A New Business at Age 67

Rochester store owner started his Treasure Hunt in 2024: ‘Every day is like Christmas,’ he says

By Mike Costanza

 

Surrounded by slot cars, vintage toys, plastic model kits and other collectibles, Lou Lanceri talked like a man who’s living out a dream.

“When you buy and sell toys all day, every day is like Christmas,” said the 69-year-old founder and owner of Treasure Hunt. The store, which is on Rochester’s Lyell Avenue, is a haven for toy collectors and the young at heart.

Lanceri opened his business in December of 2024 at age 67.

Treasure Hunt is packed with more than 5,000 items, including prototype, vintage and modern slot cars and die-cast models of cars that are so detailed that you can see the fake wiring under their hoods. The store also offers toy 18-wheel trucks that bear the logos of local firms like Kodak and AC Delco, model trains and vintage plastic airplane and automobile kits. Barbie dolls sit in their original boxes ready for sale, a WW II-era Supermarine Spitfire fighter plane model kit sits on a shelf and a Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots toy stands in a corner, its plastic pugilists poised to throw punches. The Marx toy company first offered Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots in 1964.

Though Lanceri spoke of Treasure Hunt’s offerings with the knowledge of someone who loves the stuff, he seemed to particularly like talking about the four-wheeled toys. Pulling out a case of HO scale slot cars, he pointed out that the miniature racing cars began life as prototypes that toy manufacturers created to attract that retailers’ buyers.

“For every car [manufacturers] sell, they mock up 20,” he said.

The buyers select which cars might sell the best and the manufacturers produce them. The final products have chassis, electric motors, rubber wheels and bodies made of plastic or some other lightweight material. Each of them can course along a toy racetrack at high speed, its motor powered by juice flowing through the track. A guide that’s inserted in the track’s slot keeps the car from flying off of the miniature roadway—hence the name “slot car.” The car’s “driver” uses an electronic controller to determine its speed.

Some of the smallest slot cars are made to 1/64 scale, meaning that one inch of the toy represents 64 inches of the real vehicle it replicates or could replicate. Despite their small size, they can reach 60 miles per hour on drag racing tracks or multi-lane racetracks.

“You can barely see them go around, they’re so fast,” Lanceri said.

Slot car collectors can pay well for prototypes that never make it to market. According to Lanceri, a prototype that was designed to look like a real Benneton Formula 1 race car recently sold for $1,000. Rare production models and custom-made slot cars can also bring top prices. The TYCO toy company made many of the slot cars that were sold in the US until the Mattel company absorbed it, but those made by the now-defunct Aurora Plastics Corp. are now much more in demand.

Some of Lanceri’s rolling stock was never made for the track. Opening up a Styrofoam shipping case, he pulls out a powder blue die-cast metal model of a 1957 Ford Fairlane 500 Skyliner. True to the luxury auto that Ford once offered, the gleaming replica has a hardtop that folds into its trunk, making it a convertible. Opening up its hood, Lanceri pointed out the engine’s fake wiring and other parts.

“Look at all the mechanisms and everything inside!” he said.

The model currently retails for $200. An intricate metal replica of a Case 580 Super M Backhoe can go for as much as $650.

Other items on Treasure Hunt’s shelves have local connections.

Until it closed its doors in 2004, the Winross company, a local pioneer in promotional model trucks, made intricate replicas of 18-wheelers that bore the logos of various firms, including Kodak, ACDelco and the Genesee Brewing Company. The firm’s products, which were once displayed at what is now the Frederick Douglas Greater Rochester International Airport, still draw collectors’ eyes.

“Winross trucks are very reasonable,” Lanceri said. “They’re not expensive at all.”

Lanceri has loved slot cars since he began collecting and racing them during the slot car racing craze of the 1960s. His parents let him have a room to himself in their Brockport home here he would work on the cars.

“I cared about them as more than just toys,” he said.

Week after week, he headed off to Seneca Raceways, a slot car racing venue that has long since closed, to send his cars speeding around the tracks. He also loved making plastic models from kits, mostly cars.

As he grew into his teens, Lanceri discarded toy and model cars in favor of the real thing. About 30 years ago, he caught sight of new types of slot cars that were more detailed, colorful and accurate replicas of real vehicles and was hooked again.

“Once you get hooked, it can hit you bad,” he said. “That’s all you spend your money on. That’s all you spend your time on.”

Most of the items in Lanceri’s personal collection are slot cars, including those he made himself from the parts of others that were broken, but the trove also includes a $7,500 handmade 1/6 scale replica of a Ferrari Formula 1 racecar that he managed to buy.

“There’s only seven or eight of those in the whole world,” he said.

The collection, which numbers more than 4,000 toys and collectibles, fills Lanceri’s Hilton home.

“The stuff is to the ceiling,” he said. “In some rooms, you can’t even get in.”

After working in collision shops, at used car lots and as a limousine and delivery driver, Lanceri bought the building housing Treasure Hunt in March of 2024. He opened the store the following December and now splits his business equally between buying, selling and trading his wares on site and online.