Today is the last day of the year, and I spent the morning roaming around a flea market with my husband who is a toy collector. I love that silly goose, but sometimes I question the sanity that comes with his collection that absorbs our 600 sq ft apparent and at 10 by 10 storage unit.
There are a couple of things you'll need to learn about TRUE toy collectors.
1) They require a lot of space, storage and a place they can display their collection.
2) Toy collectors, just like any other collectors, love to brag about their toys via in person, photos, or video to display them via internet.
3) They will spend a fortune a few dollars at at time.
4) If a normal person thinks a toy they still own is valuable, chances are a toy collector will tell them is junk.
5) If a normal person thinks a toy they still own is junk, chances are a toy collector will agree, but in rare cases they think they have found gold.
6) A true toy collector can go to a dirty bin of toys at a garage sale, flea market, or retail store and tell you the name of the character, what series, who made the toy line, what materials they used, the cost of the production and even go as far as telling you whether the mold of the body is standard or custom for that figure.
7) Most toy collectors are cheap, but if they really want something that is rare, they will shell out the mula.
8) If you are dating or you are married to a toy collector trying to get them to stop is nearly impossible. Have fun trying. Even if you think they have stopped, many of them will find a way to do it with out telling you.
9) If you think getting a bigger space is the solution to your clutter problem, you have made it worst. Now they have more space to gather more stuff. Believe me.
10) Never ever ever touch a toy, don't break anything, or throw or sell any of their toys without their permission. 99% of the times it will not end well, plus that one toy that looked like junk probably cost a small fortune to obtain. JUST DON'T DO IT.
As a collector's wife, I was aware of this and knew what I was getting my self into before I married him. He's a great provider,pays his bills, goes to work, and puts the home first. He also puts crazy hours during the holidays to make sure we have all we need at the house. This is why I usually just let him do his thing.
Today was a much awaited day. He had his eye on a Godzilla that is about 1/80 of scale. We found a vendor at one of the flea markets we go to claiming he had one at his shop. It really is a rare find and for what we knew it also came at a reasonable price. This is a pretty big deal to him. So he was like a kid going to a theme park.
We first spent the morning roaming another flea market called Wagon Wheel Flea Market in Largo. This place is so huge you can spend a whole day there. For me this is a chance to do some of my work out as I'm browsing through the isle full of items that are now worth just a few dollars. The whole place is madness. It takes 3 miles to completely walk this flea market so you can only imagine how tired we were by the time we where done. Originally we came to this flea market to help me find two books I was missing out the 21 Bleach books we picked up at a previous toy show for only $15. You can't beat that. In the end, I only found an old halve gallon glass jar for $2 and my husband had obtained more stuff. This time an old Indiana Jones carded figure for $10, and two more figures for a $1.50 each. My husband has 3 figures and I have 0 books at this point. Disappointment on my behave.
After the first venture we finally make it to the Oldsmard Flea Market to get his value price. Sadly when we get there we realized it was the wrong size. They guy only had the 1/100 scale size. Dooohhh!! This took some time to figure out. At this point in needed a break and looked around this flea market for my books. Sadly flea markets a) don't know what manga is and b) they only have a lot of romance novels, and a bunch of books nobody give a crap about. Doohh!!!
In the end the guy gave us a great price on the wrong Godzilla and now my husband is happy as a clown. Well while I will agree that that Godzilla is pretty cool, is still pretty hard for me to justify paying $350 for a hunk of plastic in shape of a lizard, but hey it makes my husband smile. In the end he got a Godzilla plus toys, and I... got an awesome vintage jar. LOL
