I go yard saling almost every week, and never find anything. I mean anything. I just live in the wrong area for this. I watch YouTube videos of toy collector's live hunts and their bad weeks are typically better than my year. Granted, I've had some decent luck lately at thrift stores, but yard sales, I think I've bought maybe five toys in the last fifteen years in Bangor. But today marked my first yard sale purchases of the season. It's Friday, let's go toy hunting.
It started off with an awesome, spinning, glass display case. I paid $10 and got that and an air conditioner. I woulda spent $10 on the case alone so that was one hell of a deal for me. It's a little dirty, needs some windex and a good cleaning but I love pieces to display my collection on, so the mini glass spinner gets added to the ranks of the lighted display case, the wooden spinner and the bubble rack. And now I'm wishing I bought either one of the stands I saw a couple weeks that would have been perfect to set this on so it'd be a little higher. It stands at just under 4 feet tall.
At another yard sale, I came across a couple boxes of toys, mostly sports figurines I know nothing about, wooo go sportsball. But there were also a number of modern Ninja Turtles and a couple WWE figures. I grabbed a handful to ask for the price, a quarter a piece. A quarter? Perfect! So I bought my handful, dropped them off in the car, went to another yard sale next door, couldn't stop thinking about the other Turtles, then went back and grabbed another handful of the ones I was questioning. Somehow, in the few minutes I was gone, some jackass must have bought a couple of the figures I was looking at. After considering hunting down the nearby children to find the culprit, I decided my haul was good enough. Oh, oops, it turns out that jackass was me, I bought them. I just forgot that I paid the woman an extra dollar and grabbed a couple more my first time through. So I got all the toys I wanted.
For the figures I'm keeping, these two Shredders, because, come on, Shredder. I picked up the talking version of the 2014 Animated Shredder a couple months ago at Salvation Army, wishing it was the regular one, and now I have him. And is it me or this movie Shredder sick as hell? I love this thing. I might even buy the cape on eBay at some point because he'd look even better with that. I was actually a fan of the two new TMNT movies when I finally got around to watching them, I might get hate mail for this but I actually liked them more than the original movie, but of course not more than Secret Of The Ooze, go ninja go ninja go!
I also picked up these Turtles, not really a fan of the design on any of these. I find it, I don't know, comical yet sad that our technology has progressed so much, yet our cartoons and action figures have a fraction of the detail they did 20, even 30 years ago. The articulation is better, for the most part, but they all look like knock-offs to me. The figures aren't worth much but I have a few other random Turtles I've picked up in Goodwill boxes over the past few months so I'll bundle up all the ones I don't want and sell them in a lot.
I also grabbed WWE Mattel basic figures of John Cena and Vince McMahon. Although I do collect some WWE Mattel figures, I only get my favorites, and usually just the Elite versions. I already have a John Cena because every kid who buys wrestling figures has a Cena, but McMahon is a little more rare. So these two will be added to my lot to sell, which I picked up months ago at Goodwill, right before my herniated disc issues in the spring. But for now they'll hang out with the others on display.
I also picked up an Imaginext Two Face, because if a kid in Bangor has any toys whatsoever, he's got McDonalds and Imaginext. I'll add him to my growing lot of Imaginext superheroes for eBay. I probably would have loved these as a kid, their small size is ideal for playsets and perfect to play with. Secretly, I'm keeping them around just in case I decide to get back into customizing figures because I've always wanted to do an MOTU line out of these. But let's face it, never gonna have time, too many books to write.
And now, on to Goodwill, where I picked up an entire armload. It's rare I buy anything there, so a whole armload is like whoa. For starters, there was a Weapons & Warriors board game from the early 90s, I didn't have it, but I know it has a bit of a following so I picked it up for a couple dollars to resell, and inside of it, while checking it out when I got home... one of the missiles to the early 90s GI Joe Headquarters that I was missing. It's on display on my dresser right now, I just put it out a couple months ago. My sister and I used to set up the Joes on it and shoot them off, but one of the missiles went under the radiator and down a tiny little hole never to be seen again. My wife says only I could lose a missile under the heater in 1994 and find it 25 years later in a board game box at Goodwill. The game isn't complete but I'm sure someone out there needs these parts.
I came across a Supersize Superheroes Hulk figure from 1991. I
couldn't find any of him loose online so I grabbed him for $2 to clean
and sell. They had some figures bundled up in two packs so I grabbed
those, one of Joker from 1989, which I actually had as a kid. He was
taped to a figure I didn't recognize who turned out to be Atalon from
the 1995 UltraForce line. There were a couple other loose UltraForce
figures that I didn't grab. But I did pick up Prince Lightstar from the
mid 90s Skeleton Warriors line. I didn't collect them, they were a
little after my time, but I always admired the figures and my cousin had
the horse. This is my first time holding one of the action figures and I
must say, I'm rather impressed with the mobility. They're not worth
much so I think I might keep him.
I also found three wrestling figures, Suicide/Manik from TNA Impact's Jakks line and both Hawk and Animal, the Legion Of Doom 2000 figures from Jakks WWE Classic line. Animal has his shoulder pads and Hawk has his collar. I have Legion Of Doom from the Classics line in their blue attire, both in and out of package, but not LOD 2000. Thinking about keeping them but they do get a bit of money on eBay and I could use some extra cash for ISBNs for my books so we'll see. I think I'm going to clean them up and sell all three figures. Not a bad haul considering I usually
walk away with nothing.
I also stopped at Salvation Army and picked up a couple dragons from the Safari line for $1 each. I always like looking at these at bookstores but I'm not really into dragons so these will be going in the resell pile. There was also a Playmobil jeep with a couple figures that I bought for $1. I'll resell them along with some other Playmobil figures I got in a Goodwill box and previous Salvation Army bags. It's not worth too much but it is kind of rare so I'm sure there's someone out there who will appreciate me finding this.
All in all, this was probably my most successful day toy hunting, spent about $15 and if I decide to sell everything, I'll pull in about $75 to $100. I'm aiming for $320 so I can buy a 10 pack of ISBN numbers to get my hiking guides in stores for the spring, well closer to $400 because it's another $25 for each barcode. I had big plans this past spring but with my herniated disc/sciatica putting me out of action for almost 3 months, I missed out on almost the entire waterfall season as well as some toy shows I was really looking forward to. And my book releases got delayed due to the fact I couldn't actually sit up to write them. So next year it is. I'd rather find toys I want to keep for myself but reselling them works fine as well. Gotta love the hunt.
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