VaultIQ

The Problem

A spreadsheet can tell you what you own. It can't tell you what it's worth, what's missing, or what to do next.

Identification Stalls at the Casting

Most tools stop at "which car is this." The variation — color, wheel, tampo, sub-variation — is where the real value lives, and it's where every spreadsheet gives up.

Asking Prices Aren't Comps

eBay listings and forum chatter get treated as market data because nothing better exists. A guess dressed up as a fact is worse than no number at all.

Scale Breaks Every Hobbyist Tool

Single-piece logic falls apart at 60,000 pieces. Liquidation sequencing, absorption rate, lot-vs-singles strategy — nothing built for a shoebox handles a warehouse.

The Story

It started with 60,000 Matchbox cars and no answers

Steve spent decades building one of the most serious Matchbox collections in the country. For three years he tried to get someone to build a real tool for it. Several developers took a swing. None of them survived contact with 60,000 pieces.

Then one day he casually asked Josh: "Any idea where I'd find an affordable developer to handle my collection?" Wrong question. Right person.

Josh had spent years trying to outsmart a different market — Thinkorswim, options, day trading, buy and hold. Then Steve dropped the line that reframed everything: he'd made more money trading Matchbox than he ever made in the markets.

Diecast isn't a hobby pretending to be a market. It's a market that never had a terminal. So Josh built one.

Steve Tarte

Co-Founder

Decades of hands-on collecting, dealer-scale trading, and a domain-level knowledge of the hobby no spreadsheet ever captured. Steve has made more trading Matchbox than he ever made in the stock market — and he spent three years and several developers trying to get a real tool built for it. VaultIQ exists because he refused to stop asking.

Josh Van Tassel

Co-Founder

In 1993, behind a brand-new 486DX33 with 8 MB of RAM, Josh said out loud: "One day I'll learn to make a living with my computer." Thirty-six years in the Army carried that promise — an FA49 operations research analyst, the specialty that turns messy data into decisions that survive hostile review, including budget fights for the Army National Guard where his Golden Thread methodology grounded every number in doctrine. He's been building applications since MS Access in 1998. VaultIQ runs on the same thread — every value traces back to something real — and it is that promise, kept.

Growing every week. VaultIQ — built by a collector, for collectors.

The Shift

Diecast has never had a serious trading platform. This is it.

The mental model is Thinkorswim for diecast — a platform built for operators who treat a collection as a portfolio, not a shoebox.

VaultIQ powers an intelligence layer behind every screen: it analyzes inventory composition at scale, identifies absorption rates and liquidation sequencing, and surfaces lot-level opportunities — not just single-piece guesses.

The bottom of the car tells more than the sides. That's the whole philosophy. VaultIQ looks where hobbyist tools don't.

How It Works

The identification pipeline

Every piece runs the same four-stage process — a real sequence, not a marketing flourish, because each stage depends on the one before it.

01 / PHOTO SCAN

Capture

Single item or multi-angle scan — the photo always wins over the catalog when both exist.

→

02 / CATALOG MATCH

Identify

Checked against the reference catalog by casting identity, not a reused position number alone.

→

03 / VARIATION RESOLVE

Refine

Color, wheel, tampo, and sub-variation resolved down to the specific production run.

→

04 / CONFIDENCE RATING

Verify

Every value ships with Confirmed, Estimated, or Inferred — never a bare number.

What Sets VaultIQ Apart

Confidence you can trust — every value, every time

No other tool in this hobby distinguishes a real comp from a guess. VaultIQ never lets one pass as the other.

Confirmed

A verified completed sale — a real transaction, not an asking price. This is the only tier a serious operator should treat as ground truth.

Estimated

Inferred from comparable transactions when a direct match doesn't exist. Directional, disclosed, and never confused with Confirmed.

Inferred

Limited data available. Useful for a general sense of direction — and labeled plainly so you know exactly how much to trust it.

You ask: 1968 Superfast #45 Ford Group 6, VG+ (illustrative)
VaultIQ answers: Floor $22 · Ceiling $34 · List $28 · CONFIRMED (4 verified sales, 90 days)

Capabilities

One platform, grounded end to end

Every feature traces back to your actual inventory and real market data — not a language model improvising.

Concierge

Grounded Q&A

"What's my rarest piece?" "What should I sell first?" Real answers, built from your actual collection — reasoning you can follow, not a black box.

Market Scan

Multi-Source

Research active listings and recent sales across multiple sources, on demand, and capture the finds that matter.

Grail Index

Scarcity + Demand

Premium pieces scored on scarcity and demand — know what actually matters before you chase it.

Want List

Gap Engine

Catalog gap analysis maps exactly what your vault is missing. Automated listing alerts ship to founding collectors first.

Exchange

Marketplace

Buy and sell directly, tied to the same intelligence that surfaced the opportunity. Unlimited galleries put serious collections in front of real buyers.

Show

Display Mode

A dedicated display mode for sharing your collection — custom background, custom soundtrack.

Ask VaultIQ

The concierge, in practice

Plain-language questions, answered against your real vault — not a generic AI guess. Every answer traces back to something real.

Illustrative Example

"What's my rarest piece, and what would it cost to replace it?"

VaultIQ checks your vault against Grail Index scarcity scores, then researches current listings and recent sales for the top candidate. The answer names the piece, the confidence level on its value, and what replacing it would actually cost today — not a guess.

Grounded in your inventory + live market research.

"I have $200 to spend this weekend — what should I be hunting for?"

Cross-references your want list, Grail Index scores, and current spreads to surface pieces worth the trip — ranked, not just listed.

Same grounding. Every answer traces back to something real.

Built for Scale

Dealer-scale, from your first piece

This is a dealer-scale operation from the ground up — 60,000 Matchbox pieces and counting. The questions change once the scale does. VaultIQ changes with them.

Casual Collector Question	Dealer-Scale Question
"Is this piece worth buying?"	"What's the market absorption rate for this series?"
"What should I sell?"	"What's the liquidation sequence that maximizes total return?"
"Is this a good deal?"	"Which 500 pieces warrant individual grading vs. bulk lot?"
"What's my collection worth?"	"What's the realistic liquidation value vs. asking-price fantasy?"
"Should I flip this?"	"Which segments move fast vs. which need patient placement?"

What You're Using Now

The tools you've already outgrown

The Spreadsheet

Counts what you own. Silent on value, silent on what's missing, silent on what to do next. At scale it isn't a tool, it's a filing cabinet.

The Price Guide

A number frozen the day it was printed, with no condition context and no connection to your actual piece. The market moved. The book didn't.

The Scanner App

Generic image recognition with no catalog behind it. Reads the text on the base, guesses the rest, and shows a $2 car at $50. A wrong number delivered confidently is the most expensive kind.

Variation-level identification validated against a real catalog, confidence-rated values from verified sales, and intelligence that scales from one piece to sixty thousand.

Before You Ask

What VaultIQ isn't

Is this a price guide?

No. Price guides give you a number with no context. VaultIQ gives you intelligence — a confidence-rated value plus the reasoning behind it, tied to your actual collection and current market conditions.

Is this a chatbot?

No. VaultIQ's AI layer is grounded — every answer traces back to your real inventory and real market data. It's an intelligence layer, not a help desk that improvises.

Is this a social platform?

Not the point of it. Galleries, likes, and follows exist so real buyers can find real sellers and serious collections get seen — credibility infrastructure, not an engagement feed. No algorithm optimizing for time-on-app, no vanity metrics for their own sake.

Is this just for hobbyists?

It works from your first piece, but it's built for scale. Serious operators deserve serious infrastructure — VaultIQ doesn't downgrade its logic for a smaller collection.

Does it cover Hot Wheels?

Not yet. VaultIQ was built and proven against 60,000 Matchbox pieces, so Matchbox comes first: variation-level coverage, Regular Wheels through modern. Hot Wheels and other brands are next on the roadmap, and founding collectors help set the order. One brand done right beats ten done shallow.

Will I lose my vault if I stop paying?

No. Your vault is yours forever. Your data stays in your account whether you're actively using it, on a paid plan, or if you step away from collecting entirely. We're a platform, not a hostage-taker.

Start free.
1,000 credits. No card.

Try everything. Scan your cars. Identify variations. Talk to the Concierge. Explore the platform at full power. After your credits run out, if you need more, paid plans start at $8.99/month. Or pause collecting—your vault stays safe and free. Your data stays yours, always.

✓ Your vault is free for life

✓ Your data stays yours forever

✓ No contracts, cancel anytime

Start Free Now

Pricing

Choose your plan

VaultIQ was built and proven against 60,000 Matchbox pieces, so you're joining a founding collector community that's already using this. Choose the plan that matches your pace.

Free

$0/mo

1,000 onboarding credits

Try all features with your free credits. Scan your cars, identify variations, explore the platform. No card required. Unlimited vault storage.

Start Free

Hobbyist

$8.99/mo

1,000 credits/mo

Vault, scan, rack, tray, and basic search. The full inventory core for a growing collection.

Get Hobbyist

Only the balance sheet matters. Start yours.

Start free with 1,000 credits and scan your first piece in minutes. Your vault is yours forever.