Hot Wheels Super Collector Donates 'Holy Grails' to Petersen Automotive Museum
Bruce Pascal has one of the world's largest and most rare Hot Wheels collections. He's met with former Mattel employees and executives, gaining access to one-of-a-kind treasures from private collections and old office files.
He also owns the Hot Wheels "holy grail," a pink Volkswagen Beach Bomb prototype - only one of two known to exist.
However, with more than 8,000 items in his collection, he wanted to enter the next phase of his 25-year collecting journey.
In July, he made several donations to the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles so they could be in the museum's archives. The Petersen Museum is considered one of the world's great institutions for automotive history and car displays.
"The next stage of Hot Wheels collectibles is having museum-worthy items in a museum," Pascal told SI. "I can sleep at night knowing that one of the greatest automotive museums in America has one of the greatest Hot Wheel collections in its archives."
Among the donations was a blueprint for the mold to make one of the first Hot Wheels cars in 1968, Italian and German cars from the late 1960s in their original packages, and one example of every casting produced in 1968 and 1969 - Hot Wheels' first two years.
The most important donation, which Pascal describes as another "holy grail," was an unpainted Rear Load Beach Bomb prototype, which was documented to be the first one off the assembly line in 1969. It is the early model for Pascal's ultra rare pink version.
Pascal has his own Hot Wheels Museum, located in a warehouse in Gaithersburg, MD, which he opens to the public so children and families can enjoy the toy cars. But he felt the donated items would be better served in the Petersen Museum.
Pascal plans to make more donations in the future, even as difficult as it is for him - a collector's collector - to say bye to some of his most treasured items.
"It was painful taking them out of their displays and wrapping them up - you're saying goodbye to your children, but it's for a better cause," Pascal told SI. "But once I was at the museum, I was excited. I have no seller's remorse, even though I sold them for zero," Pascal joked.
HORACIO RUIZ