Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[g.ijoecollecter3400]

I live in a rather small town where everybody knows everybody else ( one of those places ). Anyway couple days ago i ran into a guy i knew from high school @ the local pizza place. This guy in his 40's and im in my 30's. So i ask him '' hey Troy, did you ever have g.i joe figures from the 80's when you where a kid..? '' The answer i got was: '' YUP, TONS !!!... I even had the big aircraft carrier,,5 or 6 big planes, all kinds of men and a whole bunch more vehicles/ I almost had em all ''

So, therefore the next logical question is, " where are they now ? and can i buy them ? ''

I said to him " what did you sell them off a little @ a time in yard sales and stuff " ?

The answer i got was: '' NOPE ! DUMP !, GONE ! Mom just up and descided one day to clean house ''

I was like this: 

Then he adds to the hurt, get this, he goes '' If i knew you woulda wanted em i woulda told you to come get em a long time ago and i woulda GIVEN em to ya ''  Then i was like this: 

So the moral of the story is, never give up i guess. You just dont know when or where your gonna find g.i joe treasures.

P.S Anybody wanna get together and arang a search patern with me @ the local dump...?  LOL

[latinjoe22]

Just saying, you'd be surprised how many people that never buy anything at shows (same ones) come to the same conventions each year, and when they see something they go "I had this, I had that when I was a kid". When I look at their faces, they all seemed to be pretty pretty happy about where their joes are now. So no, I'm not one bit sad for any of them, unless one comes and expresses some genuine indication there is sadness. Mostly, the sad ones don't talk and don't hang out around toy shows anymore. 'Mostly'.

While collecting,It's best not to be sad for a transaction that could never have taken place in the first place. It's just pointless in the end. It never happened. Jump to the next best thing. It's best also not to ponder over items that got snatched under one's nose while snoozing. Maybe it just wasn't meant to be. There's always something better around the corner for the one who knows how to look. Also, anything it can be rebuilt, it's just a matter of how badly you want to rebuild again knowing that you lost so much, and other life factors that one simply can't ignore.

   

[Prince de Lu]

just ti add my two cents... when i was a kid I had almost everything between 1982 and 1989 all vehicles and figures, that includes the flagg, the terrordrome, the defiant, etc. and I stopped buying joes around 1993 when I turned 20. I left my parents home in 1994 and that year my parents also moved to another house.


Long story short, my dad asked me what i wanted to do with my toys. I decided to give them to a little boy, he was 6 at that time. I gave him everything i had. 20 years later, I bought back a lot of things I had and I know on that day of summer '94, a little boy was very happy ;-)




if you want to see part of my collection, here's the link https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.148108396072.117685.723921072&type=1&l=636791489b

[g.ijoecollecter3400]

So does this mean you guys are signing up for the Clare/ Yarmouth County Dump Hunt this weekend...?    LOL

[ARROW]

Back when I was collecting the O-ring Joes, I had most of them from my start of collecting in around 1985, up to about 1999. Lost interest in them then, and sold the whole lot to a friend for about $150 or so. He had then for about 6 months and then gave the whole lot to a nephew of his.

The kid celebrated his new acquisition by grabbing each of the Joes and testing his own strength......pulling the figures apart.

Pulling ALL of them apart. 

See, a couple of the older figures had weak O-rings when he received them, those fell apart as soon as he played with them and the kid was oblivious to the fact that O-rings could be bought and replaced, restoring the figures.  He figured the whole collection was ruined because some of them were then "broken", so in a fit of pique he destroyed the rest.
And then stomped on all the vehicles. 
The kid was given the stuff by his "generous" uncle, because the kid had "issues".  Yeah, issues.

I calculated the value of what I gave away at over $2500 ( 1998-ish). I had hundreds of like-new figures, and about 30-40 like-new vehicles with meticulously placed stickers and some careful paint touch-ups and corrections, and I was the original buyer for 95% of the stuff, all bought from the mid-80's to the mid-90's. Complete waves of figures from 1986-on. It was the result of years of collecting, scouring the city and region for parts to complete stuff.

I gave it away because I just wasn't interested in it at that time, and figured it would give someone else some joy.

I know the fate of the stuff because about 5 years later, I asked my friend if he still had the stuff and that I was willing to buy it back at 5 times what I paid him for it.

[Sundance]

^now that's a sad story and kinda sickening too.

[g.ijoecollecter3400]

Up until 5 years ago i was working @ a second hand store. We would get tracker trailer loads of used items from the U.S.
I was bring home 5 to 10 grocery bags PACKED full of vintage and modern loose toys. And i was also collecting and buying toys @ stores brand new. When id get home with loose stuff it went in a cardboard box. One for ninja turtles one for star wars one for g.i joe and so on. When id get home with MOSC stuff, it went in a plastic bag and in a sealed tote box.

Anyway, One day i was unloading one of these big boxes the stuff came in ( boxes where 4 feet tall/ 4 feet wide and 4 feet long ) They called'em gaylord boxes...? Whatever..

So, im there unloading this thing, i get half way to the bottom and BOOM!  From the middle of the box to the bottom, some guys 1982 to 1987 MASSIVE G.I JOE COLLECTION. 50 vehiles in there easy, all nicely packed. 3 green 82 or 83 vamps/ a stinger / skystricker complete without Ace and parachute. 3 or 4 missle defence systems. x-30, the bridge laying tank/ black cobra jet/ couple flack canons and on and on it went.........

Of course it landed @ my house..LOL for like 20$

My problem with collecting was, i wanted the modern stuff..And in 2007 the modern stuff was priced through the roof, and a lot of it wasnt made yet..LOL..  And im a completist , i couldnt see myself trying to collect everything from 80's g.i joe. Plus i knew the cost assosited with that.

So i had my g.i joe collection plus this mega lot i found plus my friends collection that i got for like 30$. There was a lot of stuff. But i only had like 50$ in it...I thought i was doing good by posting it on kijiji for 350$. Guy shows up. Offers 250$ I said take it...

And take it he did. plus the 40 pound bag of figures/ plus the 10 pound bag-o-eweapons/ plus 20 pound box of misalanious peaces.
All for 250$....

Also sold my MOSC collection and all my loose stuff from every other toy line. 1100$ for everything. There was a lot of stuff there also. I had to ship it to the guy. I remember boxing it all up, and FILLING,,,FILLING !! The back of my truck. I just dont mean the cab i mean the box on the back FULL, to the brim plus some in the cab too. It was only an Chevey s-10 truck, but it holds a lot of toys...!!!

[Prince de Lu]

the moral: never sold or give your stuff if you still want to collect.

[Zenith27]

I got so lucky with my old stuff. Since it was in my parents attic I couldn't get at it to toss it all and they weren't gonna bother since it was out of the way.

Going back into those totes and pulling out a 25 year old Night Raven or Mauler that was EXACTLY in the condition I left it was a strange feeling. It was like opening a time capsule.

I feel so bad for ARROW. It's the most painful when you were the original owner. You collect and treat your toys really well and some spoiled little monster just smashes them. I've given away a lot of stuff over the years and my policy has to be to never ask about the current state of it or it'll drive me nuts.

[ARROW]

I feel so bad for ARROW. It's the most painful when you were the original owner. You collect and treat your toys really well and some spoiled little monster just smashes them. I've given away a lot of stuff over the years and my policy has to be to never ask about the current state of it or it'll drive me nuts.

It bugged for me about 5 minutes, and then I just literally shrugged and told myself that I had sold it off, and had been paid what I agreed to. I sold the stuff without regrets in the first place, because I was no longer interested in it then.
The irony is that I've essentially "rebuilt" the collection with the 25th Anniversary et al. lines and other vehicles.

The kid wasn't a monster per se. I was told that his issues were an abusive home life and behavioural problems.
I thought my buddy was going to keep the whole thing for himself, but I later got the sense his plan all along was to have it end up in the kid's hands.  I don't have a problem with that charitable gesture at all, what bugged me was that the stuff was so systematically destroyed in a (pointless) tantrum. C'est la vie.

[Zenith27]

The kid wasn't a monster per se. I was told that his issues were an abusive home life and behavioural problems.

Where I grew up a LOT of kids were spoiled rotten since their dads worked in the woods and made a fortune. They used to break their toys in the way you describe for no other reason that their parents would replace them with new toys. I guess I just assume the worst since I was exposed to nothing but destructive little jerks (count some of them as my best friends) while I had to scrimp and save to get a figure every 2 months or so. On the bright side I got a ton of parts and weapons for almost nothing and learned how to fix joes and vehicles at a young age. (10-11) My mom also considered the mail aways great deals so I have to thank her for me now having a couple different Steel Brigades, Sgt. Slaughter and the elusive Starduster.

I only wish WHOBIT existed back then. I've had some weapons on the wrong joes for 20 years! Luckily I kept all the spares so I'm only missing a few at this point.

[g.ijoecollecter3400]

Small Soldiers movie was 10 years ago...