TOYDIARY BY TOYKAKI - Toy Collecting and Investments

"We are living on borrowed time, and no day is guaranteed in this race called Life"

- Early 20th Century Proverb -

The purpose of this blog is to help my wife and kids know the value of my toy investments and also a little history of those toys. My dream is always to have a toy museum, or to be able to display my collection at home. Unfortunately due limited space and the ever growing collection, most of my collection had to be packed in storage boxes and hardly see the light of day. Hopefully I can realized that dream before I....and if not, this blog is a reference page for them if they want to sell the collection.

Some terminology I'll be using in this blog: 

Antique - Stuff that is over 100 years old.

Vintage - Stuff that is over 20 years old. Exception to the rule - Star Wars Vintage refers to Kenner toys made in the 70s-80s only. The relaunch toys of 1995 and beyond are NOT considered as vintage despite being more than 20 years. Transformers toys from the 1980s are known as G1 a.k.a. Generation 1, they are not called vintage.


Retro - Remakes and reissues.


Now for status of rarity:

HTF (Hard to Find) - You can find them in departmental stores if you're lucky. You probably can still get them in collectible stores, online stores or flea market.

Rare - You can get them in collectible stores, online stores, auction sites or flea market if you're lucky.

Very Rare - Turn up once in a while in collectible stores, online stores, auction sites or flea market with high prices.

Super Rare - Turn up once in a long while in collectible stores, online stores, auction sites or flea market with super high prices.

Ultra Rare - Turn up once in a blue moon, when it does, its quickly snapped up despite high prices. Good luck trying.

On rarity, what is rare here may not be rare elsewhere for modern toys. As such, eBay SOLD pricing is used as a reference for value because eBay is international and some of the pricing is from bidding.

Most vintage collectibles from the 70s-80s,  their price will increase year by year as it becomes rarer. In those days, there weren't many collectors compared to today. Kids played with them and most was thrown away when they got older. As such new in box or mint and complete specimens are hard to come by. These toys became rarer as more and more people become collectors and snatched them up in the secondary market, driving up the price.

Toy collecting boom kind of started in the 90s when these kids had grown and started working. And these collectors began to hoard the new toys as investment. Unfortunately there are too many hoarders...making some of these modern toys worthless. For example, the 1995 POTF2 Star Wars figures line.

Finally this blog focus on toy value, and not much on toy features. I have an old blog that is like my own virtual toy museum called Play Again Toys (PAT). It shows more on the toy features. You can check it out here: 

https://patmuseum.wixsite.com/collectibles

However I encountered some issue. Some of my older blogs photos had disappeared. 

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