For the seller

Selling a diecast collection

A diecast toy car in hand

Diecast is collected in two different ways at once: the early castings from the sixties and seventies are hunted as serious vintage, and everything since is collected by line, by casting and by variation. A large collection usually holds both. What decides interest is the era, the exact casting, whether it is still in its packaging, and how it was kept.

Hot Wheels and Matchbox collections grow larger than almost any other kind; a thousand cars in one room is not unusual. That size is exactly why selling one car at a time defeats most people, and why these collections so often come to us whole.

What collectors look for

The early castings. The first Hot Wheels years, with their distinctive polished paint and red-striped wheels, and the early Matchbox ranges before and around the switch to faster wheels, are the serious vintage end of the field. Colour and casting variations within them can matter enormously.

Packaging. A car still in its unopened blister pack or original box is a different object from the same car loose. Never open one, and never cut a card to save space.

Condition and originality. Played-with is the normal state and collectors know it. What they check: paint, wheels, and whether the car was taken apart and restored. Repainted and rebuilt cars are their own corner of the hobby, but they must be sold as what they are.

The larger scales. Model cars in the bigger scales, the detailed dealer models and the boxed classics, are collected by marque and maker, and their boxes and paperwork belong with them.

Before you sell

  • Do not polish, repaint or straighten anything.
  • Do not open blisters or boxes, however crushed the card.
  • Keep cases, boxes and paperwork together, and keep the collection together: the rare castings are what make the rest a collection.
  • Photograph the drawers and shelves as they stand. With collections this size, the overview photographs matter more than close-ups of every car.

The size problem, honestly

A thousand loose cars sold one by one is years of listing, and most of them will never justify their own postage. Sold in unsorted bulk, the rare castings go for nothing among the rest. A whole collection to one buyer who looks at everything is the middle road: the serious pieces are seen, the ordinary ones go along, and it is done in one go.

How we handle diecast collections

We buy them whole, blisters and loose, vintage and modern, anywhere in the world; a collection this heavy is one we prefer to come to and pack ourselves. The story of how it was built, the flea markets, the one car found in a cereal box, is recorded and stays with the collection, with the collector's name. Everything is sold on as the collector's pieces they are. See also are old toys worth anything, and Pass it on for how it works.

Short answers

Are old Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars worth anything?

The early castings and unopened packaging are seriously collected; played-with modern cars much less so. The base of the car tells you the casting and year, and that decides it.

Should I sort a huge collection before offering it?

No. Photograph it as it stands and tell us roughly how many. Sorting is our work, not yours.

Do you buy single cars?

No, only collections: roughly twenty objects and up, or fewer if they are exceptional.

Why we keep the story

A collection is not a pile of objects.

It is years of somebody deciding what was worth keeping, and sold off piece by piece that is the first thing to go. So before anything is sold, we sit down with you and record it: how it started, what the best of it was, the piece that got away. That story stays on every object with the collector's name, and goes with it to whoever keeps it next. You get a page where you can see where each piece ended up.

Three ways the story gets recorded

On camera, where it lives. We travel to the collection and film it properly: you talking about how it started, the room and the shelves as they are, the objects in your hands. Wherever in the world the collection happens to be.

On a call. If the collection is sent to us rather than collected, we have the same conversation over a video call and write it up, with one photograph of the shelf as it stood.

In writing. If you would rather not talk at all, answer a handful of questions in your own time and in your own words. It goes on the objects exactly as you wrote it.

It never changes anything else, and you can always say no to it. Some conversations run ten minutes, some an afternoon. Read the collections we have taken on

If it is a whole collection

We buy whole collections, not single pieces: one person takes all of it, and the story is kept with every object. Tell us what you have and a person replies within two days.

How passing it on works, in full

1The collection
What is in it
Pick everything that applies. Something else opens a line to tell us.
Roughly how many pieces
A guess is fine. Nobody has counted.
How would you describe it
There is no wrong answer here, and a lot of ordinary is a normal collection.
One or two sentences. This is the question we care about most.
2Where it is, and how it could reach us
Town and country is enough.
How could it reach us
Unseend is in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Sending and bringing are as welcome as a visit; if it is sent, we pay the freight and insure it.
When does it need to be gone
No hurry is a good answer. It lets us plan a visit properly.
3Condition and photographs
In your own words. Broken, incomplete or untested is fine and is normal; it only needs saying.
Photographs
Three to ten photographs The room and the shelves as they stand. Phone photographs are fine, and a slow walk round on video says more than any of them.Send them to hello@unseend.com
Or attach them to the reply that comes back within two days. Any of them works, and nothing is looked at until a person reads it. Do not clean up first — the shelves as they stand tell us more than a tidy arrangement.
4The number, and the story
A number or a range, whatever you have in mind. You will get an honest answer either way.
Would you tell the story of it
Filmed at the collection wherever it is, on a video call, or written in your own time. It never changes the price.
5How to reach you
The reply comes here, from a person, within two days.
Only if you would rather be called.

Answered within two days, by the person who would come, and by email at every step after that. Nothing you send is shared with anyone, and your photographs are deleted if we do not go ahead.

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