LOL! I think the circle was still so small that no one really knew what was out there back in those days. I had two of those McClaren's. One I sold one to my friend Ceij who runs GranToros.com (pic below).... the other pic is me back in the day receiving a check for $5,500 for that little white camaro. It was put in some newspaper somewhere. They said there were only half a dozen of those white camaros in existance according to Strauss (which contrary to what people think, wasn't the god of all HW collectors and his guide was full of bogus info) - like the white camaro - which I know was bogus because at one given time, I had three of them. Hard for me to buy I had 3 and there were only 9 others out there. I don't even know if to this day he has accepted the pink rear loader BB being authentic - only because he doesn't have it, otherwise I bet it'd have been authentic in an instant!apexspeed wrote:I had one of the infamous orange enamel McLarens still in the package (that supposedly didn't exist). That was the rarest piece I ever had or sold, and that was a $1000 car.
I got out of that hobby because counterfeits were getting harder and harder to tell from the real thing and I wasn't going to plunk down $1-5K on cars without documentation and a trail back to the original owner, etc.. BrightVision started coming out with their rear loader BB that looked so much like the real thing that Mattel used their design. And other people had the spectraflame paint down pat. That's when I knew it was time to sell out, so did a few other of the big spenders. So, that year I went to Anaheim for my last convention, rented a suite and had a private gathering of the 'heavyweight' collectors over and sold off the majority of my collection in two days. I had to make half a dozen trips to the bank to deposit every time we'd reach $10-15K. It was hilarious looking back - a small group of grown men in a clandestine invitation only gathering in my suite negotiating exclusive deals with these little toys like they were diamonds and trying to keep everything hush hush... LOL! I could write a book!
