WTF was I thinking?

I had the good luck of accidentally breaking all these creepy clown figurines I've been carrying from residence to residence since I first moved out of the house ten years ago (I've lived in nine different places since). I couldn't get rid of them because my relatives bought them for me as a baby, but as soon as they broke I joyously threw them in the trash.

I don't think that, but lord knows my parents do. I still get the occasional, 'So when are you moving out all your Star Wars crap?' call about once a year. 'When they're worth something!' I generally respond.

I'm with you. I've threw out a bunch of stuff before I moved.

I've been going through the rest, have the other have of my garage as a staging area.

I have three sections.

1. Give away.
2. Trash.
3. Sell.

Some useless crap.

One fake spider
A ton of Second Edition D&D stuff.
A bra/cover for a 99 eclipse.
Speaker Stands
Bunch of Art Supplies I don't use any more.
Old fridge I bought from someone for 20 bucks.
Old microwave.
Some lamps.
A few unassembled models (I still haven't decided if I want to keep them.)
A bunch of Mech Warrior stuff
Old VHS Camcorder with steady cam. Still in great condition.
And much much more...

Second edition D&D stuff you say? Hmmm...

If they're still unassembled, you don't want to keep them.

I had this realization last year when I was doing a big room remodel in my house. Lots of comics and other assorted junk went to the eBays, recycling center, and the dump.

I hope the recycling guy enjoyed that complete run of Spawn.

No. I don't think he did. I don't think he did at all.

I've got stacks of '80s metal on vinyl that is, for all intents and purposes, useless. Look, I'm not ashamed of the fact that I bought Tygers of Pan Tang and Pantera and Saxon and Armored Saint albums when I was a kid, and if I heard one of those songs I might even say "hey, Armored Saint!" but really, what good will all this vinyl ever do ANYONE? Or to put it another way, WTF was I thinking?

I wonder the same thing every time I look at the neglected buckets full of Heroclix in my closet... among other artifacts of my wasteful spending

Yup I get the same thing.... I moved out of my parents house over 15 years ago but I still get the yearly "when you gonna clear the loft of your stuff?" question.

I have to say that I don't want to go through it all, because now with the benefit of hindsight and of course the advent of Ebay pretty much killing off the collecting for profit side of things, I would move right on past the "WTF was I thinking?" question and just go straight on to the Comic Book Guy's last words before he's nuked in the Omega Man Simpsons parody of "I've wasted my life!"

Beyond that though I have had many WTF was I thinking moments when I look back on my old comics collection (actually sitting in my loft) containing such *ahem* classics as Deaths Head, Dragons Claws, Robocop vs Terminator, and an infinite amount of "oh we've just rebooted it back to issue 1 again" DC and Marvel cash in's....

With any luck my loft will explode erasing this piss poor collection from the face of the world...

I was just chucking out, yesterday, a whole bunch of generic fantasy novels I read in my teenage years. I think there were some of the D&D lot in there.
There's a fair amount of other stuff from that period that should probably go (Magic cards, say), but I can't really bring myself to throw things out when I know how much I could theoretically sell them for if I took the time.

Hehe I thought that with my comics collection, especially some of my Epic edition Akira's and the more bizarre early editions of Dark Horse output like Roachmill. Yet 10 minutes on Ebay showed me that what I as a teen thought of as a canny investment as well as something cool to read, is actually worth (in total) about £10 in change.

Hell I have a Watchman graphic novel first print signed by Dave Gibbons, yet on Ebay (my only source for this info sadly) you can get an Alan Moore signed special edition of Watchmen for £20 to £30....

So all in all flogging out that kind of cash for first prints of crap like Batman: The cult, back in the 80's has potentially earned me a net profit of about minus £500.

Somewhere out there in the highest floor of a huge skyscraper, looking out from a massive picture window silhouetted as the blinds robotically begin to close, a gaggle of corporate overlords are laughing. Laughing! LAUGHING!

Buy shit you don't need. Neglect it. Get rid of it without making any profit. Buy more shit you don't need. Repeat. Repeat. Hey did you say HeroClix?

I totally scored a few weeks ago when my friend salvaged about seven large, brand new canvases from his moving rommate's 'trash' pile. That's like, a hundred bucks, right there. I already ruined one of 'em with a painting.

Me and my family went back to Kentucky for a relative's wedding and stayed at my parent's house last week. I decided to stay behind Friday while everybody went out for lunch and I opened the closet to my old room and found stacks and stacks of those blue storage bins filled with all the stuff from my late childhood/early teens.

You would not believe the amount of Wizards I had. The funniest stuff was the "Casting Calls" they did for movies like Spider-Man and X-men. Glenn Danzig should fire his agent for not getting Wolverine. In addition (among other assorted things) I found Jenny McCarthy's Playboy debut, VHS copies of Clerks and Tommy Boy, a Gin Blossoms and a Toad the Wet Sprocket c.d. and an embarrassing amount of blacklight posters.

Anybody in the market for a huge blacklight YingYang to adorn their living room?

God I was thinking about this a lot while moving this weekend. Most of it is childhood toys that my mother doesn't want to throw away (pack rat) but sweet Jesus I don't remember playing with 90% of these things.

I've got tons of Maxim, FHM, etc. in storage bins. One day I'm going to put them up in lots on E-Bay.

There's a ton of clothes that I'm finally giving away that have been cluttering up the closets here in the house. About time I got rid of that stuff.

Goodwill is your friend. Can you say tax deduction?

Barbies. A biiiiig box of Barbies taking up space in my hall closet where I really need the room. Barbie as Marilyn Monroe. Barbie as Wonder Woman (you'll pry *that* one from my cold, dead hands, by the way). 1950's replica Barbie. 1960's replica of Barbie's cousin, Francie. Original 1974 Quick Curl Barbie. Plus, an original set of Donny and Marie Osmond dolls, an original Shaun Cassidy doll, an original John Travolta doll, and an original Andy Gibb doll. All sittin' around in the closet, taking in the sights and sounds of a big Hewlett Packard printer box. A fine place for my doll collection...

My uncle bought all my Star Wars toys from me when I was ten (wooo! $100!), and my dad sold the rest at yard sales (without asking!!), all I've got left are a couple dozen morie related toys. I left a box of Spawn toys at my last house for the neighbor girls, who flipped out. They loved them.

Last summer I moved from the east coast to the west coast, so there was a great purge of all the bullshit I'd collected over the years.

Just as a note though, there is lots of stuff you can do with old books and comics that you can't sell, but don't want to throw away. You can often donate books and comics to public libraries or books behind bars type organizations. There are lots of people out there who can still learn valuable life lessons from your old Dragonlance novels.

My small comic collection is full of evidence that I was trying to collect comics as an investment, at the worst possible time: the mid-90s "let's make 50 variant covers!" glut. The result: seconds of entertainment and a box full of worthless, often really poorly drawn crap (I'm looking at you, X-Force #1).

Also add the unassembled models, geeky knickknacks, and tons of second-hand paperbacks. This stuff is especially irritating when you move and realize you're lugging around boxes of crap you haven't looked at in years. Is there some kind of packrat rehab?

ETA: Also back issues of Fangoria, which could become valuable since back issues no longer exist.

I went home last weekend -- the first time I'd been back since moving out six years ago. I've still got a shit-ton of comics in my Mom's basement. To my dismay, I found the full runs of all the "Heroes Reborn" titles, and Christ I hate to admit it, Rob Liefeld's take on "The Fighting American." I could've better spent my money on lapdances. Fuck my college years.

I went through a bunch of stuff this weekend as I was straightening up my office. I threw out my old G3 PowerMac, and found more room for my graphic novels and Hobby Japans.

I am planning to unload a bunch of old action figures (X-Files(!), Gundam, pre-Legends Toy Biz figures, etc.) come Christmas - I did really well unloading a bunch of stuff last year at a Marines/Toys For Tots drive, and I figure some deserving kid will get more enjoyment out of an old figure than I'd get trying to hock the thing for peanuts on eBay. Figures I really like and want to keep (loose) are going in a small display case in my office.

AD&D, Star Frontiers books and modules, old Star Trek and Dr. Who RPG games and assorted RPG miniatures, etc. I'm probably going to unload soon as well (may save the Dr. Who stuff for my homie EdHocken if he's interested).

My Megos (original and customs), however, ain't going nowhere! Those stay in the family!

This gives me a good idea. I might try to donate the stuff to a local school or college. I have some good stuff. A large set of oil pastels, rulers, paint brushes, paint cans, etc, etc.

I hate throwing perfectly good stuff away. I've been trying to at least give the stuff away. I know someone could use most of the stuff I don't want anymore.


BTW, I might put a shameless link up soon with a full list.

While donating stuff to charity or schools is obviously great (especially if they're legitimate supplies like Billy's talking about), you can make them work in your favor, besides making you feel good about yourself. Those donated items would be tax-deductable - so anything you ship off to charity or to a school, get a receipt, and bring it with you at tax time. Normally, the people accepting the donation will have an idea of the dollar amount it would be worth (taking into account how used the items are), and even a hand-written receipt from the charity is acceptable when you're getting your taxes done.

Oh god X-Force #1 yeah I have those... And the X-men #1 variant covers that came out at the same time.... Stuff that in all honesty is a waste of good paper mache for the kids to play with.

I did this same thing. I have tons of comics from this era that aren't worth shit, and they just sit in my closet. Haven't even glanced at them for years. I also have about 10,000 worthless baseball cards from the mid-90s. Only cards I have worth money are my fathers.

I had to do a doubletake: I thought you said 'babies'. Sadly, wasn't surprised by that either...

"Oh, they're fine. I've cut in some airholes, and every so often I toss a few M&M's in there."

Lisa, you should setup Barbie deaths. Film it and put them up on youtube.

A few ideas, one thrown in front of a train.
Thrown off a tall building.
Cooked with some olive oil.
Thrown in a wood chipper.

You could edit in a laugh track and add some sound effects.

Toy Story 2 must have been a guilt-bomb for you.

Lisa's Barbies can't touch my friend Jerry's collection. Dude has an entire HOUSE loaded with collectables, toys, etc. He's only just now coming to the realization he has too much stuff, and about 40% of it is WTF stuff.

My bedroom closet is full of videogame magazines, circa mid-80s to the early 2000s. The only ones worth going through again were ULTRA GamePlayers. Other than those, the magazines are terrible written and useless. Though I remember being a very excited kid when I saw a Sega CD ad (or something Sega-related anyway) featuring a naked woman covered only by a few game screenshots. It was the only time Gamepro or advertising was ever useful.

But apart from that experience, I'd say all that reading confirmed, yet stunted me.

Aah...I remember that ad as well:

Actually, yeah! It's a long story, but I'll try to hurry. When I was 13, we packed up all my old toys and sent them to a children's hospital, and that was fine, because at that age I thought I was too cool for toys anymore. But later as an adult, I wished I'd kept my favorite doll, P.J., who was Barbie's "Mod, hippie-chick" friend. Nothing I could do about that till ebay came along. I should explain - the doll was a bit of a touch-stone for me. My parents had one of those loud, screaming divorces, and more often than not, before I'd run out of the house to hide, I'd grab P.J. and bring her with me before I'd bolt. And as an adult, it was really not just that I wanted the doll back, but it was almost a sense of huge guilt. The one toy that got me through a really scary part of my childhood I allowed to be packed up and shipped off like she didn't matter. (Yeah, you can see what's going to happen during Toy Story 2...)

Anyway, once ebay was around, for close to a year, I fought tooth and nail to get a P.J. doll back for myself, and kept losing out on the auctions. I finally won her, complete with her original clothes, for about $48 dollars (which is nearly unheard of for a vintage Barbie). Even sweeter - it was three days before my 36th birthday.

About a few days later, my friend and her 12 year old daughter and I went to see Toy Story 2. Fast forward to "When She Loved Me." First of all - Sarah McLachlan, who could make me sob by singing a dinner menu. And then of course, the whole song and what it was about. "Lonely and forgotten, never thought she'd look my way..." You can guess what happened next - I fucking LOST it. Sobbing - over a doll! Over a piece of plastic! Just 23 years of guilt over having tossed away my favorite toy all welled up to the surface. My friend turned to me, and she knew the whole story because the doll had just arrived from the seller on ebay a few days before that. She said, "P.J.?" And I sobbed, "Yes!" So it was pretty dorky, but since you mentioned it, Dave, yeah - that was one of my more embarrassing moments of losing it during a movie.

And of course, she's one of two dolls that aren't stuck in the box - she and another doll a friend gave me are out on display on my bookcase.

Hey, if Proust can get seriously nostalgic over a madeleine, I don't think there's anything wrong with losing it over the deadly combination of P.J. and "When She Loved Me."

And look - she has her own bodyguard!

Fwiw, Lisa, all I could think of during that scene/song was my Cabbage Patch Dolls. I gave them away after I moved out of my parents' house when I finished college. Decima and Jeanette...

I can't talk about this right now.

Aaw, that cat is adorable.

Lisa's story is why I never gave up my Mego Spider-Man - it was my favorite toy (also my favorite superhero), and was a source of great memories for me. Of all the geek stuff I have, losing that particular tchotchke would involve violence most profound on my part.

I know, right? Toys - they're a killer.

After that story, I'll have to go home and hug Man-At-Arms.

Back in Tucson the public school system is broken. Even when I was a tike 10 years and back things were bad. I went to the Art magnethigh school, and in my advanced freaking portfolio, had to take a test to get into, college goddamn level class, we had paint rations. Most of my paintings ended up being blue because blue is a cheaper paint. My point is that someone's got to have a place for your supplies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uNt7...eature=related

Have to admit that I never quite got into the favourite toy thing as much- books were more important to me when young.
There's probably one or two shapeless woolly lumps buried somewhere here, though.

I'm really touched by LisaNY's story; I got embarassingly misty at that scene in Toy Story 2, but God, it must have been dozens of times more intense for you.

You should be able to sell Quake to a Nine Inch Nails fan. I bought the game (used) just for the soundtrack, which is a de facto instrumental NIN album.