toy collectors prior to 1990

[goldenryan]

i have always been fascinated by the collectors of the early days but maybe it's because i hate most of the toys made now i had a family member who collected mostly star trek and superman items and this was in the late 80's or early 90's but he did have some nice mego things those aliens were real rare back then. so please share some memories u have from the good old days of collecting.

[toys2cool]

well i started collecting really young,at about 8-11 in 88-91 i met a collector/Dealer in the local shows named John.He always gave me a free loose 3" Joe or a weapon for a Vintage 12" Joe with every purchase every show.Great Guy,I wonder how he's doing.You don't see sellers doing that type of thing anymore.He use to love to show me and talk about all the items he had.

My first purchase from him was? My first mego WGSH a complete Batman all original $25

[RG]

I started collecting in 1991 but I met a couple people who had been collecting for years. I got to see pictures of one guy's collection and he had just about every action figure from Star Wars MOC and MIB items. He had some nice super powers stuff also but only from the 1st maybe some from the 2nd wave of toys. And they bought them at retail. I don't remember any 8" megos in his pictures (may have had some??) but he did have lots of the misc. movie 3 3/4" mego action figures Dukes, Trek, etc.

One older guy must have been in his mid 60's at the time was selling his collection at a flea market I was at ... tons of tin toys cast iron banks ... jaw dropping awesome stuff. I wish I would have bought some of his stuff ... I found out later that his wife had passed away and he was given less than 12 months to live. He was selling his collection mostly to give his items a good home since he had no one to leave them to. From what I was told one person bought some stuff with values of $100+ each and he only charged them $10 for the lot.

[palitoy]

Started in '85, a lot of this stuff I collected was still in old variety and junk stores. Mego wasn't considered much back then, Star Trek aliens were popular but Planet of the Apes were considered junk.

some WGSH was pricey but I could get most of them for $10 MIB, nobody made much bones about card variants, save for Kresges.

The big thing in 87-90 was Captain Action, Baby Boomers were in their twenties and had a lot of disposable income. I watched the prices on that stuff explode. I still occasionally talk to some of the big names in Captain Action.

Most of the toy shows were antiques, diecast cars and teddy bears. Under the tables you could find vintage mego and G.I. Joes everywhere. It was junk! Soon, the Mego would be on the tables and underneath were 80's Joe and Transformers, it's a cycle.

[Brue]

I started collecting in the 90s. I remember passing on a mint Great White shark for $400 early on. Ya never know waht seems like a lot -isn't.

[Hotfoot]

I've been collecting stuff since 1969 +/-. Have all my car magazines from 69 on. Most of my childhood toys that didn't get destroyed or sold. Got out of collecting in the late 70's through early 80's except for the odd toy here and there and Albums and CD's. Got too much stuff and only a small space to display things. Sold alot off over ebay the last few years. Never really had anything Rare or super expensive! All my older stuff was played with back before the Collector Craze of the 90's!

At one point I had over 1000 different telephone insulators. After years of lugging heavy boxes full I finally sold off most of them to another collector!

Its just stuff and I get started on one thing for a while than move on to something else. Keeps life interesting.

[jwyblejr]

I started in '91. I started out with vintage Star Wars. Back then you could most of the commons for 5 bucks. I remember one time trying to call one of the ads in Toy Shop trying to get some stuff someone had for sale. They told me all of their Megos were sold out. Never did find out what happened to the Star Wars stuff they had.

[Mikey]

I started collecting around 1982 ...

At that time I mostly just collected Star Trek, Beatles and Doctor Who.

By 1984, I was already buying Mego's and more.

[rche]

In the pre-digital world - analog toy collecting as it were - I recall using the newsprint mags a lot. I collected toys and 16mm film and had subscriptions to Toy Shop and the Big Reel. For BR I forked over the extra $$ for expedited shipping. Thus, in theory, I would get the rag in its first few days of livelyhood and could get in on the good deals before they were picked over.

I would then pour over the TEXT ONLY ads with a sharpie marking things that looked interesting or like a good flip. Then I would start the phone calls. Many answering machines and missed messages later, you might send a money order out and in another couple of weeks have a box show up at your door.

In between scouring the rags, I would pile up whatever I had for trade fodder or sale and hit a local show. Mostly junking and antique shows in my neck of the woods where you had to know where the folks who dealt with toys (or film) were and then see what was new in their stock.

It was an awful lot of fun looking for the deals in the newsprints, sort of like hunting online for bargains and buy it nows that nobody else has seen yet. Except you had to wait for the print to come out every month.

The picture ads that some of the folks ran were great as well. I still have a stack of those newsprints some where. It would be a kick to dig them up and see what the going rate was then for some of the things I've picked up lately.

rche

[megoat]

I started buying/selling and collecting toys in the early 90's. Mainly 70's but also a bunch of 50's and 60's toys too. It was a different scene back then for sure. I remember going to country estate auctions and often being the only bidder on the plastic toys. The older dudes would bid sky high on tin wind ups and other metal toys, but plastic was considered junk to a lot of folks. I used to clean house, my car would be filled with mego/vintage joe/johnny west/old marx playsets/ etc etc.

Also, I remember the yard sale scene in the early 90's--every other sale seemed to have TONS of He Man or 80's GI Joe---I passed on ALL of it. Wouldn't even give it another look!

[cjefferys]

I started serious collecting (as opposed to buying toys to play with) around 1987, when I started buying Super Powers. I first bought them to open and display on my bookshelf and later started buying some and not even opening them. Shortly after, I found a vintage toy store in Buffalo (next door to a comic shop that I already knew about), and the old guy who ran the place had a bunch of boxed Megos. I started buying those up (I never really lost my interest in Megos and still had a bunch of my childhood ones, so finding boxed ones like this were a real treat for me), and also started hitting toy shows, toy clearance sales at department stores where I picked up a bunch of Star Wars stuff on closeout, etc. And around 1990 discovered Toy Shop magazine, and then my eyes were really opened in regards to how the hobby of collecting 70's and 80's toys was really starting to build up steam.

[nvmbrsdoom5]

My story is similar to Cjefferys', I wasn't what I considered to be a "collector" in the 1980's but I never stopped buying toys completely, even once in my teens. But starting around 1986/1987, I clearly recall going into TRU and Kay-bees and picking up figures like General Lando and Imperial Dignitary from SW-POTF when they were on clearance, even though I'd long since stopped playing with toys. I also would pick up a few things here and there, like some Super Powers figures, just because they looked cool and they were favorite characters (like Red Tornado and Hawkman), and would open and display them on shelves in my room. When the Toy Biz DC and Marvel figures hit shelves around '89/'90, I liked them enough to start buying all of them and keeping the packaging. In 1990, my discovery of Toy Shop magazine and the ability to re-purchase some of my favorite childhood memories from other collectors and dealers solidified my path as a collector.

When I was buying those occasional toys during the mid to late 1980s, I wish that I had more sense to at least hang onto the packaging (even if I opened them to display) and to take better advantage of the deals I found. I can remember seeing many Star Wars, He-Man, G.I.Joe and Super Powers/Secret Wars figures on clearance for years, and only took advantage of the cheap prices on a few occasions *sigh*

[4NDR01D]

So far, I'd say I'm the newest collector to post on this thread yet. Just started a couple of years ago when I discovered eBay, and then it was purely by accident in a way. Before toys I collected records and music related merch (tour t-shirts, old magazines). I soon became one of those "ebay addicts" and was spending an insane amount of time looking at auctions. I would scour thrift shops to find things to sell, anything really, but had quite a bit of success with neat items I'd find in their toy departments. In my research to find out if the stuff I picked up was worth anything I'd come across old toys I had as a kid, and subsuqetly started to bid on those items. Mostly smallish,cheap and loose items. Then a few years ago my GF bought me a Stretch Armstrong for xmas, an item I wanted so bad but could not bring myself to pay that kind of money for. From there it was on, I sold many of my rare rockabilly and psych records and spent the cash accumulating a small but cherished load of figures and stuff. I'm not yet at the point where I want to buy/display shipping boxes, but have really changed my attitude about mib/moc stuff since joining this forum. All it takes is a quick look at some of these members collections to realize how impossibly great they look.

[HardyGirl]

I started about '87 I think. I didn't know boo about toy shows and all that, but I would find things at flea markets, garage sales and stuff like that. I remember I got a working Tippy Tumbles doll, and an Alphie Robot, which went over big w/ my preschoolers at that time. When I moved to WI in 1990, I discovered Rummage-O-Rama (no longer there), and toy shows. I remember it being winter, and I was bored and broke, and I went to a toy show, (torture!), but I did leave w/ something. I was eye-ing a Baby That-a-way doll from my youth, well gushing was more like it, since I hadn't seen one since I was little. The woman who was selling her told me just to take her, since I loved her so much and she knew I'd give her a good home, free of charge! At that same show I was wishing I had money to buy the GIJoe Adventure Team book and record sets, and a Mr. T doll. When the next toy show came around (and I had money!), the seller w/ the records and Mr. T says to me "Guess what I was saving for you?" She pulls out the GIJoe book and records and Mr. T, and she let me have them for half price! A lot of the sellers were often at Rummage-O-Rama, and recognized me, since I went all the time, and often had little deals like that for me.

I miss those days.

[jds1911a1]

I started to activley collect in 80 w doctor who stuff, and when superpowers came out I had to have all of them but even then there were cherry pickers CYBORG I didn't get till 86 at a toy show for 300 (stil hve him MOC) and a loose one for $85. I bought mostly foreign Joes from Dealers who put ads in comics, lee's afn etc, I recal vividly when Cotswold sold old joes not just the stuff they made for themselves. I recall phone in auctions in the late 80's (man the phone bills). When the internet got hugh and ebay came in the whole enviroment changed. the small toy seller coulnd't exist without it and prices of common stuff plummeted since you could now go somewhere else. of course rare stuff got pricier since there was much bigger pool of people going after the same stuff.

I do miss toy shows that actually had stuff other than the cherry pick resells when you found dealers with really old stuff now you only get that in a JOECON or mego meet and still most of the dealers are just scalpers