Hot  Wheels collectors find new club in Bonita

By Mark S. Krzos
mkrzos@news-press.com
Originally posted on June 26, 2006

You won't find a bunch of 40, 50 and 60 year-olds going "Vroom, vroom" when handling Hot Wheels.

Instead, you'll most likely see them trading, bartering or buying the latest Hot Wheels car or fighting over a rare piece.

On Saturday, July 15, the Hot Wheels Collectors of Southwest Florida will meet to buy, sell or trade the little toy cars.

"We saw that there was a lot of interest in them," said John Glavach, 64, of Naples. "We'd meet a lot of people at K-Mart Days and thought about starting our own group."

K-Mart Days is when the makers of Hot Wheels offer special gift packages of the cars at reduced prices.

So Glavach, his wife Sharon, and Ken and Donna Green of Lehigh Acres decided to start their club.

"We hold all our meetings in Bonita Springs," said Donna Green, 56. "We started it about three months ago and we had about 15-20 people at our last meeting. There's collectors from Punta Gorda south to Naples."

With so much interest in collecting toy cars, you'd almost expect the Greens and the Glavaches to be long-time Hot Wheels enthusiasts.

Not so.

"We started collecting in 1996," said Donna Green, 56, estimating that the couple has amassed more than 3,000 cars in the past 10 years. "My husband used to have them when he was young and just got back into them again."

The Glavaches started around the same time.

"My daughter and her husband got us into it," said Glavach. "We probably have about 5,000 of them."

Collectors like Green say the reason grown-up are into Hot Wheels is because of the potential values of some of the cars.

"If you had a bunch of them when you were a kid, they're probably worth a lot of money today," Green said. "I probably have a few that are in the $300-$500 range. The values change every year."

For more information about the Hot Wheels Collectors of Southwest Florida, go to http://www.swflorida-hwc.com