Toys Of Christmas Past
12.04.06 By Derek DahlsadBack in the 1980s, I spent days examining the pages of the Sears catalog with an urgency that came just once a year at Christmastime. First, it was Star Wars, then He-Man, and then GI Joe, but I always had a genre to pick from. The lists bordered on enormity — it would have been easier to just tear entire pages out with a hand-scrawled note at the top: BUY ME THESE. Of course, I never really expected I’d get everything I wanted, but I knew that the more I threw on the list, the more likely it’d actually arrive. My childhood collections grew to satisfying degrees, so I was never particularly disappointed when certain items on my Christmas List never arrived.
Many years later, I found out what had happened to some of those missing desires.
I grew up in a family of “keepers” — people who didn’t toss out just any old thing, instead filling boxes and closets with important stuff — and over the past several years I’d been recruited to take back large boxes of my childhood toys home. My parents kept everything, which makes it nice to know that most of the Star Wars figures still have their original weapons, but also leaves me with boxes of bodiless limbs from action figures past.
In several boxes, though, I discovered toys I had never owned: a couple Masters of the Universe figures in their original packaging. It seems that my parents had hidden Christmas gifts far, 
far away from us nosy children (with good reason), but ended up burying them so efficiently that they were not found for many years after they were originally purchased.
This event is exactly what collectors of toys, baseball cards, comics, and record albums wish for. The Lost Horde Of Unopened Gifts: the box in Grandma’s attic of sale-bought toys for when the grandkids visit; that record it turns out the giftee already has; all the baseball cards that slipped between the drawers in the desk. Children’s collectibles that were never played with are the most valuable, because few toys and games survived the loving wear-and-tear of children’s fun. The silty layer of GI Joe arms and legs, chromed Transformers weapons, and crushed Hot Wheels at the bottom of the toybox may be a sign of boyhood fun, but it doesn’t leave much value in those toys. It’s the unopened, untouched items that collectors drool over.
Now, I’m no advocate of training kids to keep their toys in “collectible condition.” Nothing’s sadder than a kid staring longingly at a 1/16th scale Ford Mustang, its ability to speed down tiny roads hindered by twist ties wrapped around the axles and laced through a cardboard floor. Many collectors recommend buying two of speculation-worthy toys, secreting one away for a later date. This is some financially sound advice, covering both the fun aspect and the investment angle at once, and I don’t doubt many collectors do well with this theory.
At first glance, this may seem a selfish act on the parent’s part — why not just spend twice as much on the kid’s gifts? Why waste the space on storing these speculative toys for so many years? What you might not realize, however, is that doing this for the kid really does have a lot of value.
Many toy collectors keep what they do, whether it’s cars, action figures, or Barbies, because these were toys they played with as children. These toys ignite a connection deep under that inner child these collectors keep so close to the surface, tied to childhood memories of the fun they had.
If you’re lucky enough that your children will still collect the toys that were stashed away when they were children, they will love nothing more than to open up — for the second time in their lives — a brand new toy on Christmas morning. Back when they were ten, they appreciated the gift because it meant fun, a new tool in their arsenal of make-believe. As a grown-up, they may appreciate that the particular paint scheme was only done for one year, and a manufacturing flaw makes it even rarer. Two toys — one played, one saved — can bring a lifetime of value.
I, however, haven’t any interest in collecting Masters of the Universe, so these two figures went on eBay (and for a pretty penny, thank you). Hopefully they went to a collector who, deep down underneath the adult logic of their online purchasing, wished they had gotten TrapJaw and Mer-Man back on Christmas 1982. The preservation of these two figures was unintentional, so I can’t fault my parents for saving something that didn’t interest me. Now, if only they had kept a Boba Fett, a Milennium Falcon, and a TIE fighter…
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Article Tags: Christmas, Masters of the Universe, Star Wars, toys================
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