Truetorial: Space.
The Final Frontier…

NoisyDvL5

I probably could write a whole series on the “Joys of Moving Your Toy Collection”, so keep that in mind as you indulge me in this, only the second installment. As of today, mostly nearly everything I own is in my garage. It’s in my garage because I have no idea what to do with my new “office”.

My wife and I have entered the unpacking phase of our move. Nearly everything is out of the old house and moved to the new, but we decided early on to use the new garage as a staging area. A two-car garage had been a stalwart part of our “wish list” even after my car accident last November robbing of my need for a parking space. As such, the two-car garage we did get became a great place to quickly stack up the boxes and allow us to worry about unpacking later.

Space.

If I have any advice for future movers, it’s to never do that. Every time that we’ve needed something this weekend, it’s been buried under stuff that you have no idea why we took with this other than it being, unfortunately, our property.

It made sense at the time. You go to your closet and start packing your clothes; your primary thread repertoire is up front and finds its way into a box and gets loaded up. As you dig deeper into the closet you find that JLA shirt that doesn’t quite fit you or that really cool online-bought shirt that ended up being too thin, but you just have to keep it, sort of like a printed meme. Those get boxed up and moved next. And inevitably, the box with the current clothes gets put behind or under the box with the old clothes. My wife is ultra-organized. It’s often joked that I have undiagnosed OCD. And yet here we are, our favorite clothes lost in a sea of cardboard when we have to be at work within the hour. Ugh.

This has also been true of my toy collection. My MOTUCs – I couldn’t tell you where they are right now. I can’t see the giant tub they’re in, but I assume it’s in there. Meanwhile, I’ve got easy access to some older items that make me seriously question my past self’s purchasing decisions. I mean, I didn’t even watch X-Files. I try to look on the bright side, perhaps Mulder & Scully will come in handy here in future IAT photos or maybe I’ll get $5 out of an eBay X-Files lot.

This is here for a reason, trust me.

My collection being inserted backwards into my garage makes me really take note of what I’ve done all these years. I, as I well know, have way too much stuff. My parents weren’t happy helping me move it. My wife is not happy seeing it in physical form in the garage. And, heck, I’m not all that happy about it myself. I could’ve told you this last week, maybe I did, even I don’t need this much. Many of these toys will need to find themselves new homes with new kids and collectors soon. Many have been boxed up for far too long. Many just can’t be appreciated as individual pieces among the chorus that is my collection. And so, looking at it, I know I’ll be doing plenty of trimming and selling in the coming weeks.

And it’s funny to me. Because for the first time in a long time, since before my brother was born and I had my own room, I haven’t had this much space to display all my toys. The new house, among its rooms, affords me a little 10×10 room for a personal office. I’m not sure why I need an office. Maybe I could finally manage to get myself published or at least have a quiet space to work on IAT as we rev up the engines here in 2013, but I do have one.

Prolly shoulda taken the batteries out of the box.

I’m pretty stoked. If nothing else, this will mark the first time in my life that my writing/work desk and my art desk are in the same room; that the art desk will actually be propped up and not a flat surface for whatever. It’s going to be sweet. And there’s going to be toys. Oh, there will be toys.

But which toys? Well, that I don’t know. I’ve got a lot to go through and it’s going to take awhile, particularly those boxes of random/loose cellar toys I had to box up in a hurry (I’m thinking of turning those into a strange finds type column here at IAT). I’m going to get some new shelving and it’s going to be grand. But where do I start in reassembling my collection? Well, unlike all the other quandaries I’m facing, that was one actually pretty easy.

To Sticker, or not to Sticker?

If you’ve been patiently reading along with me, you’ve no doubt questioned why this article is being accompanied by strange pictures of a golden Enterprise-D. When I was a kid and Playmates was plugging away at Star Trek, my parents did a great job of spoiling me with that line. I love that line even to this day. It, more than anything, helped me transition from playing with toys to collecting action figures.

It’s silly to look back on it now with the individually numbered packaging and collectible cards, pogs, and whatnot that Playmates added to make them collectible instead of just making a line of Trek toys, but it totally worked back in the day. Everybody bought those things, wave after wave, ship after ship, and now… well, now it’s all pretty worthless because they made plenty of everything and everyone has it. But! It was a great line in its heyday. It had an impressive character selection, a great range of ships and props, and I’d probably still have bought more if Playmates had the ability to go back and make anything remotely compatible.

Among the many toys my parents bought me for those early 90s birthdays and Christmases was this ship. It’s trying to be a lot fancier than it really is. It’s just a simple gold recolor of the standard Enterprise-D toy. It did include a stand and a little shiny plate pointing out it was limited to 50k (how many toy companies would kill to be able to make/sell 50k units of anything today), but it was really just one more ship in the line at the time. One with limited playability unless you concocted “The Gold-Plated Incident” or “Operation: 24 Karat” in your home adventures.

But I loved it. I didn’t see it like the other ships. To me, it was more like a prop. The show regularly featured gold-painted models in the backgrounds of offices and quarters. They didn’t have red plastic bussard ramscoops and deflector dishes, but I didn’t care. I resolved to keep this guy in box until I had somewhere nice to display it. And for a long while, it became one of only two toys to stay in their package in my young “collection”.

That was about twenty years ago. In all the moves, in the all the backs-and-forths, and changes to how and what I collect, this Enterprise always stayed somewhere known. It was stored, but never under, behind, or in the back. I’m not sure which box my Bird-of-Prey is in or that even sillier Battle-Damaged Enterprise with pop-up off panels and fake damage, but I knew exactly where this gold Enterprise was. When it came to the new house, it came alongside my Hot Toys, my Masterpiece Transformers, etc.. Stuff that probably shouldn’t ever be in the same box or trunk as a toy that I could probably get on eBay for less than my parents paid for it twenty years ago, but that’s what I gave it.

And today, with that room still empty. My art desk and toy shelf in the garage to be cleaned and my work desk still at my old, internet-ready place so I can update the site, I moved in my first toy. I cut the twenty-year old tape and opened the box. I quickly discovered a smarter kid would’ve opened it twenty-years ago and pulled out the included batteries, but nothing was amiss on the toy itself. And it was great to open a “new” ship after all this time. It was worth the wait.

Yes, it’s a silly toy and my wife got a good chuckle out of that little golden Enterprise sitting all alone in what will ultimately be my office, but I’ll take it all in stride. It’s going to get plenty of company soon enough, but for now I think it looks great in there.

It is going to have to give up that center spot in the carpet though. That’s just not feasible.

45 thoughts on “Truetorial: Space.
The Final Frontier…”

  2. Yes, a cool-looking ship, indeed.

    I wish you a speedy resolution to your display situation. After our move back in 2000, I was still finding figures I thought I’d lost up to a year later, and my collection was only 1/3 (perhaps as little as 1/5) of the size it is now, which is scary.

  4. It’s funny, I’m currently setting up my new place, and my brother (who is one of my roommates) has nixed the idea of having a display case full of starships in the living room, “Unless they’re gold.” Maybe I should show him this one.

    I’ve got the D and E from Diamond (B currently on order at the LCS), the refit original, Reliant, and Bird of Prey from Hot Wheels, and a Defiant from a Japanese manufacturer whose name currently escapes me. Because I’m trying to keep them all to relative scale.

    1. I’d love it if someone would come along and do the ships in scale!

      I’d also love it if DST would do a big Enterprise-C. It may seem counterintuitive to do an “obscure” ship, but folks will buy it to complete the sets I’m sure!

  5. (puts on Bill lumbergh glasses) Yeah, now if you could get back to reviewing toys, that’d be great. 🙂

  6. Your house appears to be a near mirror of ours in terms of color scheme. I think all houses now are coming with tan carpeting, tan paint, and white trim!

    I forwarded your article on to my girlfriend who is surprised at how long it is taking me to unpack my own recently-moved collection. You’ve voiced much of what is going on in my own head right now. Do I really need all of this? Do I still care about ALL of this? As such, I’ve been digging through and unpacking the things that I actually miss. I’ve skipped over all sorts of boxed nonsense just to dig out a particular G.I. Joe or Transformers figure, leaving behind old Spider-man Classics, Spawn, and DC Direct pieces in my wake. In some ways moving was the best thing to ever happen to my collection as it really forced me to look at everything and decide “What am I happy to own?” vs. “What do I own?” There’s a key distinction there.

    Keep on posting pics of the room as you set it up as I’m very curious to see how another collector sets up his own “blank space”. I keep staring at one wall in our basement, knowing what I’d like to do with it, but finding myself never 100% certain where to start!

    1. I’m not sure if it’s just finally having my own place and still missing a lot of the necessities, but I feel like I’m living in a hotel.

      I’ll definitely keep with the updates… once I update something. 🙂

      1. You should hang something on the walls; that seems to transform it from “hotel” to “home” pretty well.

  7. Believe me I am thinking of this when time comes when I leave where I am now but thanks to some yard sales I have shrunk it. Comics are another thing. Think may look into trade form for many to save space on shelves.

    I never got that into Star Trek to buy any ships though remember seeing the little models in a show once or twice. Dnno where I would put it unless had a desk in there to put it on.

    1. I recently moved, and I have well in excess of 3000 comics. It is a pain, and I’m trying to find a solution to dump a large portion of my collection. I’m fully aware I’ll probably never look at 80% of the comics I own ever again. The problem is that throwing them out seems wasteful, and trying to sell them on eBay or something just seems like it would be a huge hassle.

      1. I forgot to mention, I also have 7 large boxes or so of trades (and about 400-500 DVDs). So switching to trades isn’t always a great space saver, though it may force you (or me) to examine which stories you actually care about enough to want to keep and read again.

      2. do you have a local library or children’s hospital down there? Ask if you could donate them to the kids. Most of my thirty year collection (comics and toys) was “lost in storage” in 2007, so that was forty less boxes I had (a chance) to move later on. I did locate some of them at a local flea market later, but very few were ones I “needed”, like NTT #38, the original “Who is Wonder Girl?” and the JLAvengers mini.

        Even now, with only a five year plus collection, I’m getting the urge to throw them all on ebay the next chance I get. I finally cut the addiction this past year (oh hey, it’s 20*13* now! LOL) and Marvel were long since priced out of my pull list and the nu52 soured me on the rest to the point I would only get maybe half a dozen titles to keep up with, and even those were victims of massive crossover collisions to the point of annoyance, so….I killed the pull. I can always get a trade, later, if I really wanted to.

  8. is that display base detachable? cuz that would look pretty fly hanging from the ceiling, in a dogfight w/ a wind raider or something…

    1. It is indeed! Other than the first three which had no stands, I always appreciated how Playmates handled the stands – alternate battery covers. One normal and one with the stand molded as one piece.

      It works so much better than the DST ones where the ships pop on and off and then the stand breaks – which is what happened to my gorgeous DST Enterprise-A.

  9. Nice read, Noisy!

    But now that you have everything just there in the garage, it makes it that much easier for that Collection Intervention lady to come by and force-gut your cache. So look out!!!! 😉

    Shame that you never watched X-Files! Good TV for its day.

    I still have the Dahlberg-sculpted Flukeman from the McFarlane series.
    Pretty serious sculpt on that thing, and the display base goes awesome with any TMNT stuff.

  10. How sweet! In the last episode of Toy Hunter this season (I’m assuming they’ll get another one), Jordan’s employees mounted his original Star Wars toys in a shadow box and gave it to his as a gift. It pretty much brought him to tears. Though they were clearly played with and worth pretty much nothing (missing capes, weapons, etc), it clearly meant a lot to him. This is a guy who has found $20,000 figures and gold edition transformers, yet it was his original toys from childhood that made the most impact just like your gold Enterprise D. This is why I love collecting toys.

    1. I didn’t catch that episode!

      Toys from our childhood ARE our memories, and while we may obsess about paint on a new figure, all of the little defects like chipped paint, faded stickers, missing accessories, etc. are endearing because they’re OURs.

  11. Nice Noisy! I too can’t wait to see some pics of your office! As someone who has zero free space left to display anything..or heck even move around unhindered I am Jealous of your new house, but in a good way 😀

    1. Thanks, Doc! I’ll keep with the updates as it does seem there’s demand! (Though some new reviews wouldn’t hurt…)

      I’ve completely lost the December Mattel box though… LOL

  12. Having moved twice in three years, your feelings about your collection are mirroring the way mine have turned. Yeah, all those Acroyears I bought are cool, but…are they ever going to be on display again? Are the Joes? Are the weird assortment of 6″ Marvel guys I ended up with?

    Fundamentally, I have too many Transformers alone to ever have out all at once. That doesn’t leave me a lot of room to keep buying random other junk like I have for years and years. (Except glow-in-the-dark Glyos. Obviously.) As hard as it is for me to let stuff go…I think sooner or later you have to.

    I hope I’m not growing up.

      1. I don’t think it’s growing up! I think I’m just to the point where I’d rather have 100 really cool figures than 1000 okay figures. I’m horrible at getting rid of stuff, but I really want to clean out the garage and I don’t foresee a lot of it coming into the house.

  13. So jealous of that room. Unless your house is huge, once you have kids, kiss that room goodbye!

  15. I remember seeing that one, but I don’t think I *owned* it? I know I had a model version I painted gold (with black and red accents), but don’t think I had that one.

    When I moved in 2006, I was half-packed when moving day came, and most of the unpacked were stacks of video tapes and the toys in the spare bedroom on shelves, which comprised some mostly forgotten original story in my mind, which were a conglomerate of Trek, 5″ Marvel and even the Superman:Man of Steel, among others that fit. My friend John had the “honor” of packing those. I think I managed to grab all of those “loose” figures, and still lost the DC-TAS and TJ/JLA collections, and some of the official Marvel collection boxes, as well as the entire ARH and G1 TF collections, among others.

    One thing I did manage to retain was the NG Bridge set, mint in NM box (a flap came loose at some point, and it was too big to put in another box, and somewhere along the way, it did get a touch weathered by the elements. I have no idea about batteries included, but now I have the worry that the insides of that set are slowly melting from any included batteries disintegrating. thanks.

    I remember one of my pet peeves was filling the storage unit so fast, I didn’t have much room for the SHELVES I had been keeping everything on and had to leave several behind. even then, I didn’t have a large enough vehicle when I did try and get some of my stuff out that I lost those with the rest.

    Of course, I had help putting it in, but none taking it out. and my plan after I get my legal/finances straightened out (hopefully soon)? MOVE. and with my current limited mobility, I’m screwing Marmaduke, here. :/

    oh, and one of those legal things? settling on my own car accident from 2009. It took me a year to get $3k to replace my car, and my lawyer claims one excuse after another for the other delays. Biggest one I know of is the old man who hit me/other guy died a year after the accident. FML.

    I hope your settlement goes smoother. My sister is now insisting I should have settled with the insurance out of court without a lawyer, so I wouldn’t have so many losses to take with the lawyer, which now includes $1500 for a medical deposition (exCUSEme???). fun. NOT.

    and good luck with any publishing ventures. I have a couple friends who have gotten published with companies and independently. One was just about to send off his third manuscript when another ….well, it was the Catholic Church’s own case file on his experience that they sent him about a week before he sent his manuscript in for “Blessed Are the Wicked”, which backs up everything Steve ever said about his extreme haunting up here in Onion.
    (see also: A Haunting: Fear House; Fact or Faked: Truckstop Terror; whichever ghost Hunter did the Morse Mill Hotel after their own “Morse Mill Project”; or any of Steven LaChance’s books.)
    (sorry for the plugs, but it’s kinda hard to explain Pops’ situation without going into full detail mode.)

        1. I didn’t mean to be insensitive; sounds like you’re dealing with a lot. And I do admit to wanting to hear more about the Catholic Church and your friend’s manuscript.

    2. The garage is way fuller than I really thought it’d be and yeah, I’ve had to go through and be more mindful of batteries in the last couple days. 🙂

      Good luck with your legal/finances. Mine have been fun, I just found out the insurance company only paid a 2/3rds of my medical when they were supposed to cover all of it. Had to take some of the house money and pay that sucker off. :/

  16. I love this entry. That Star Trek you unboxed makes me feel all nostalgic. Being a Superman fan, I still managed to keep my beat up 1988 Superman Doll (dunno what toy company it comes from but it just says DC 1988 on his behind). It’s this Superman if you guys could help me identify it

    http://actionfigureplanet.blogspot.com/2012/02/origin-of-my-toy-collecting.html

    I’m moving in soon, and pretty much he’ll be the only beat up collection in the display room soon. My dilemma is should I let it stay that way with it’s battle scars? Or should I have it repainted? Still contemplating if I should get the HT Superman this year. He seems to work well when paired with this one because I’ve made a deal with myself that the moment I purchase that HT superman is the moment I’ll be quitting toy collecting. So that’s the reason why I’m holding off from purchasing that piece of beauty 😀

    1. I’ve never seen that Superman before… It’s neat though!

      I’d say leave it as is unless it’s outright broken. I’ve replaced a TF or two if a limb is missing, but I love having all my original beat up Super Powers!

      1. Back in the late 80s/early 90s, there was a company called Applause that made figures like that. I know they did several Batman-related characters. I wonder if he’s one of theirs. A quick search didn’t turn him up, but I think that might be an alley to pursue.

        And definitely keep the battle scars.

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