I saw a few of these at TRU as well. It was $22 at my TRU. Not sure if its worth anything though.. :confusedmec011 said:
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Absolutely correct FGT, I do have one of these 2004 GTO Chase Cars.FordGT said:
RC2, RCE, Ertl - whatever you want to call them - has been doing these chase cars for a while now. The early chase cars were a polished bare metal finish, meaning no paint at all. I think they put a mild clear coat over the bare metal. A couple years into the whole chase car thing, Ertl started doing the chase cars in what was called "black chrome". It was a reflective shadow grey coat applied to the car - not bare metal anymore - covered in a clear coat. The "black chrome" cars had a high gloss and looked pretty sharp.
I haven't seen as many chase cars being done today, in fact, the 2004 GTO is the first one I've seen in a while. Other limited edition companies like Supercars & PYE will usually have a few gold plated or black chrome cars tacked on to the end of an order they commissioned Ertl to do, but these aren't usually referred to as chase cars. These are truly rare collectors items. Many of Supercars gold plated cars are 1 of 6 or 1 of 12, usually going for well over $600-$700 at auction.
The 2004 GTO returns to the original chase car style in that its finish is bare metal. These are limited to 1 of 500 and I've read reports that of these 500, the interior colors are randomly different. My GTO chase car has a red interior, but I've also read about some with a purple interior. Not sure which, if either, is the more predominant color used in the chase car. Could be 250 have a red interior & the other 250 have a purple interior????
As far as value goes, the chase car market has really dropped in the past couple years. When these first hit the market, they easily got $100 if not well over that mark. The only chase car to break the $100 mark in the past year - that I'm aware of - was the 1970 Plymouth Superbird. These went consistently for $150. Nowadays, it seems the "average" for the chase cars is around the $50 mark if not less. I just did a search on eBay and found 2 of the chase cars - one at $30.55 and the other with a Buy It Now of $59.95, but no bites.
One thing that could be hurting the value of the GTO chase car is that it really closely resembles the Quicksilver regular release. In fact, when I went back to the shop where I bought my chase car from, I almost walked out with the Quicksilver version versus the actual chase car. The packaging is identical and even though the chase car is bare metal, it looks very close to the Quicksilver version. The easiest identifying marker to look for is the "Mint Edition Chase Car" sticker in the upper right hand side of the window box. If the GTO you're looking at doesn't have this sticker, chances are its not the chase car. And considering I've read multiple reports of collectors finding more than one "chase car" at their local Toys R Us or other places, I suspect they're actually finding the regular release Quicksilver GTO. I find it hard to believe that all 500 of the chase cars were shipped to a handful of Toys R Us stores up & down the east coast.
As far as taking it out of the packaging, naturally a true "Mint in Box" "Never Removed" is going to hold slightly more value than if you take it out of the box. I don't know that these chase cars will ever hold that much value though, so I decided to enjoy mine and put it on display with my other cars. But the choice to do so is up to the collector. If I ever decided to sell mine, I'm confident I'd at least get back what I put into it.
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