Our local Friday night auction is set up so that the rare/collectible stuff gets set up and displayed on tables indoors during the week, usually by Thursday, where they can kind of keep an eye on it. Then there's an outside auction that's some tools and power equipment and vehicles and then just rows of box lots of crap that get put out the day of the auction. Most of them usually look pretty much like someone emptied a kitchen junk drawer into them, but occasionally there's beat-up old toys and you can find some treasure trinkets in the boxes. Well, whoever set up today wasn't paying attention. One big box had an old HW case that contained, lo and behold, a bunch of Redlines. The case was the smaller of the ones that looks like a mag wheel. In this case was a goldish Barracuda with pretty beat-up paint, a red Custom Firebird in pretty good condition, a green Custom Firebird in pretty good condtion, a brown Custom Camaro that looked like someone had taken a nail or something pointy to the roof to remove the paint, and another Custom Camaro in better shape, I forget what color. There were also a couple of what I call "thingies", or fantasy cars, which I never learned the names of. A couple were Silhouettes. Also in the box was a BIG overstuffed HW box of orange track with purple connectors, and a Matchbox car case from the 60's... in this case was another Firebird that I think was missing the windshield, a Redline Indy car, a couple of the later Redlines with the newer axles, a couple more fantasy cars, and a chrome Camaro with meatball numbers (I think) and no hood (I think) that someone there said was a cereal promo car. Seemed to be in very nice shape. Also in the Matchbox box were 2 or 3 of these things that I think said Hot Wheels Service Center... they opened like books and a little building or something popped up from the center. They were made of a plastic or vinyl type stuff. One had a Deora in a blister that had been opened but was still hanging on the card/playset/whatever. the Deora was in NICE shape, but was missing the surfboards.

Anyway, I saw this and my knees kinda got weak... I called my wife and cleared the evening to be back for 6:30 when the outside bidding began. WHen I came back a little after 6, there were a few guys around the box, and it seemed every time people moved away, more came to look. Unfortunately, they started the outside bidding at the other end of the lot, and as I drifted back and forth, I saw lots of people digging through... by 7:30, after I had bid on a couple little slot car items at the other end, I went back to look and it seemed that the chrome Camaro was gone. They weren't gonna get to this box for a while, and I decided that enough guys were interested that this would probably go well over $100, and I had set my absolute max bid at a hundred bucks, and who knew what else would "disappear' in the interim... I had stuff to do at home so I left. Man, I'm kinda sick. I'm not a big Redline collector, but assuming all the stuff would have stayed in the box, and guessing at the general descriptions I gave, what might all that stuff have been worth? A quick Fleabay search tells me that a nice Firebird in the right color can go for a hundred bucks by itself...

--rick

Well, I would guess you passed up more than $100 worth of cars... but at the same time, if there was that much interest, would you have gone $1000 or more?