// About
Everyone's a Collector
I grew up in the late '80s and early '90s. Saturday mornings meant cartoons. Weekends meant flea markets, garage sales, and the toy aisle at Toys "R" Us. My childhood smelled like fresh blister packs and the inside of a Blockbuster Video.
I collected everything. G.I. Joes, TMNT, Hot Wheels, Transformers, X-Men. I was the kid who kept the packaging. The kid who read the file cards on the back. The kid who cared about the story behind the toy as much as the toy itself.
Decades later, not much has changed. I still collect. I still care about the stories. Now I just have a family, a mortgage, and a slightly better vocabulary for explaining why a sealed 1985 Snake Eyes is worth more than my first car.
Here's the thing I believe:
Everyone's a collector.
- ▸Can't throw out a high school yearbook? Collector.
- ▸Kept a card someone gave you 20 years ago? Collector.
- ▸Dried a flower in a book and never took it out? Collector.
Some of us just happen to collect action figures. The feeling behind it is the same.
My family thinks I'm obsessed. They're right. But sharing this stuff with them, watching my kid hold a toy I had at their age, seeing their face when I tell them what it used to cost versus what it's worth now... that's the whole point.
90s Toy Vault is where I put all of it:
- ▸The history and the deep cuts
- ▸The collections and the controversies
- ▸The toys that got banned and the ones that made billions
- ▸Cards, comics, and everything that overlaps with toys from that era
There is no wrong way to collect, and there is no wrong reason to care about this stuff.
For anyone who remembers what it felt like to rip open a toy on Christmas morning in the '90s and think this is the greatest thing that has ever happened.
If that's you, welcome to the vault.