Back in the late 1990's, I bought, sold and traded Matchbox at a toy show at the VFW in West Hempstead, Long Island. At that time I was concentrating on Superfast because Battle Kings were too hard to find and collect.

During one show, at which I had a table, a gentleman walked up to me and asked, "Do you buy Matchbox?" I replied, "Of course I do, what do you have?" He proceeded to open a giant 72 car carry case from 1970 and showed me the goodies inside. It was fully loaded with beautiful Transitional Superfast in mint condition and included their boxes!

I knew instantaneously that I wanted all of them so I asked, "How much do you want for everything?" He had no clue so he said, "What can you offer?" They were worth on average $20 each so I said, "I can pay you $720". With shock in his eyes he exclaimed, "Really?" I told him, "I figure $10 each is a fair price since they appear to be $20 cars in great shape." He thought to himself for a minute and then said, "Let me walk around the show to see if anybody else is interested." I explained, "Nobody here is going to beat my bid and nobody here has $720 in cash." He walked around the show and after five minutes he returned and said, "You're right, sold to you."

I handed him $720 and he gave me the case with the cars and boxes. We were both very happy! He received much more money than he expected and I obtained so many gorgeous pieces. I immediately began to go through my new babies to see what variations there were and which I needed for my personal collection. I came across a $250 SF#64-A MG1100 in green and I was quite excited. That was just a warm up for my next surprise.

There was a red SF#22-A Pontiac Grand Prix. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was a rare piece because the usual Superfast color was purple. I had no idea of the value so I whipped out my price guide. My eyes must have bulged out of their sockets when I read, "$1500-2000." I wanted to scream, "JACKPOT!!!" I brought the car over to Neil of Neil's Wheels to get his professional opinion. After thoroughly inspecting it inside and out for ten minutes, he said, "Lou, the rivets look clean and the piece is mint - congratulations."

The reason the red Pontiac is so valuable makes for another interesting story. Back in 1968, the main competitor for Matchbox was Mattel's Hot Wheels. In 1969, Matchbox replaced their Regular wheeled vehicles with Superfast wheeled versions to keep pace with Hot Wheels. They would also change the body color of the car during this transition phase. At the Lesney factory in England, some workers took Regular wheel bodies and attached Superfast wheels to them. They would sneak these valuable variations out of the factory hidden inside their lunch boxes. These impossible body color and wheel combinations came to be known as "Lunch Box Models".

Just think ..... all that gentleman had to do was buy a price guide from Neil's Wheels table for $20 and he would have received a lot more than $720 for his collection. A similar red Pontiac sold for over $6,000 at a Vectis USA auction on 07/24/2004.