Hot Wheels 2016 C Case

Starting in November short card 2016 C case cars started appearing in supermarkets around the country and then followed by reports of long cards being found in the major Hot Wheels retailers (though nothing locally). Coinciding with Black Friday, The Warehouse ran a promotion on mainline Hot Wheels cars, selling them for just $1NZ (a 66% saving of the normal retail price of $3). As expected, stock soon sold out and my three local stores were either mostly empty or completely empty after the sale.

As a result of being empty, I suspected that a restock must be coming soon and saw the first sign at the smallest store which had put out one single 2016 C case car on the pegs (surrounded by 2014 parallel import stock). Efforts to locate more cars failed and so I decided to head back into the city in the evening to try my luck. The largest store proved to be unsuccessful (though it was nice to see a few other collectors I knew) and so I headed over to the other store and found 5 2016 C case boxes sitting in front of the dump bin which had been opened, along with a small handful of cars in the dump bin and quite a few placed very neatly on the pegs above the dump bin.

Grabbing a couple of cars from the pegs for the collection, I then looked in the dump bin and the first car I touched turned out to be a 90 Acura NSX, that had some different wheels and tires compared to the other I already had in my hand ... thats right, after a very very long drought, I had found a Super Treasure Hunt in the wild.

Turning my attention to the cases, I searched for any other supers as well as regular cars I hadn't seen on the pegs/dump bin and eventually managed to find a Nissan Fairlady Z - whoever had looked at the cases before me had grabbed almost every single one, and then with 10 minutes to go before I headed towards the small peg section at the back of the store. Getting closer I was surprised to see that the pegs had been neatly filled with more C case and after scanning reached for the only 90 Acura NSX hanging to find that it matched the one I had pulled from the dump bin - thats right, another Super Treasure Hunt.

Time will tell if New Zealand is on the ball and has 2016 D cases this side of Christmas!