19th Annual Hot Wheels Collectors Nationals
The first week of April saw more than 2,000 Hot Wheels collectors from around the world converge on Lombard, Illinois—a suburb of Chicago—for the 19th Annual Hot Wheels Collectors Nationals. The event was orchestrated by Mark and Jennifer Millhollin of Collectors Events Unlimited and a group of dedicated volunteers. One of the key components to this yearly event are the special Limited-Edition Hot Wheels cars that are made specifically for that event. Mattel produces very short runs—normally no more than 5,000 pieces— of specially painted and decorated cars with the event logo and date, and lifelike Real Riders rubber tires and mag-style wheels topping it all off. Packaged for this year’s Collectors Nationals event were four Hot Wheels castings and a special Red Line Collectors Club Car, making a total of five Limited-Edition cars that attendees could purchase with their paid event ticket.
The fourth car available at the event was the Dinner Car—a special-edition blister-packed Hot Wheels–produced car that attendees received with their paid dinner ticket. The dinner is usually in honor of a Hot Wheels designer, past or present, and the car produced for the dinner is one of that designer’s favorite designs. This year’s car was a 1981 DeLorean DMC-12, a representation of the full-size DeLorean that Hot Wheels designer and sculptor Manson Cheung drives to Mattel every day. On the Dinner Car card is a sticker that reads, “Celebrating with Manson Cheung.” In addition to the Dinner Car, the ticket included a meal, a souvenir pin, and an exclusive T-shirt decorated with the dinner honoree’s name and car, limited to the number of dinner participants (with a maximum of 4,000). There was also a dinner swag bag, with a specially decorated “Code 3” Custom Cobra “Baggie” car, produced in light blue enamel for Collectors Events Unlimited by one of the pro customizers. The Cobra was also done in three alternate colors but in much smaller runs, and were given away at the end of the dinner as door prizes. The alternate colors were red, white, and yellow.