View Full Version : What got you started with collecting toys?
Navajo 08-06-2005, 11:45 AM I'm sure this has been asked a million times already. But I was curious if you can actually pinpoint the time in your life that you decided to collect toys. For me, I never collected them when I was a kid, I played with them. So I grew up (shudder just thinking of it) and got into other stuff. So then about 4 or 5 years ago Episode I figs were marked down to like 2 bones or something like that. Anyways, my girlfriend bought me a Tatooine Darth Maul for a stocking stuffer. So I was intrigued because I thought it was pretty cool. So I went back up to Walmart and bought 6 different guys...then I thought how many of these are there? I wonder if there's any stores that sell action figures? So I found Bountyhuntertoys and Kool Stuff in Hamilton. Then before I knew it I had the complete run of EPI figs. But What I really shudder at was that I got rid of all my joes and transformers that I had in my attic so I could get the EPI guys. Suffice to say I had to go out and buy my joes and stuff all over again. So when I get dirty looks from my girlfriend for buying somthing and spending a little bit more than I should all I have to say is "You started it, don't blame me." Well that's my little "Behind The Toys" episode, how about you?
ken
sinnister 08-06-2005, 11:55 AM I started collecting the star wars figures in the mid-90's when they started re-releasing them. I was in the army, single, lived in the barracks, had a car, and didnt have anything to spend my money on but beer (although that was a good chunk of my check) so I started buying them.
I slowly got out of the star wars stuff during episode one. I got a few I liked...some darth mauls etc and then quit all together and boxed them all up into a trunk. I was married by this time and was moving this big box of gijoe junk from my childhood from apartment to apartment, rental house to the house I own now. While cleaning the garage one day I decided to bring the box upstairs and inventory everything so I could list it all on ebay. Hindsight being 20/20 I should have probably left that box sealed.
As a kid I only played with a few SW toys...and they were incorperated into my Joes which was basically the only toy I played with...besides legos. I opened the box and the memories came flooding back. I had already found yojoe and was using it to inventory everything when I saw this primitive looking forum. It had I think green box letters or something that said 'For Sale' or something like that. I started browsing and found out that a lot of the stuff I was missing or that was broken was listed in there and thats when I saw that there was hope to restore my items to their previous state. I originally was just going to complete what I had...now I have an entire room full of Joe stuff.
So now I'm a 30 year old kid who probably has more toys that both of my kids LOL.
danielmd06 08-06-2005, 12:09 PM I grew up being pretty OCD with my Star Wars and GI Joe toys. I would keep them all as pristine as possible and put them up in a specific bag to keep them safe. So you might say that I started "collecting" from day #1. I kept collecting through the early nineties and finally quit about the time that I went to college.
When Devil's Due wheeled out the new GI Joe comic series I started reading and got hooked on Joe toys again. I had some disposable income and decided I was finally going to get some of the loose figures and vehicles I always wanted as a kid. The carded figures followed fast on the heels of that decision.
orionlukteel 08-06-2005, 02:40 PM It's all Gus Lopez's fault. :D
I had a few Star wars toys from a garage sale dating back to my teens. Nothing important, just a couple figures and a couple playsets. Then I found rec.arts.sf.starwars.merchandise and rec.toys.misc (which later expanded to rec.toys.action-figures) and it was OVER. Most of my disposable income and some that wasn't went into expanding my collection, and Gus was one of the first to sell me Star Wars. A bunch of complete figures, at a REALLY good price. I made friends with Eric Myers, Michael Crawford, John Gersten, Roxanne Galica, and Jim McCaslin, as well as gus and his wife Pam, on the super-secret 1:1 trading group (essentially a list of good traders from the rec.toys.misc newsgroup).
We traded a LOT of stuff, from Super Powers to Spawn to X-Men (that's how I got into the group, trading for a Phoenix figure)
And it just grew from there.
Got out of it for a while, then I found eBay. and it was even more OVER.
So you could say I've been seriously collecting (and selling and collecting again) toys since '92 or so.
But I DO still have my Storm Shadow from '84, bought with my paper route money. He's the only figure that's been with me from the get-go. Not even my Cylon survived. :D
And that's how I got infected with the incurable disease. :p
joebahama 08-06-2005, 03:04 PM The Internet ; plain and simple. When I saw pics of other guys collections and I discovered ebay , it was all over. I had just finished college, got a promotion at work and at the time didn't have a girlfriend. Remedy for this huge amount of free time, GI Joe. If I hadn't started at that point in my life I probably wouldn't have ever started. Now I am married, have tons more responsibility at work and even trying to run a small business. I don't have the free time but I still collect. Sometimes weeks pass and I don't even see my collection but when I get the days off oh boy I spend at least one day in toy frenzy.
airedevon 08-06-2005, 04:09 PM For me, the moment - the exact moment - I decided to collect action figures is as clear as a bell! I remember it like it was yesterday!
It was over 25 years ago. I was in my late 20's. I was at my parents house in the Blue Ridge mountains. My first son, Ethan, was about a year old. (He was already into Star Wars thanks to a wonderful 6 year old neighbor :-)
Anyway, while at my parents, my mom went into the attic to look for some old toys for Ethan to play with. Toys that my brothers and sisters and I had played with as children (there were 12 kids in our family!). As my mom found some of the toys, the look on her face had so much love!!!- These toys evoked so many memories in her that I was truly moved. Then she said something that I will never forget. She said: "Oh! How I wish I had saved more of the toys you kids played with - it's such a pity that so many of them are lost forever... It would be so wonderful if the grandchildren could see them and play with them!"
Well - That did it for me. I decided right then and there, that, from then on, I would carefully preserve as many action figures as I could afford - for future generations. I didn't want such inventive toys to be "lost forever". I had no idea at the time that other people also collected action figures - I was so delighted when, years later, I found out that other people also cared about these fabulous toys!
So, for years I collected - with my two sons - some of the great (and often offbeat) lines that appeared on the market... We opened all of them (carefully saving the packaging) and created a "toybrary" (like a library - but with toys :-) where kids could come and select a "universe" to play with... Later, when I was teaching at the University of Texas, I was even lucky enough to be able to successfuly use action figures in some of the research projects (autism and early communitcation) we were working on.
When did I start collecting Joes? I can pinpoint that one, too!! (Wow this question is flooding my mind with so many great memories! Thanks for posing this question!!!)
When my second son, Colin, was a junior in high school, he went over to Russia to study for a year as a foreign exchange student. He is a GI Joe nut - always has been! Well, just before he left, we discovered the internet and.... internationally released Joes! We were both so excited to realize that Joes were a world wide phenomenon and thought what fun it would be to find out more about the figures released outside the US...
When he left to go to Russia, I decided to try to put together a set of international exclusives as a present for him for when he returned - and as a way of staying close to him.. ('cause I missed him a lot and had almost no communication with him for that entire year!) I had no idea then, what a huge task I had undertaken!
The more I delved into the international Joes, their history, the people and friends I made in countries all over the world, the international camaraderie, the more I fell in love with these Joes myself and was thankful for the networks they had created! And I've been smitten ever since :-)
Aire
viperguy 08-06-2005, 05:46 PM My brother got me started. Mainly on Legos. I have 1,000's of them now. Thanks snake-eyes01:D
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