by: Scott Bianchi

I wrote and article about two months ago on the popularity of Hot Wheels. I did it because I found some sites to feature on my hobbies page and I had not realized how popular the toys were to collect. Do not let the title of this article fool you, I am not modifying my previous article. Out of the approximately thirty articles I have written in the past months the article about Hot Wheels was my most popular. I decided to look more into this hobby.

Part of my research consisted of trying to contact some webmasters focusing on Hot Wheels. I spoke with the owner of www.z-mods.com. I tried to find out what it is about these toys that drew such a following. The owner's name is Steve Zalimas. He has been playing with and collecting these cars since he was little. He does not recall what drew him to it. He did not even know other people collected them until the last ten years or so.

What Steve did share with me is the not only are the original Hot Wheels worth money but he makes most of his money off of his modified cars, hence the title of this article. Steve said he has been modifying these cars for a few years now. The modifications consist of things as simple as changing wheels to a more rare set of wheels, unique paint jobs, turning hard top cars into convertibles and more. No car he modifies is the same. He cannot remember all the different combinations he has done over the years but estimates they are in the dozens.

Steve also indicated that he has built a nice list of repeat customers over the years as well. "This is not a high production business by any means. You are working with very small cars and some of the detail work involved to produce a high quality car is time consuming and requires a lot of patience." This was a quote offered by Steve in one of our e-mails back and forth. He also told me that he will even do a car based on a customer's specifications on a rare occasion. Steve spends most of his time on the collecting of the cars because the rare cars are just not plentiful enough to supply his modification side of things. He did ask me to pass along a message, which I will gladly do because he gave me the courtesy of helping me in researching this article, that if you do not see a car on his site for sale to contact him. They sell off faster than he can produce them so he may be working on the exact modification you are looking for.

Steve does this as a hobby and for relaxation mostly. He is not in it for the money so he couldn't give me an estimate on how much he has made over the years with his modifications. He said he doesn't always sell them for money either, sometimes he will trade a modified car for a car he has been needing for his personal collection. It is obvious that this hobby is hotter than I ever expected.