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Letters From North America Not having much to do last Saturday and it was too wet to go outside and putter in the yard, I decided to go downtown to something called a “collectors bazaar”. Now, let me just tell you right off the last word of this description describes exactly what was happening down there…..It was bizarre. Like most of us, when I was a kid, I had toys to play with. The thought of keeping those toys in boxes and never, ever using them just never occurred to me. I actually used my toys. I wore them out. My dump trucks…were used to dump. My bicycles were used to get me from one place to another. When I was 9 or 10 years old, I don’t know that the word‘investment’ was in my vocabulary. I had a friend over the other day. He was looking around our house and saw a collection of toy soldiers in a case. He brightened up and said…”Are those the same ones we used to play with when we were kids?” “Indeed, they are.” I replied. We sat down and got a good laugh, remembering how many hours we used to play with these small pieces of metal. Now, after all of these years, they still are holding up, although with many, nicks, chips and signs of wear and tear. Well, anyway, back to my story about the collectors show. I walk into this huge cavern of an auditorium and there before my eyes are hundreds and hundreds of booths set up with people selling toys. Now, these are new toys from years gone by. There was stuff from the days when I was a kid. Still in boxes, still new, still unused. How can this be? Where has this stuff been all of these years? Did some astute parent or some really forward thinking kid decide years ago to put those new toys up as a hedge against inflation 40 or 50 years in the future? Man, I was using those toys. I was playing with those toys. To leave one in the box only meant one thing…Christmas. You were expected to actually use these, not pack them up in their original boxes and stuff them in a closet for ½ a lifetime. Well, eventually your toys broke or got lost or worst of all, stolen. But in any event you didn’t have them anymore. Maybe you gave some away. Who knows? In any event, you didn’t have them anymore. Well, out at this show, they were all there …brand new. Still in unopened boxes. Only with one big difference, the price. Now, what I threw away was selling for 25 or 30 times what I paid back when I was a kid. If I wanted to buy something, the prices were so high; I couldn’t afford to play with the stuff. Just buy it, stick it in a case somewhere and look at it. Too expensive to play with these days. What a shame. I mentioned this to a friend of mine and was told that most of the dolls bought for little girls today aren’t actually used, they are put away to be sold years later. Pardon me, but this just runs contrary to what I believe and have practiced all of my life. Use it or lose it. Kids need to be kids, for pete’s sake. Let them play with those toys. If you want an investment, buy them some stock. I wish my folks had bought me some. In fact I wish I’d have bought some. If you ask me, kids grow up entirely to fast anyway, these days. They have all of the time in the world to be adults. Adults have to worry about payroll, bills, taxes, relationships, and most of all ….cash flow. Let kids be kids. Let kids play with toys. Buy them something that they can break and you don’t fall apart because it broke. Kids break things. Get over it. It’s stuff. Kids are more important than something you have held onto for a zillion years. I want kids to be able to play with things and grow old thinking about all of the fun they had …playing with things. It’s hard to understand how a dump truck operates when it’s in a box on a shelf, in the closet, at the top of the stairs, on the second floor. Now, that I think about it I wish I had kept all of those toys that I had or my boys had. I’d have liked to put them in a big box and let new kids play with old toys. Just go to town with them. If they broke, so what? They’re old toys. This might be too much for them to handle. You reckon? It’d be interesting to see what would happen. |
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