My Hot Wheels Redline Alive 55 Lemon Yellow Chevy Nomad

For over two years I had this Hot Wheel on my Ebay queue. But I never had the chutzpah to make an offer I thought the seller would accept. In that two years I probably only saw a handful even close to it sell. For some reason I really wanted this one.

When I was in single digits my friend Brad down the street had the best Hot Wheels collection on any kid in town. We didn't so much play with his Hot Wheels as we gave audience to them. Sure, me and my brother had many Hot Wheels, but we had a nasty habit of actually playing with them. And they often met tragic ends. Many an avalanche of boulders claimed one of our even most prized Hot Wheels.

Because they were only a dollar. Less than a dollar. You got them on your birthday. You always got one for gift exchange at school. They weren't considered special or something to be treasured. They were toys to be played with.

Little did I know somewhere out there were many kids like Brad who thought differently about their Hot Wheels. I thank them now for being such good curators of these cultural artifacts.

The first day we got our baseball mitts my brother and I were out the door and didn't have much time for any toys after that. But a few years ago I just had this desire to start collecting redline Hot Wheels.

Lemon yellow Hot Wheels Alive 55 redline

All Alive 55's were made in Hong Kong. 

Auguest 12, 2026 update: This was the last Hot wheel I sold on Ebay when I let go of the collection. 

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NATAS: The Reflection On Thriller Video

Sort of a bummer of a night compared to expectations. Duke winning another NCAA championship is like the jockos winning in every 80's movie. Then I was slightly disappointed in the season finale of Better Call Saul. To make things worse, I lost out on an Ebay auction for the only copy of Thriller Video The Human Duplicators I've seen available in over a year. I actually came in just two seconds too early because I thought $105 would be enough to buy a VHS tape of a movie no one has ever seen or cared about. It wasn't. But it's not much fun even if you do win one of those auctions when you have to pay top of the line prices. Most of the fun of assembling my Thriller Video collection is the hunt, and I know I'll see this tape again, and probably not have to pay $105. Anyway, as soon as I lost that auction I had a feeling if I looked immediately I would find a previously unseen Thriller Video for sale. And I did. I found a copy of NATAS: The Reflection, a Thriller Video I haven't seen up for auction at all in the year I've been looking. The seller's pictures and description were vague, but it was only $18, and I knew if I didn't press the buy it now button immediately I'd regret it. So I took a chance at $18 without any real pictures or description that this could be a solid copy of...

Natas: The Reflection

It's one of two of the 24 Thriller Videos hosted by Elvira that don't have her prominently featured on the cover. The other one, ironically, is...

The Human Duplicators

So, maybe in a week or so when I get NATAS: The Reflection, I'll be pleasantly surprised that I scooped up one of the rarest Thriller Videos for a great price, but I don't expect that. Either way, I can use it as a placeholder until I get a stellar copy. Eventually, my ridiculous plan to collect all 24 Thriller Videos in both Beta and VHS will come to fruition, then I'll have to come up with some other idiotic way to waste my money and time. 

I'll post a picture of NATAS: The Reflection when I get it. 

Thriller Video ad circa 1985

April 23, 2015: It turns out the tape was a later release by Avid Video. Completely worthless, but in very nice condition. Mostly because no one has ever actually watched this movie. The hunt continues.

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New Items That Match Your Interest In The Mont Blanc Meisterstuck Pen, Burgundy

Every afternoon I get an email from Ebay alerting me to new items that match my interest to previous items I have been interested in, including, but not limited to: Hot Wheels, Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks, transportation tokens, aspirin tins, poetry books, Spiderman comics, The Monster Club, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, Zombiethon, Shock Waves, silver, copper, and nickel bullion, and Mont Blanc pens. 

It's good to have interests in life. Hobbies. Collections.

I used to do Sears delivery, and was inside several peoples' homes every day for a few years, and I was astounded by how little people had that distinguished them from the next person. Now you could say I didn't really see where they kept their most private possessions and items they didn't want anyone else to see, but I saw enough to get the sense there wasn't much else going on besides what I saw out in the open. I was behind and underneath and in enough unusual places to know I'd seen enough to get an idea who lived here and what they considered important. 

I never saw journals or collections or studies brimming with books and personal mementos gathered during a lifetime of travel, experience, and contemplation. 

Mostly I just saw a VHS copy of the movie Independence Day. I'd have to say that movie was the most common item in all those years. Every house seemed to have it, and someone appeared to have watched it recently.

I like that Ebay shows a daily concern about the collections I curate and wants me to complete some of my ridiculous collections sometime in the coming
century.

Perhaps the thing I lost that was most painful to me was my burgundy Mont Blanc meisterstuck pen. I had bought it in the late 90's at Office Max for $119 and adored it's balance and the smooth, equal amount of ink the ballpoint cartridge exuded. Perfect. And beautiful. I had to Ebay mine when I moved into this apartment because I had lost everything. I needed money for food and to get the utilities turned on. The saddest thing about my life was I had nothing left of value. Except plasma. I got a very fair amount for the pen. More than I had paid for it, in fact, as the meisterstuck now costs almost three times as much to buy new. I suppose my circumstances are that I could buy one right now online, but this one was bought to reward myself for publishing my second book of poetry, and even though they all look the same, that one was mine. 

I'll buy another one, eventually. And perhaps I'll live long enough for that one to replace the memory of the other. These things happen. Lessons that things are just things. Or perhaps the opposite lesson: that things are damn important and should be cherished. 

September 12, 2026 update: I indeed did find myself buying another Meisterstuck pen, then subsequently selling that, too, along with most of my collectibles in what has become a sort of lesson in the impermanence of things, including myself. But at least this may be the last time I have to ever look up the spelling of the word "Meisterstuck".

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