M2 Machines - Self Xmas Present 03

Knowing that I had a couple of parcels headed towards the parcel forwarding company I use in Portland, I decided to have a look around eBay and other online stores in order to play catchup on some items I was after (and other items I had no idea I wanted). Parcels eventually arrived and four parcels became one as I shipped the items onward to New Zealand

All these parcels can also be considered Christmas presents to myself, however I have opened them well before "the big day".

Rather than split the shipment into each parcel as ordered, the shipment will be split based on the brand's received in the entire shipment - presenting the M2 portion of the parcel

Browsing on the M2 Facebook page, I found myself drooling over a Walmart Exclusive set of M2 Machines .Trying to find a seller on eBay who was asking a reasonable price with reasonable postage proved rather difficult, but I was able to eventually get the main two I wanted (Ford F-250 Ranger and Ford Econoline Delivery Van) from the same seller for just a bit over cost price. The other Shop Truck came from another seller who had some more M2 I was after (see below), and at the moment I am still trying to decide if I want to get just one more truck in (Chevrolet Apache) or go for all of them,

While trying to find sellers who had all the Shop Trucks I was interested in, I spotted another Walmart exclusive that I had not been made aware off through alternative methods, the Mopar Garage line. I was instantly drawn towards the Dodge Charger Daytona HEMI and found a seller who had it for a very decent price, along with another release that I was mildly interested in. As mentioned above, the seller who happened to have a M2 Shop Truck casting I was interested in and so the decision to purchase was made pretty quickly.

While looking at the options at my main Greenlight supplier when doing the order, I discovered another set of Auto Mod 55 Chevrolet Bel Air Hardtops, due to be instock in a few days. As I am a huge Auto Mod fan, I quickly added them to the order and waited. In hand I noticed that the packaging mentions Detroit Muscle rather than Auto Mods, so I am no longer sure what line they are in (or how M2 decide what items end up in what line). Either way, another beautiful set of cars and I look forward to even more future releases.

Greenlight Parcels - Self Xmas Present 02

Knowing that I had a couple of parcels headed towards the parcel forwarding company I use in Portland, I decided to have a look around eBay and other online stores in order to play catchup on some items I was after. Eventually some parcels arrived and without wanting to be faced with customs and import taxes for having a very large parcel, I split the shipment and sent four parcels on their way to New Zealand leaving the rest to wait for stragglers and late purchases to arrive.

All these parcels can also be considered Christmas presents to myself, however I have opened them well before "the big day".

Ordered some Greenlights, with all but one items coming from a new supplier as I was rather impatient and couldn't wait for my regular Greenlight supplier to get stock.

Excuse the hands

Checking the Greenlight database, I started making a note of what castings I was missing completely from the collection and when I saw that the seller I was purchasing the Hot Wheels Heritage from had a 2016 Chevrolet Volt listed (for cheap), I jumped at the chance to purchase.
As part of the Black Bandit series, I had been avoiding most of the Black Bandit line because of its nature - black cars, black detailing, black wheels. However in hand, there are details in the Black Bandit line that online images do not show and they look really good.

Very shortly after the release of Series 1, Series 2 made its way onto the internet and had cars I was interested in, including a brand new casting with the 2015 Chevrolet Silverado. With my regular supplier being slow in listing Series 2 I took a chance with a random eBay seller who had everything I was after (and who also had reasonable shipping charges) and also included one of the Series 1 Jeep Wranglers I decided I wanted after I had already purchased Series 1.

Included in the parcel with the All Terrain vehicles was a Hot Pursuit 67 Bronco, which was purchased after checking out the Greenlight database and noticing that Greenlight considers all Broncos the same casting, even if they look different (no roof, no doors etc). In purchasing, the justification was that I don't have any Broncos with a room and doors yet ...

Already looking forward to more Greenlight, the release list for the next 2-3 months is rather full and looks very promising with lots of new models to look forward to.

Hot Wheels Parcels - Self Xmas Present 01

Knowing that I had a couple of parcels headed towards the parcel forwarding company I use in Portland, I decided to have a look around eBay and other online stores in order to play catchup on some items I was after. Eventually some parcels arrived and without wanting to be faced with customs and import taxes for having a very large parcel, I split the shipment and sent four parcels on their way to New Zealand leaving the rest to wait for stragglers and late purchases to arrive.

All these parcels can also be considered Christmas presents to myself, however I have opened them well before "the big day".

Rather than split the shipment into each parcel as ordered, the shipment will be split based on the brand's received in the entire shipment - presenting the Hot Wheels portion of the parcel

With word from the New Zealand supplier I had gotten the rest of my Heritage from that he had run out of full sets and could not supply the Nissan Skyline, I decided to head to eBay and Toy Peddler and eventually purchased a set of six along with an extra Skyline for DCTV, along with another item (to be featured in another blog post). Overall, while it took a bit longer to arrive in New Zealand, the cost was significantly less than purchasing from the local importer. In hand the cars I thought I may part with actually look better than I thought they would and still may have a future in the collection.

In looking for "something extra" I found a seller who had a "reasonably priced" (for a Ferrari) Ferrari Speed Machine I had been wanting to add to my collection. Looking at the sellers other listing, he had one other Speed Machine that I had already but not on USA packaging so it was added to the parcel and finally I decided to add a 100% Black Box collectable to the order.

After a few false starts and delays to the ever growing list of website issues, the HWC team finally decided on a date for the sale of the 55 Gasser, one of the hottest items for the year. As expected the sale turned into a massive [insert swear words here] with the purchase taking over an hour for people to complete. While not a huge Gasser fan, it was an item I was still on the fence about getting, even as I got out of bed to complete the sale but I eventually decided it would be a gap in the collection I would want to fill and getting it on the secondary market would cost an arm and a leg, along with probably a kidney and lung as well...

Older Matchbox

After getting in the last lot of older Matchbox, I was hungry to add more to the collection but had seemed to deplete the stock of cars I wanted from the seller I had been using. After wasting a lot of time searching on Trademe I was able to find some more cars from a seller and after setting up some bids I let the system do its thing and a few days later had some emails advising me I was the winner of all the auctions I had been interested in.

A few days later I had the parcel in hand and these older Matchbox castings once again do not disappoint and I am already looking forward to the next lot...

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!

Greenlight Club V-Dub

At the end of October, I decided to email the supplier of Greenlight in New Zealand to see if they planned to bring any more 1/64 scale Greenlight into the country in time for Christmas as I was planning to make some USA orders and would hold back some items if I knew it would be sold in New Zealand in order to support local businesses. Sadly the only thing they were planning on adding were Club V-Dub, a series released around June 2015 in the USA and I had already imported the one casting I was slightly interested in.

Visiting Toyworld on what has become an almost daily trip, I noticed that they had received some boxes from the Greenlight distributor and after "chatting up" one of the staff members I was able to open up the boxes in order to see if the store manager had ordered some 1/64 scale die cast for me to browse over. Unfortunately, time constraints did not allow me to really dig into the very large boxes that had been sent and so I left empty handed but promise to be back the next day.

And sure enough the next day I was back and headed over to the die cast section where I was greeted with a few new pegs of 1/64 scale cars from Greenlight - the Club V-Dub series.

Thumbing through the cars looking for (but not expecting to find) a Green Machine, I was heavily surprised to actually find a Green Machine on the pegs and for the first time looked at the Green Machine not just as a potential trade source, but also a car I could add to the collection due to the fact it was actually half green coloured and featured a standard base and wheel/tire combination.

Since I was picking up one car, I decided to make that three and added two regular VW's to my small Greenlight purchase. In person these vehicles are a lot more tempting than images online would lead me to believe.

Roll on February or March 2016, as that is the tentative time frame the Greenlight supplier has advised the next shipment will be due in.

Super RAOK

A few weeks back, I caught up with my "good friend from the capital city" in my hometown, since he was down for work. As part of the catchup, he handed me a box with a few Batman Automobilia sets he had gotten for me from his local bookstore. Once the meet was over, the box first went to work and then got chucked in the back of the car and promptly forgotten about. Fast forward several weeks and I decided to get the Batman cars out of the car and while pulling the cars out, came across an extra surprise car, sitting in a protecto pack.

A USA carded, P case release, Hot Wheels Super Treasure Hunt 70 Plymouth Superbird!

Once again, huge thanks go out to my "good friend from the capital city" for supplying me with another awesome Super Treasure Hunt that I wanted to find locally but had next to zero chance with due to the very poor releases of cases in New Zealand over 2015.

PS: The Batman Automobilia sets will soon get their time to shine on the blog.