The Great Super Treasure Hunt Experiment of 2014: My most rural find yet…

There has been a Hot Wheels Wagon Super that has been getting just a bit of hype lately, well before its release.  Honestly we don’t know if we have seen a higher amount of anticipation about a Super TH than what the Datsun 510 Wagon Super is getting.

Lost in all that, however, is the too-cool fact that there are two (TWO!!) Wagon Super Treasure Hunts in the 2014 line.  That fact alone makes the 2014 lineup of Supers one of the best yet.  Off-hand, we can think of three wagon Supers previous (Morris Wagon, Chevy Delivery, and Chevelle), so two this year is awesome.

And while we all watch the prices of the Datsun Wagon fly high, and as we watch the frenzy that will be Kdays in September, let us all pause and give some love to the other wagon, the ’64 Chevy Nova Station Wagon.  There have been a lot of good-looking Supers this year, and this is surely one of them.  Yes, flames are kind of the universal symbol of Hot Wheels over-decorating their models, but there is a way to do it right, and this is surely a great example.  The brown works so well, and the flames are simple.  Definitely the less-is-more approach to flames.  And the perfect choice for wheels is the steelies.

We have an example here for our Lamley features, but the Nova Wagon was definitely a Super I wanted to find on the pegs, especially as part of my attempt to find all 15 Super TH’s on the pegs during random daytime visits to stores.  The batch came and went at Walmarts and Targets, so smaller stores would be the best place to find one.

And it finally happened.

For me, while finding a Super is always thrilling, finding one at an unlikely location is even better.  I have found them at grocery stores, rural Walmarts, a gas station, and even by my neighbor on her first visit to the pegs (imagine when she texted me a photo of the Toyota 2000GT Super asking if that was the model I was looking for).

Today’s story may be the best location-wise, because I found it in the most rural of rural areas.  I have mentioned several times that my work takes me all over a huge chunk of the state of Utah, from essentially Salt Lake south.  All the way to the southwest corner in St George, just north of Las Vegas, as well as southeast to Moab and the Four Corners.  This Super find happened in the town of Blanding, Utah.  You can look it up.  It is 70 miles south of Moab, and north of the Four Corners area.  It is a small town.  And like a lot of small towns, it has an Alco:

I don’t know too much about Alco stores, but they seem to be small general stores, and only in small towns.  Here is the view from the parking lot:

I have been to this Alco in my travels before, because they do have a small toy section, and I have always wanted to find a Super at a store like this.  A collector I have run into near my home mentioned he had found a Super at this exact store several months ago while he was traveling, so I have held out hope.

At about 5 pm I had just finished a meeting with a client when I hopped in the car to start the 4-hour drive home.  On a whim, I decided to give the Alco a quick look, considering I am not down this way that often.  So a quick stop I made.

I arrived at the pegs, and they looked well picked-over (I took this photo after my find, but you get a sense of what the pegs looked like):

The cards were sporadically placed, suggesting employees were spreading the models out as more models were purchased.  The Snoopy suggested that while these pegs had been passed through many times, maybe no collector in the know had gotten to them.  So I perused.

Only a few pegs had more than 2-3 models on them, including that lower one in the middle.  From the left I noticed the rear model was a Nova Wagon that seemed a darker shade of brown, and a walk around to the right verified my hunch:

Yep, those are flames on that hood.

Finally, the Super I have really been hoping to find, and in a location I have really wanted to have some success.  It didn’t make this exhaustive one-day trip worth it, but it did make it more tolerable.

My makeshift Alco checkout counter photo studio:

Isn’t she pretty?  I am very happy to have this one.

So, the update on my Super TH attempt:

Chevrolet SS – Found at a rural Walmart at 11:30 am
Sand Blaster – Found at a nearby Walmart around 4:30 pm
Camaro Special Edition – Found at neighboring town Walmart around 3 pm
’71 Mustang Mach 1 – Found on a Saturday afternoon grocery run at Harmon’s Market (I found two)
’07 Mustang – no luck
’55 Chevy Bel Air Gasser – no luck
’70 Chevelle SS – Found at two different Walmarts on the same day (one at 10 am, one at 5 pm)
Twin Mill – Found at a rural Walmart at about 3:45 pm
’64 Chevy Nova Wagon – Found at 5 pm at a rural Alco
’83 Silverado – Found at Target at 1 pm
’76 Greenwood Corvette – no luck
’69 Corvette – no luck