus that
this is a six-figure plus piece. Cary and his son reached out to me I would
say probably about a year, a year and a half ago when we started talking about
the possibility of bringing that to market. With something like that you have
a limited pool of buyers, you know how many people in the world are gonna pay
that kind of money for something that everybody's agrees is worth it, but you
know it's a limited pool of buyers. So the last couple years I've had a lot of
time to watch the market, to kind of think about what would be the best way
to find the right buyer for that and fortunately the market has heated up
like we're seeing in a lot of the second half of the 20th century collectibles
are really having a boom right now. They seem to be a little bit more aggressive
buyers even than they were three years ago and so they're here to come
visit ROADSHOW again and further discuss the possibility of consignment
of the Hot Wheels, so I can potentially bring it to market this year.
GUEST: I have approached Grant Zahajko about representing me in the sale or auction
of this vehicle and that's something that we're working on today even.
I've got it right here Grant.
APPRAISER: Beautiful, so next what we would do is we would have this
photographed and get professional photography on it and then come up with
a plan on approaching some qualified buyers.
GUEST: Wonderful. It does mean so much to me, it's one of the last things that I have to remind me of my dad.
It's, you know, a small matter for me, but I I'm very confident that we're doing the right thing.