Ok.
This is for most of you who have been collecting most of your lives.

The long term toy-whores. We're talkin' fossils.

Do you have a memory from child hood of that certain toy you could have gotten, but the vintage look (well, maybe not at the time) didn't appeal to you, or maybe you passed for something else? But you could have gotten it.

I remember going to the Japanese toy store in LA and I passed on a Gori Vinyl with the rooted hair because i thought it was lame. Now i wish I had it.

Also...
I remember back in the 70's I had a mutual friend who would collect Japanese toys too.
He would break all his stuff, wheras I would store mine back in the boxes.

He had a large missile firing Zaboga, I should have bopped him in the head and ran off with it because he was a dumbass. I think back to all the cool stuff he had and broke to bits (Imagine a toybox FUll of Vintage Microman). I still have a few toys I managed to rescue from his oblivion. (I didn't steal them, I BORROWED them! ) Heck, I probably could have traded him one stinking Olivia Newton John album for everything he had, but I didn't.

Any related stories?

Mine all seem to be "That is too much money for that" and I regret it later. The keiji-k godess bootleg on yahoo, a couple hawaii vinyls I passed on, and the worst one, during the infancy of yahoo japan, I was unwilling to spend $500 to get an unpainted blue godzilla! Arrrgh! It is a 3k figure now, but I wasn't playing in that league 7-8 years ago. Such is life.

Other than that? Early on, I learned that $10-20 more than I want to pay now, as much as it sucks, it easier to get through, than years of waiting for a toy to show up again. Money comes and goes, some of the old toys never show up for years. Some, you only even get one shot at, and that is it.

Off the subject alittle! My friend Dan was Transformers crazy! Dan would ask everyone he came in contact with if they had any old Transformers laying around. At band practice one day his drummer brought a box full of old, well played with transformers along. A deal was struck a little cash for a box of old dog eared toys. The drummers wife stopped in to see Dans wife a couple of weeks later, on the way she sopped at a yard sale across the street. Low and behold a table full of boxed G-1 transformers! She went to tell Dan, sadly he was not in! She went back to the yard sale and asked how much? All for a hundred Bucks! The next day the couple went to Dans and offered the toys to him for five hundred dollars. Dan refused the offer thinking they would cave in for a lower price. The couple took the toys to a local comic shop, they offered $1,300. Dan almost stopped collecting toys after this. Later I learned they had offered to sell Dan almost every G-1 transformer made (times two). A grandmother had bought one for each of her two grandsons so they wouldn't fight over them....

I have a huge amount of regret from the pst years - I owned a collectible shop up until last April and the amount of cool stuff I had go through my hands was unbelievable!

Brian can atest to this! He use to be my customer coming all the time looking at the Jap Vinyl! Oh how life has changed and now I am buying stuff from him.....irony you say? How are those Hawaiian Bullmarks treating you lately? Please tel me you still have them as they were mne from when I was a wee lad. Don't even get me started on what I passed up when I was a kid living in Hawaii and the mainland. I remember a trade I did with a local kid. One of the Bullmark Utra 7 monster vinyls for a Kaikaider vinyl motorcycle. My Mom made me undo the trade and I never saw the bike again. And NO! I don't want to know how much it is worth on todays market as I would probably still have it!

I'm going to go huddle in the corner of my office and cry over my new SB figs......excuse me!

This is very sad indeed!

I trashed all my original 12" GI Joes back in the 70s so if that counts-hahaha..Really wish id not played with em but thay were a blast back in the day..

I remember Takatoku valks going for $35 back in the days at Comics & Comix (Frisco old geeks know where - North Beach area near the swimming pool). I wanted to, but spent my all money on Adidases and parachute pants.

Dr Tounge, where in Hawaii did you grow up? I grew up in Kona on the Big Island.

Well the year and a half I was there was the late 60's and I don't remember a whole lot from that (just all the pics my folks took of me in the really cool Hawaiian shirts I wish I still had)! We were on the Big Island & Oahu mostly.

Then the 4 months I stayed over the summer with my Dad in the mid 70's was on Oahu close to Pearl City!! Daiei Store ruled in the Pearl City Shopping center! I actually won an Ultra 7 coloring contest through the store. I also remember going to a signing for Diamond Eye at some other all Japanese store and being the only Hoale there!!! Think I still have that poster somewhere signed in Japanese! LOL! Oh and then there was the Ultra 7 Stage show at the Bowl - got scared shitless by a guy in an Eleking costume who snuck up behind me.......man memories are all flowing back.......... I am so fucking old........

Alive & kicking: http://www.billiken-shokai.co.jp/

My stories echo Lostinky's- I was a transformer collector before Sofubi, and I remember just when I got back into it, maybe around 98-99 going to a local toy fair, and seeing a guy with deadstock Diaclone (japanese and Italian Car Robos) for $90 a piece... and I distinctly remember thinking to myself "Man I want these, but there's no way I'm spending $100 on a single toy"

How times change... About a year later I found myself spending $600 on a mint boxed Diaclone Corvette Stingray (for those who know their Diaclone) wishing I had the Porsche, Lamborghini and Lancia Stratos I had saw to go along with it...
EDIT- Andy actually has a shot of the Corvette Stingray @kaiju Korner-http://kaijukorner.blogspot.com/2011/09/super-festival-57.html#more

Fortunately Takara eventually reissued a lot of the original G1 line- which I bought all I could... But then I went to college and over time sold the mail-away figures, the contest figures and the e-hobby released stuff (all the hard-to-find stuff) to pay for photo supplies... which I kinda regret now... I love the original Diaclone Car Robos...

I also remember the point in my childhood when I realized you could disassemble 3 3/4" gi joes with a small screwdriver- So many figures destroyed.

I remember right before Tower Records closed shop, seeing the original Tim Biskup Helper figure on clearance for like $12 or something, thinking it was cool, but I wasn't into that sort of toy just yet, and passing...

I never had any toy regrets of passing on something when I as a kid.

But I have a lot of those now.

Lindsay, Vanessa, Megan.... Damnit why did I pass on them?! Really regret it now. Oops sorry....

I can relate to this as well, but it was at FAQ Schwartz in Vegas....