I was born around the right time, I have an affinity for science fiction, I've got an eBay account -- but why don't I collect Star Wars crap?

The first Star Wars toy I got was a sandspeeder, circa 1978, and nearly every birthday or Christmas after that point included Star Wars of some sort. I still have the sandspeeder around here someplace. My parents, the source of my packrat mentality, stored my and my siblings' toys for decades, waiting for the eventual day that we come and pick up our stuff and take it to our own basements. A couple months ago, I did exactly that.

Not at all.

I sold a bunch of it on eBay. There was even a nice Weequay, still in it's original package, that went on auction. A couple of the complete figures are under glass in our antique booth. My wife took all the Ewoks and claimed them for herself; they guard her computer monitor. The rest are lying around in boxes, waiting to be sold.

A lot of the recent interest in 80s artifacts is an attempt by those of us in our late 20s to early 30s who miss the items from their childhood and now have the money to buy them. GI Joe, Rainbow Brite, He Man, My Little Pony, Transformers: they all have a new following for their old incarnations. People all over, in the US and overseas, and competing with their dollars to buy back their childhood, collect the toys that they broke or lost so long ago.

There's old, and then there's old. Antiques are old, a used kleenex box is old. My collection is up on bookshelves, old leatherbound tomes; it's the century-old oil paintings on the wall. It's bits and pieces of ephemera, one-of-a-kind works of human art. The items in my collection may be old, but there's no replacing them. Age and uniqueness has given the items a value, maybe not priceless, but worthy of being on a shelf for display.

My collection is not leftover toys from my childhood. Those are old, deserving of a garage sale. I played with them for years, I beat the crap out of them, I had my fun, I don't need to buy that back again. Why do I need them now? I can't even play with them like I did in my childhood; that'd ruin the value. A new-old toy, like a genuine tin windup from the 50s or a composite doll from the 1910s, those are old in a good way. The toys from the 80s, mass-produced by the thousands and marketed with half-hour cartoons, are meant to be tossed out, disposable items in a fast-moving market.