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I have something that I need to get off of my chest this month. There are certain elements in the collecting community, called speculators, who go out and buy the "hot" toy and then sell
it on e-bay or some other auction web site or set up a booth at a convention
to sell their ill gotten gains. Most of these people have inside contacts at
places like Toys R Us, Target or Wal-Mart that help them get a hold of the
hot items and these insiders get some sort of kickback from the dealer for helping
them out.
I'm sorry to say this, but these sorts of people have no business being in
the toy collecting market. There are those of us out there, like myself,
which like certain things like GI Joe and/or Star Wars and want only one set
to open and play with. That is because most of us grew up in the late 1970's
and 1980's in which we did not care what was the new hot toy; we were happy
getting a Luke Skywalker and Han Solo action figures from the Star Wars
action figure line. Plus, there were a lot of ways you could play with them.
If you were particularly creative you could go out to the back yard and
pretend that it was Endor and your good guy action figures were the only
ones standing in the way of getting the second Death Star completed. Then the
cat would come out and screw things up and you would have to take things
inside and pretend it was the bunker the Imperials were using to protect the
Death Star II. A snowy day was an excuse to get out the AT-AT (even though I
never had one) and reenact the battle of Hoth.
Toys these days need to be remembered like when we were kids and they need
to be played with. Not collected like some get rich quick scheme. You are
not going to be able to get your kids through college with the set of Star
Wars Episode 3 you collected from the beginning of April. Everyone and their
mother (yes your mother), decided to get a complete set of the figures on
opening day. If you want to get rich quick, then take up something like
coin collecting or something like that and leave the toys to the collectors
who want something special to remember Star Wars Episode 3 by.
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