The line at the Burger King on Paramount Boulevard began sometime around four in the morning, which is early for a meal and normal for a man with a folding chair and a purpose.

On Friday at 11 a.m., this location — number 10014, Downey, California — hosts the Golden Claw Machine event, the public finale of Burger King’s Hello Kitty promotion: one golden cat, one machine, one restaurant, and a county of approximately 100,000 adults who have read the terms and conditions.

The promotion itself launched nationwide on Oct. 20. Every King Jr. Kids’ Meal now contains a sealed blind box holding one of six toys — Hello Kitty and friends, each wearing a tiny Burger King crown — and among the six, somewhere in the supply chain, sits a plated golden Hello Kitty whose pull rate Burger King has declined to print, which every collector in America understands as a number they are meant to feel in their chest.

“There is no rate,” said Dwayne Whitmore, 41, a former warehouse logistics manager who has held position 11 in the Downey line since 4:20 a.m. and has a laminated map of the drive-thru. “That’s what makes it an economy. If they printed one in six hundred, it’s a promo. If they print nothing, it’s a rumor. And a rumor is the only currency that has never inflated.”

He was asked what he would pay for the golden cat.

“I don’t pay for things,” Whitmore said. “I provide liquidity.”

The local market is already functioning. In garage sales across southeast Los Angeles County this week, sealed blind boxes were reportedly trading at four to six dollars against a meal price of roughly ten, meaning the sensible consumer is now being paid to eat fewer chicken fries, an economic event economists have been waiting their whole lives to observe in the wild.

Not everyone is holding. A thirteen-year-old named Marisol, dragged to the front of the line by an uncle, delivered the assessment of her generation: “It’s a cat with no mouth. It’s worth nothing. I’m here because he drives.”

The Downey shift manager, who asked to be identified only as Brandon and who has worked this counter for nine years, said the crew had been briefed on the claw machine but not on its odds.

“They told us to keep the line moving and not to touch the machine,” Brandon said. “That’s it. That’s the whole briefing. In nine years, that’s the most respectful thing corporate has ever said to us about anything.”

By 6 a.m., the line had twenty-three people, a dog, and a man selling the line itself — folding chairs, coffee, and guaranteed position numbers, cash only, refundable if it rains.

Whitmore, reached again at 7:15 a.m., had upgraded to a lawn chair with a cup holder.

“I know exactly what the golden cat is worth,” he said. “I’m just waiting for somebody else to say it first.”