If you start cleaning your attic, you may find yourself rummaging through old toys and games that perhaps your parents, or even you, played with as a kid. What some people view as old junk is gold to antique toy collectors, who are looking to make a profit off of nostalgia and a well-loved toy.
Wind-up tops, race cars, and pop guns. Everyone remembers their favorite toys growing up. Adults today are finding nostalgia and a lucrative hobby collecting antique toys from past generations.
Entering the Kalamazoo Expo Center for the 63rd Circus Maximus Toy Show you see and hear a buzz of buyers and sellers negotiating prices and sharing stories. Collector Phil Mitchell loves to collect and sell toys that connect with many different people.
“I’m a Lego specialist, along with GI Joes, vintage toys, Barbie’s, but Legos are our flagship."
Mitchell owns Lost Toys, a toy store in Kalamazoo. He says that of all the toy expos he goes to, Kalamazoo brings out the biggest crowd. He attends two to three shows each month, and travels all around the Midwest, selling vintage toys. Mitchell says his passion for toy collecting probably means that he never really grew up.
“I like to see people happy. I like to play with toys, I think they need to be played with, I think they need to come out of the box, respected as a toy and eventually passed on to somebody else.”
Mitchell’s toy collecting started when he was about six years old. Vendor Joe Waiman has been collecting for just a few years.
“This is something that we do kind of to have fun and try to unload a few things that’s all. And, seeing what other people have. Some of the stuff people have is from your childhood and kind of brings back memories and stuff, and I kind of like the older toys better than the new ones.”
Waiman doesn’t consider himself much of a collector as compared to his toy show neighbors, who have tables of toys accumulated throughout years of the business.
“The person next to us, now I think that’s pretty much his livelihood, and like the guy in back of us, that’s his livelihood I think," Waiman said. "So, yeah some people that’s what they do, they’re just, some are retired and this is what they do and they go show to show.”
The Circus Maximus Toy Show has some toys that are pricier than others, like The Avenger’s #1 comic book that was selling for 800 dollars. But no matter what the cost, collectors like Phil Mitchell find it rewarding to sell their toys to people who love them just as much as they did as a child.
"Toys are timeless. You got people that graduate from college and they want to live vicariously through their kids so they’re looking for vintage toys and that’s kind of the niche we have, is we find those toys for the right ages and people buy them and they give them an excuse to play with them again with their kids.”
The Circus Maximus Toy Show is just one of the many events that bring these collectors together to express that passion with many more people that are still kids at heart. The show will be back in Kalamazoo this October.