How did you begin your collection

[thewatcher]

Honestly I don’t remember but I got some pics when I was 4 years old whit MOTU FIGURES and I been always interested in the vintage star wars figures but I was born in 1984 and when I get the age to be interested in they were quite old figures

[victoryleo19]

i have pics of me as a baby with Super Powers Green Lantern and ROTJ Ewoks battling....i guess getting hand-me-down toys sparked my interest in the 80's era of toys.

[TheWatcher]

Wow, more then one Watcher? LOL Well let it be known I was here first, lol.j/k.

Well I have always enjoyed my toy collection and had a big one even as a child. I was really drawn to Monster and Robot toys as a child. As I grew older I got into the Star Wars and then finally fantasy figures starting w/MOTU. My parents really dictated alot of what toys I got. I am glad they had such good taste in toys, something that I owe them for today. They really started my love for toys.

[proteus]

it would have to be star wars-i am of the star wars generation,and it was really kenners original 3 3/4 inch line that first started me collecting-nowadays i dont have many -i now like 8inch format figures , but it was star wars that really set me collecting.there was nothing like it befor that in the early 70s there was only gi joe

[pain]

I always collected figures loose to play with and display in my room since being old enough to sit up and play with them. (Hand me downs and new figures)

As for MOC collecting, my dad collected Hot Wheels MOC, and I loved the way they looked on the wall. That was all she wrote. By the time I was 6 (1987) I was asking for two of everything. One to play with, and one to keep sealed. The 80s were great even in 1987, you could still find large amounts of figures from as early as 79-80. I remember buying Tcats, MOTU, TF Joe and SW (Infaceables, Inhumanoids and more) at Lionels Playworld, and pinning them on my wall, or ripping them open to play with if I already had one.

[shaxper]

I was a sophomore in college (1998), when my mother discovered ebay. She was thrilled and called me up, promising to get me any one thing that I wanted. As I understood it at the time, ebay was a sort of online garage sale full of old stuff. I thought hard about the one thing from my past that I'd love to have again, and a Transformers G1 Optimus Prime immediately came to mind. While I'd had many other favorite toy lines as a kid, that had been my favorite single toy and the one old thing that I no longer had and would want.

She ended up getting me a Powermaster Prime by mistake, and that actually got me more excited. It was a cool Transformer that I hadn't been aware of during childhood. It suddenly occurred to me that there was a whole world of vintage toys out there that I'd never seen before. I soon joined ebay, became a full fledged vintage Transformers collector, and it was only a matter of time before this bled into a craving for other vintage toy lines.

By my senior year (2000-2001), my cramped little room was overflowing with shelves full of toys. It was ridiculous and wonderful, all at the same time

[BoogDoc7]

I was six, and I think that it was one of the first times my dad could really afford to buy much. Christmas morning, Hall of Justice and almost all of series one of Super Powers, set up in the living room, with the collectors case, with Batmobile, Supermobile, and Lex-soar 7.

Plus, large quantities of GIJoes.

I was hooked. Didn't get back in until after college, but held on to a bunch of it.

[rocklord74]

Like most, I discovered eBay about 10 years ago and looked up my childhood favorites. I then discovered that He-Man had way more figures then I'd ever seen. All the foreign exclusive figures and such. So I started digging out all my old figures after they'd been in storage since the late 80's and began to build again, the rest they say is history.

[anna]

I've been buying toys all my life but I didn't seriously start till the late 80s with the transformers then added more as I went along(she-ra,he-man,go-bots,rainbow brite,ssc and others)

[luera99]

I had tons of GI Joes, Transformers, HE-Man, and Star Wars toys as a kid, but what started me collecting toys was the Spider-man the movie. I went out bought super-posible Spider-man and a Green Goblin, and it's been down hill since then. Also the first figures I opened.

[jabbascomichut973]

my cousin got me into it i saw his collection and honestly i was hooked from that point on.

[cobralegion]

Well for me it was in 1986. I was 18 and had long grown out of toys, but had a friend who was still collecting like crazy. We went to the local mall to check out the Tops in Toys and couldn't believe it! They had opened a second spot in the mall for clearance stuff and it was packed full of Star Wars toys. All figures were 99 cents and I remember the Imperial Shuttle being 14.99! I cant remember what else they had but I know it was all super cheap. Sadly I only had 20 dollars on me, so I only got 20 figures ( Happily

remembering this was before GST) My friend got a Shuttle and a ton of other stuff. I still have those figures and wish I could go back in time and get more lol.
I moved out soon after that and didn't start truly collecting until 1992 when the HOF Joes showed up at Toys and Wheels. Since then its been non stop and its an awesome hobby!

[bowspearer]

I was an impressionable 4 year old back in 1984 getting into He-Man, then came Transformers, which became a mainstay in amongst whatever other toy line was popular.

A few years ago, my interest in M.A.S.K. got rekindled and one day a couple of years ago, I came across a Hong Kong seller selling odd pieces here and there- clearly from an old warehouse find and legit- from there, I started on Silverhawks, Sky Commanders and Centurions.

After that point, I bit the bullet and started on Captain Power last year, and late last year on Visionaries, which I'm now a sealed Cravex of having a complete sealed collection of.

Hoping to have most of my collection bar TFs completed within the next couple of years.

[10incher]

I always had (and still have) all the action figures i had as a kid including mostly Star Wars, Super Powers, Secret Wars and a few Transformers. Once I grew older and started to loose interest they were all packed away in the attic.

A few years later (when I was in Junior High) I came across the final wave of Super Powers in the local Wolco (or maybe it was still Woolworths at the time?). Knowing I had all the ones from the first wave, I really wanted these but only had the money to buy Tyr at the time. Also around that time, I would pick up the odd G1 Transformer that I could afford/find. High School pretty much stopped any collecting as I had other interests during those years.

I actually began to really collect toys when the first Toybiz X-Men line came out in the early 90s. We lived in a small town and I tried to buy any I could find, but had to make trips to the city to fill the gaps. A few years later, I moved to the city where I expanded into other stuff. It was great finally being able to goto a TrU or any thrift stores I wanted, on a regular basis.

[jamesofearth2]

I didn't start collecting toys untill i entered college. I had a lot of turtles, joes, and others as a kid but most of them ended up either destroyed or lost due to my being a perticularly dumb kid. and when i started collecting comics toys soon followed, namely dcuc's, marvel legends and the marvel universe line. I've just started getting into the transformers and MOTUC

[brcthrift]

My collection got started by me being a cash strapped college student about 10 years ago. I started selling my childhood toys on ebay. This got me re-interested in them. I started scrounging yard sales, flea markets and thrift stores in Baton Rouge. I also would buy poorly titled lots on ebay and sell them for profit.

This eventually became my main source of income, and it was enough for me to pay bills, and even have some left over. As I started having more and more left over I started keeping some of my finds. I also started keeping some figures out of the lots I would buy.

I did this all through college, and built up a nice little collection. Then I started my career. And stopped with the toys for about two years. I got really into vinyl records and started savaging for those. This dominated my interest for about 2 years then one day while waiting in line to buy some records at a thrift store I noticed some vintage star wars figures in a grab bag by the register. This reignited my passion for vintage figures. This Goodwill store turned into a real honey hole, and I had many good finds there over the years.

To this day I keep to the same model in my collecting. I buy anything that has a collectible value to it. I keep what I want and sell the rest to fuel my collecting. I tend to keep my collection small. I don’t have a lot of display space, so it works out really well that way.
.

[muscle]

At the start.

[kudegras]

I was waiting in line at a Gamestop and a Arbiter caught my eye. With a price like 10.99 I said what the heck. Since then I have found so much enjoyment in adding to my collection and searching for those rare figures.

[defzombie]

I always grew up with toys. My parents would always buy me and my brothers action figures and what not for Christmas and birthdays( i remember getting old robotech figures in the late 80's, sadly they are long gone ) Including star wars, gijoe and other classic 80s lines. As we grew through our tween and teen years in the 90's it was all about Gijoes, Me and my buddy got many of the battle corps figures(i know those are the lines people dont like cuz the neon colors) but i loved them. I just took good care of my toys throughout the years, and I can say I still have over 80% of the stuff I grew up on. I did collect toys throughout the years later on, but now Im recently rediscovering the awesomeness of thrift stores and the good finds you can get there. I try to collect older figures, but new ones are great too. I just got some target exclusive Gijoe Rise of Cobra Figures w/ vehicles for 2.50 which I was really excited about. Im not as hardcore as alot of people on here, but I enjoy being a part of this group

[else3573]

Strangely enough, living in a homeless shelter and picking up free restaurant premiums and hot wheels from a free store (to decorate my room with). I mean, we all collected toys as kids, I collected Transformers, MOTU and MUSCLE, among other things, but I'm referring to when I got BACK into toys as an adult. I didn't collect toys from like 12 year old to 30 years old.

[3 3/4"collector]

well in highschool i had hair down to my waist and was totally into thrash metal and played guitar and went out at night with my friends running crazy.
but i also had a friend i grew up with in my old jr high neighborhood that was 6 years younger than me but was a really cool kid. and sometimes on the weekends he would spend the night and we would still play with all our old g.i.joes, star wars and various other 3 3/4" figures. we had our own whole worlds made up with our figures, they all had their own names and personalities etc.. so anyway even up to like 16 or 17 i still got to enjoy playing with my old figures like a little kid one day, and running around looking for girls and parties and trying to live like a little teenage rockstar stuff the next.
so in 90 i graduated and 1 weekend me and a friend went to a local flea market and found this huge booth hidden way in the back that was a toy collector shop. and i started looking around and found all these early 80s gijoes i had loved in really good shape and pretty cheap prices. and i started buying them to sort of replace the ones i still had at home in horrible beaten shape. which led to buying figures i wanted but never found as a kid which led to buying figures i thought were cool but maybe didnt even know about as a kid. so the time between me stopping playing with toys and starting collecting toys is only about 2 or 3 years.

[toy tracker]

I had lots of stuff as a kind that didn't get throw out. But I really started collecting and not just being a guy having a box of his old toys lying around when they started those MOTU re-issue witha package inside a package. i saw them at this train store (seriously the store specialized in trains, i was there with a friend and they randomlly had some non-train stuff that didn't bore me). They totally reminded me of my youth and I bought them adn the mass collecting began. It was just days later I discovered people on eBay had sealed stuff from when I was a kid.

[rihia2k]

Welp, one birthday in '85, when I turned 6, my aunty showed up with He-Man & Skeletor! Wow. I only owned plastic push round cars, and a coupla' Action Jacks & early A-Team style figs. This aunty usually got me chocolates or a girly colouring book if anything. But I knew these were special, holding good and evil in my mits right there. '89 - '93 I got Joe fever. Anyhow time went on, I 'ahem' grew-up (yeh right), met a dame and we moved around a lot, so most my stuff stayed with my parents. Fstfrwd 2005 I find a Fisto in my drawer- bam! I bring every action-fig home from my parents, "surprise, honey". And it's then I got into online trades and 2nd handshop scouring. I've really let the Joe thing go though, my vintage MOTU origins are my main collect focus now.

[bayareatoysnet]

I began collecting toys over 30 years ago. I started out with one action figure which was a Star Wars toy. Then, I got a bunch of Marvel Legends, and baby dolls. Today I have begun collecting Mcfarlane figures, toy action figures, Lalaloopsy dolls, Barbie dolls, Princess Disney and many other collectible toys.

[geomagno]

I had kept the Star Wars and Zylmex Metal Men from when I was a kid and decided to put a couple in a display case. No problem. They I saw some old Micronauts on ebay and thought I'd replace just a couple I'd had as a kid to add to the display. That's all it took. I've sold most of the Star Wars guys and I need a larger display case.

Ebay seems to be the catalyst for most collectors on here.