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.
The Founders
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.
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 followed — 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.
Why Matchbox First
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, and founding collectors help decide the order. One brand done right beats ten done shallow.
Get In Touch
Questions, corrections, or something that looks wrong or missing — tell us. We need your eyes on this.
support@vaultiqhq.com · josh@vaultiqhq.com · steve@vaultiqhq.com
Built in six months. Growing every week. VaultIQ — built by a collector, for collectors.