Toying With Their Emotions : Collectors: For many at show and sale, Gumby, G.I. Joe and Matchbox cars rekindle the memories of childhood.
BUENA PARK — There wasn’t a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle to be found at the West Coast Toy Collectors 86th Show and Sale on Sunday, but the more than 500 people in attendance didn’t seem to notice.
While turtles Raphael, Donatello, Leonardo and Michaelangelo are the rage among today’s kids, it was the venerable G.I. Joe, Gumby, Raggedy Ann and Matchbox cars that were the big hits with those in the crowd.
“It’s like going back to your childhood,” said organizer George Zaninovich. “I think a lot of people want to bring back the childhood memories that relate to the toys that they find here.”
The show, held at the Sequoia Athletic Club, offered toy enthusiasts the opportunity to display their impressive collections of vintage items, including an array of cars, trains, planes, comics, miniatures, games and dolls.
“People just stand here and go through nostalgia trips,” said vendor Jackie Grant, who was selling an eclectic selection of items that included a two-foot-high mechanical Frankenstein, a Heinz ketchup-bottle telephone, a Jackie Gleason watch and dozens of vintage metal lunch pails.
“I got involved collecting these things because I like the things that happened when we were younger, and I think a lot of people here feel the same way,” said Grant, 52. “I never really grew up. Sometimes I think I’m still 10 years old.”
Another vendor, Paul Conner, 61, has been selling electric trains at various shows since 1967. The San Diego resident said his passion for collecting electric trains dates back more than 40 years.
“For me, it’s nostalgia,” Conner said as he straightened out his display of locomotives. “When I was a kid, we’d go to the tracks and watch the trains go by. They were big, and they were powerful and they would shake the ground. I always wanted my own toy train, but I never got one. So, when I got old enough, I bought plenty of them.”
The rows of tables at the show were cluttered with unique and obscure items such as a Betty Boop alarm clock, a Bozo light switch, a Roy Rogers puzzle, a Barney Rubble doll, and Pez candy dispensers.
“A lot of these antique toys we had when we were kids, and we just tore them up in a day, never thinking about what they might be worth,” said 57-year-old Fountain Valley resident Frank Villhard.
“Just being here looking at them brings back memories,” he said, wistfully. “Things were a lot simpler then.”
Villhard, 57, came to the show to add to his toy airplane and truck collection. His wife, Barbara, 56, was looking for antique dolls.
“I have so many dolls that I have to rotate which ones I have out in the house,” she said, laughing. “I started collecting three years ago and just went wild.”
Alan Goldberg, 40, who had hundreds of his Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars for sale at the show, said he can’t explain his fascination with them.
“I started the collection when I was a kid, and I just never stopped,” he said. “A lot of the men who buy from me played with Hot Wheels or Matchbox cars as kids. A lot of times, their moms gave their collections away, and they want to restart it.”
Roger Davis, 51, spent much of his youth collecting model cars used as promotional models at car dealerships. He was at the show selling some of the more than 2,000 cars he has obtained throughout the years, including models of a 1954 Ford Sedan, a 1964 Oldsmobile Cutlass convertible and a 1960 Thunderbird convertible.
“The first model car I bought was a 1949 Ford,” Davis said. “I bought it in 1949 for $1.49.”
Although Davis was a kid when he began his lifelong hobby, his customers are strictly adults.
“These really aren’t toys,” he said of the model cars. “And besides, kids have so many other diversions like video games now. They just don’t seem to have the same fascination with cars or trains as we did.”
