Dang, I hate to hear about the Hot Wheels! I traded most of mine for marbles. When I was a kid, I was on a trip to my grandparent's house. While we were there, my mother found her marbles from childhood and gave them to me. She gave them to me not expecting much, but she told me they were old and special, etc... etc... and so I saved them. We then moved from the city to the country and the kids in my neighborhood played marbles, which I had never done before. I was good. It wasn't long before I had amassed a pretty good collection. I kept mom's separate though and she saw my interest and got me an early Everett Grist book about old marbles. It mostly had handmades in it and didn't give much value to machine mades, but I started collecting. I found a fractured frog sulphide at an antique store in town for $2.00 (the book showed it could be worth hundreds!!) and the hunt was on! I've been hooked ever since and the fractured frog sulphide is still in my collection. I took a haitus for several years but always kept the interest. I did a lot of arrowhead hunting and metal detecting but I came back to marbles a few years ago and have been hard at it ever since.