Hot Wheels Announces Its “NFT Garage” Digital Collectibles

While most virtual and cryptocurrencies are still not understood by the general public, it’s not stopping its popularity among the financially bold. The latest hotbed of activity is the NFT—it stands for “non-fungible token,” which is to say a discrete, serialized digital item—and Hot Wheels is entering the fray with its Hot Wheels NFT Garage. In addition to being salable for crypto and fiat currencies, certain rarer NFTs will include a redemption for a physical collectible.

Per Hot Wheels’ Twitter post, the Hot Wheels NFT Garage works like a virtual mystery pack of the collectible cars. You can purchase a pack of four or ten, with individual Hot Wheels cars available in four levels of rarity: Base, Rare, Premium, and NFTH, the latter of which is a digital play on the toy car line’s usual physical Treasure Hunt models. Base cards have about a 74 percent chance of turning up, while there’s less than a five percent chance of snagging a Premium NFT in your pack. The lowest odds are of course reserved for the NFTH Treasure Hunt, which is an NFT version of Bone Shaker, at less than one percent. If you manage to snag a Premium or NFTH, you’ll also get a (surely valuable) physical version of the toy car. Each NFT will be pre-minted before going into the digital packs, which means every one contains random mint—or serial—numbers. Generally, the lower that number, the more valuable the NFT.

You will also be able to trade and sell them with other NFT and Hot Wheels enthusiasts through the WAX blockchain using the WAX cryptocurrency. While cryptocurrencies can be bad for the environment thanks to high amounts of power usage, WAX claims to be carbon neutral. This form of crypto claims to work with ClimateCare to offset its carbon footprint by investing in green technology for carbon credits. From reading about how its works, it doesn’t seem to use any less power than any other energy efficient cryptocurrencies. Instead, it invests in the technology that gets the world away from carbon-producing power production and that earns itself a carbon credit.

The Standard four-pack of NFTs will run $15, while the Deluxe 10 pack will cost $35. Hot Wheels and WAX plan to offer 12,150 Standard and just 4,850 Deluxe packs, and while the full lineup of available models remains unknown. The Hot Wheels NFT Garage launches on November 16, 2021 with these Series One packs, and buyers will be limited to 2 packs of each type per transaction. If you’re interested, you can read some more here and make sure you have a WAX wallet and your credit card at the ready—in the NFT world, popular pop culture tie-ins tend to sell out fast.