Hi! Just a quick update today. As I promised in my previous post I’ve updated my Collection Spotlight widget. That’s the widget that you see at the top right of every page on my blog. It shows a random item from my collection every time you load a page. Previously, if you clicked on the photo thumbnail you would be taken to a larger version of the photo. That was kinda boring. From now on you will be taken to the corresponding database entry from my toy collection.

Toys, toys, toys!!!

You still get to see a larger version of the photo, but you will also see additional information about the item which is very interesting if you’re as obsessive and anal about this type of stuff as I am. ;-) There are currently 65 items in the database, which is just part of my collection. I will continue to add new items as I go along and when I do they will automatically qualify to appear as a random item in the Spotlight widget. The items will be added in no particular order.

As soon as my database is fully populated I will create a page that will allow you direct access to all items. And below I’ve also included a couple of direct links to some of the items. Enjoy!

Bravestarr - Handlebar (1987)

Diaclone - Dia Attacker (1984)

Transformers - Red Alert (1986)

Batman Animated Series - Batmobile (1992)

Wheeled Warriors - K.O. Kruiser (1985)

Whenever you’re serious about collecting something (anything) and you stick to it, chances are that one day you’ll end up with a sizeable collection, which can create several challenges. One of these is that you can have so much stuff that it’s hard to keep track of everything. Another is that your collection becomes an investment. It represents an investment of time and money and if you collect vintage stuff the monetary value of your collection can easily become something you cannot ignore. Vintage toy collections can easily represent values of thousands and even tens of thousands of euros/dollars (and beyond!)

Expensive… :-)

When you reach that point it is probably wise that you start thinking about taking out an insurance on your collection. What if your house burns down one day? Your regular contents insurance is probably not going to cover the complete value of your collection, especially if it’s worth more than a couple of thousand euros. Yeah, it’s not something you’d like to think about and most of us would rather keep our collections instead of getting the monetary equivalent in case of a disaster, but if it does happen, at least you’ll have that.

“Peace of Mind”

In most countries you’ll be able to insure your vintage toy collection. You will probably have to contact your insurance company to work something out, because most of them do not offer specific vintage toy collection insurance products (although some might, depending on where you live, google around!). One thing that will definitely help you out when trying to insure your collection is to have a comprehensive record of all your acquisitions. By that I mean records of the payments that you made for all your items (e.g. PayPal records), where you got the items from, photographs of the items etc. This will act as proof and will help immensely in allowing the insurance company to determine an accurate value of your collection.

You can keep those records in any way you want as long as they are easily accessible. A spreadsheet application like Excel on Windows or Numbers on Mac OS X is a very good tool, but you could even use something like Notepad. It doesn’t really matter. As long as you have some records that can be traced back to your acquisitions.

“Keeping Track”

I’ve been keeping records meticulously for several years now. I’ve kept all the emails that have anything to do with my acquisitions and the price I paid for these (eBay emails, PayPal emails, communications with sellers) and I have been registering all this info in a spreadsheet on my computer. As you may be well aware I have also made numerous photographs of most items in my collection, which can be found throughout this website. Incurance companies love that stuff. The more evidence you have that you own something and what you paid for it, the more forthcoming they will be in selling you an insurance for your collection. It saves them the hassle of trying to determine the value of your collection (which is often not their field of expertise) and works in your favour, because you’ll be able to insure your collection at precise value and will give you peace of mind.

“Caveats”

Here’s some extra important information you should be aware of, which was kindly supplied by readers of this post in the comments section. First of all, make sure that you know how much your insurance company is going to pay you if and when disaster should strike. A lot of insurance policies assume you have objects in your house that depreciate in value, i.e. they become worth less and less as time goes by. That goes for a lot of things like your TV, your computer, your furniture, you name it. Most items that you buy will depreciate in value over time and insurance companies will often pay you either the original price you paid, or, if the item has depreciated to below a certain threshold of its original price (like e,g, 40%) they will only pay you the current value and not the price originally paid!

Vintage toy collections can put everything upside down. Vintage toys will sometimes not depreciate, but appreciate in value as time goes by! There are numerous objects in my collection which are now worth waaaay more than what they were when they were on sale originally and some even more than what I paid for just a few years ago. So make sure you know what you’re insured against. The price you paid, the original price (which can sometimes be hard to determine) or the current market value. Some insurance policies will pay out the price you paid or the market value if that can be determined, but you will either need proof of payment or an expert appraisal. As far as proof of payment is concerned, make sure you agree as what constitutes as proof of payment. Do you need an official invoice, is a printout of the eBay auction and an accompanying PayPal statement or credit card statement enough? The devil is in the details, and oftentimes the fine print will be ambiguous. Also, if you do try and get an appraisal, evaluation/taxation for your collection, make sure your insurance company recognizes the person or company doing the valuation as qualified to do so.

Two more great tips: Instead of just making photos of the individual items in your collection, also be sure to make photos of your collection as a whole, so that you have actual proof you actualy own all that stuff and that it’s in your house. Even better, whip out your iPhone or Android smartphone and make a video! Film the inside of your house, walk into the room where you keep your collection and film every item. Lots of people have smartphones or tablets these days and you can be done in a couple of minutes, so there’s really no excuse. Whether disaster strikes or not, you will also have a nice video keep sake of your collection that you can hopefully look back at in the distant future.

The second tip is regarding your records. Make sure you have a copy/backup of your records off site somewhere. If a Boeing 747 lands on your house, chances are your computer and all the records you spent hours and hours compiling will be destroyed as well! Not good. There are various easy ways to keep an offsite copy. An easy way is to have some sort of cloud storage like e.g. Dropbox that keeps a synchronized copy of your data in the cloud. If you have a database, chances are it’s hosted somewhere. Don’t assume your hosting provider has a perfect backup in place and make regular dumps/exports of your database and preferrably, find some way to automate that procedure.

Thanks to argus and Zenith for these tips!

“New Year’s Resolutions”

Now it’s time to come clean. Our current insurance policy only covers a fraction of  the amount I have invested in my collection. Also, despite the fact that I have been keeping records in a spreadsheet, I have not been keeping them in a structured or organized manner. That’s my bad. I can probably calculate the total value from my spreadsheet, but the information is not recorded in such a fashion that allows me to easily calculate the total value. Also, I have been seriously slacking off when it came to recording my acquisitions in the past twelve months. Yeah… Not so meticulous as I had lead you to believe. Not even that, but I also still have not taken out an insurance specifically for my vintage toy collection. If my house burns down, if there’s water damage, if it gets stolen I will probably only end up with just a fraction of its current worth from my insurance company. I’m sure some of you reading this are in the same boat as I am….

At the beginning of this year I made a promise to myself to make 2012 the year where I straighten this shit out. I set myself to the task to of re-recording each and every item that I have in my collection, make new photos, record the prices paid, proof of payments etc. This time, though, I would not use a spreadsheet application, but record everything in a database. If you’re not technically inclined, a database is more or less a spreadsheet on steroids. It’s probably the best way to keep records of information of any kind (although you can do a lot with spreadsheets as well if you’re a power user). I’m an IT techie, so I was fortunate enough to be able to create a database scheme and populate it with all my collection records without anyone’s help. I’m currently about half way photographing all the items in my collection and importing them into the database, adding all the necessary info like item name, year of release, price paid, etc. etc.

So what’s this to you? Well first of all, if you’re a collector to whom all this stuff applies as well I hope to have a least inspired you to undertake similiar steps in getting your collection organized and insured. The second reason is that while I was spending countless of man hours recording information about my collection I thought it would be a great idea to share at least parts of the info I have recorded about my collection on my website. I know I love browsing through people’s vintage toy collections online and I would love it if someone got that same kick from browsing through my collection. Although some of the info in my database I like to keep private (price paid, name of the seller etc) there’s still a lot of info in there that would be nice to share like the photographs of the items themselves, year of release, production/catalog numbers, names of distributors etc. That’s why I have decided to unlock parts of my database to the visitors of this website.

“Programming, Programming, Programming…”

Besides the countless hours I have invested in photographing and recording my collection items I have also spent way too much of my spare time in programming a public front end to my collection database. For the techies among you, the database is a mySQL instance with a PHP interface that I programmed to serve the data in HTML form. I plan to release the data in three phases. The first phase will go live as of today and will allow me to link to specific items in my collection database. Basically this means that whenever I do a blog post on a certain item in my collection I will add a link to the corresponding database entry in the form of a button that you can click on. Here’s an example:

Marshal Bravestarr (1987)

If you click on the button above you will be taken to the actual database record of the Marshal Bravestarr action figure in my collection. Cool, huh? :-) The second phase of this project will involve an update of the “Spotlight” widget on my site. As regular visitors will know there’s a widget at the top of every page on my site that shows a random item from my collection each time you visit a page on my site. Currently this just links to a photo of the item being shown. The second phase will go into effect as soon as I have 50 items in my database which are properly tagged with meta data. From that moment on the Spotlight widget will link to the actual database entry of the item being shown. This means that whenever you click on a Spotlight item you will be taken directly to the database record of said item.

That’s all and well, but the most interesting thing will be when I reach the third and last phase, which is when all my collection items have been recorded in the database. At that point I will attempt to program a front end that will allow you direct access to all the items in my collection instead of just random items. I plan to create a portal that will list all the toy lines I have in my collection. When you select a toy line you will be able to browse each and every item I have of said toy line, i.e. my complete collection will be browsable online.

“Beta”

Things are very much in an experimental phase right now, so don’t be surprised if something goes wrong or some data is incorrect. Also, programming for all the different browsers out there is still a pain in the ass (Internet Explorer, I’m looking at you). The collection pages should look fine on browsers like Firefox, Safari, Chrome and on mobile browsers like Safari on iOS. Internet Explorer currently has some issues rendering some of the fonts correctly, which I hope to solve in the near future. I will also continue to polish the program code and add more info as I progress, like comments, catalog photos of items and anything else that I think is interesting to share.

I will keep you updated with my progress and I will also report my experiences in trying to deal with insurance companies in my quest to insure my collection. I hope that some of this info will come in handy for some of you and that it might help you in your endeavours to get your collection insured. Peace of mind is worth a lot these days. If you have any questions or suggestions just leave them in the comments section or email me directly. Happy collecting!

When collecting vintage toys from the 1980’s it’s easy to let the spending get out of hand. Way too easy. Especially if you like to collect stuff complete with its original packaging. Oftentimes I have found myself thinking, “Right, I’m not spending a dime more this month on collecting”, but then an opportunity comes along that makes me break this promise I made to myself.

Transformers – Tracks (1986) Hasbro – Europe

Case in point: I found myself 375 euros poorer about a month ago, when I came across a nice and fresh MISB (mint in sealed box) 1986 G1 Tracks inside European packaging in a French toy store. The culprit is pictured above….

“Take the Red Tracks or the Blue Tracks?”

Tracks was released twice in Europe. The first release was in late 1985 by MB and featured a red Tracks inside styro foam packaging, which has gone on to become a much wanted variant for collectors worldwide. The second release occurred in 1986 and this time Tracks was sold in the correct colour: blue. Blue Tracks also came inside a normal bubble insert as was the case in the U.S. and Canada. Also, the packaging now sports the Hasbro logo instead of the MB logo. Here are both distinguished gentlemen side by side in their European retail packaging for your comparison:

Red Tracks (1985) MB and Blue Tracks (1986) Hasbro

A typical trait of both of these European releases is the omission of the text “Transforms from vehicle to robot ….”  on the top left of the box, which is usually present on the American and Canadian releases.

“Quad-lingual Quatsch”

Flipping the box over to the back for a moment we can see four languages on the tech-spec card. While the 1985 red Tracks featured German, French, Dutch and Spanish, the 1986 release saw German dropped in favour of English. This happened with most other 1986 releases. My guess is that Transformers were not as succesful in Germany as MB and Hasbro had expected the line to be, so they decided to drop German as a language from the packaging in 1986.

Tracks (1986) – European tech specs

“Assortment reshuffle”

As you can see from the photo below Blue Tracks has the product code of 9123 26. This is the exact same assortment and product number that MB’s red Tracks had. The problem is, that although this 1986 blue Tracks carries assortment number 9123 on the packaging, this is not the assortment this 1986 Tracks was part of!

Tracks (1986) – Assortment/product code

According to the Dutch 1986 Hasbro dealer catalog, MB had reshuffled all the European 1985 Autobot cars (together with the new releases for 1986) into three new assortments. So although the packaging of blue Tracks says 9123, it was really part of “Autobot Vehicles Assortment A”, and that’s number 9132. Here’s the actual page from the Hasbro Netherlands 1986 dealer catalog confirming that:

Autobot Vehicle Assortment A – Hasbro Dealer Catalog 1986 (Netherlands)

Although this info is from the Dutch dealer catalog, it’s pretty safe to assume that this assortment change is also valid for all the other European countries where MB distributed Transformers, because MB employed a Europe-wide assortment and product numbering convention.

“The Robot in Red”

Although this post was primarily meant to be a blue Tracks party, it’s hard to do a post on the blue Tracks in European packaging, without at least some sort of comparison with the legendary red Tracks that came before it. Red Tracks lovers, rejoice! I am preparing an in-depth article on red Tracks, which should be online in the near future. It will be a much needed update to the woefully outdated red Tracks page I currently have on my site and will collect all the latest information that is known about this exciting variant. It should become the definitive article on MB’s red Tracks anywhere on the world wide webs! ;-)

Transformers – Red Tracks (MB) 1985

Acknowledgements

• Thanks to Argus for supplying the scan of the page from the Dutch Hasbro 1986 dealer catalog
• Thanks to James “Bo” Insogna for allowing me to use his incredible sunset photo as a backdrop

Holy crap! Every now and again you stumble upon an item that’s so frickin’ rare that you almost can’t believe your eyes you’re looking at it. This is one of those: The Transformers Time Warrior Watch! And one inside the original and rare Dutch mail-away packaging from MB as well!

Transformers Time Warrior Watch mail-away  – MB (1985) Dutch packaging variant

“Mail Away”

As was common with a lot of toy lines in the 1980’s kids were able to acquire special mail-away items by collecting and cutting out special points from the toy packaging. It was a brilliant incentive to get kids to buy more toys in order to acquire that special mail-away exclusive toy that was not available in the shops! Hasbro dug that and made heavy use of this tactic with their Transformers and G.I. Joe lines.

You needed 4 of these (and extra cash!) to get a Time Warrior Watch in Europe in 1985

One of the very first, and as such rarest, mail-away exclusives of Hasbro’s Transformers toy line was the exclusive Transformers Time Warrior watch! It was a funky 1980’s LCD wrist watch in the form of an Autobot symbol. By pressing a button on the Autobot symbol it would magically split in two and reveal the time! How awesome is that!!

“Behold: The Time Warrior!!!”

This Time Warrior watch promotion was run in both the U.S. as well as parts of Europe and was only available for a very limited amount of time. I’m still not 100% sure which European countries exactly, but it is confirmed that the Time Warrior mail away was available in the UK and in the Netherlands. There’s an advert for the Time Warrior shown inside an issue of the Transformers comic book series from Marvel UK and it was also run on the back cover of the 1985 Dutch Transformers promotional mini-comic/store catalog by MB, which you can see below (the UK advert is almost identical)

Transformers Time Warrior Watch offer (1985) MB International B.V.

I remember seeing that advert and thinking I would never own a Time Warrior Watch, because by the time I bought my first Transformer, the promotion had already ended! The cut off date was December 31, 1985, while Transformers only started appearing in stores in Holland around September or October 1985.

“Buyer beware!”

If it is your intention to score one of these for your own collection, here’s a little friendly collecting advice. It’s pretty hard to find a 100% working specimen of the Time Warrior Watch. Most of them come without the original packaging and have some sort of defect. The most common flaws are dead batteries or, even worse, corroded dead batteries that have irreparably damaged the watch. Another common flaw is that the spring mechanism that makes the watch flip open is busted. Many of the watches still remaining will either have one or both of the sides of the Autobot symbol not reacting when you push the transformation button, requiring you to manually move the parts aside. Also, look out for paint wear on the Autobot symbol, especially on the chrome parts.

Flip-open action (if you’re lucky)

Loose watches with one or more of the defects described above can sell for anything between 100 and 150 U.S. dollars, with boxed specimens going for 250 or more. As time goes by and the number of working, boxed watches ever decreases, this price is sure to increase, so grab one while you can!

“Packaging variants”

The watch itself is probably identical for all the territories where it was available. The packaging is slightly different though. As with most mail aways the packaging is not much to look at with the watch coming in a plain white box with just some text on it. Over the years I have been able to identify four different texts on the Time Warrior packaging. These are, in what I believe to be chronological order, the following:

1. HASBRO INDUSTRIES, INC. – NO. 12520 – TRANSFORMERS TIME WARRIOR WATCH
2. HASBRO INDUSTRIES (UK) LTD.- NO. 12520 – TRANSFORMERS TIME WARRIOR WATCH
3. HASBRO BRADLEY, INC. – TRANSFORMERS WATCH. – NO 12520
4. MILTON BRADLEY INTERNATION B.V. – TRANSFORMERS WATCH – NO 12520

Transformers Time Warrior (1985) MB International B.V.

There might be more packaging variants, but I have not seen them yet. By looking at the company names we can deduce that numbers 1 and 3 are American, number 2 is the UK version and number 4 is the Dutch version (“Inc” is typically a US legal entity, “Ltd” typically a UK legal entity and B.V. is a Dutch legal entity). Also, “Hasbro Industries” is what Hasbro was called in the US before it bought MB in September of 1984, after which it renamed itself to “Hasbro Bradley” for a while, before just settling on “Hasbro, Inc.” shortly thereafter. So these watches were probably made and/or packaged in 1984 (1 and 2) and 1985 (3 and 4).

The afforementioned Dutch promotional mini-comic was also released in French, German and Spanish. I have the Spanish version of this mini-comic as well as the Dutch version and what I have noticed is that the Spanish version does not have the Time Warrior promotion on the back cover, as the Dutch version has. This would indicate that the Time Warrior promotion was not available in Spain, but it could also be that the promotion was run elsewhere in Spain. I do not have access to the German and French version of MB’s Transformers mini-comic, so I cannot say anything about the supposed availability of the Time Warrior Watch promotion in these countries. If these did exist I would expect them to come in the same packaging as the Dutch version or otherwise with Milton Bradley GmbH or MB France SA on the packaging, respectively.

“European MB version”

The earliest waves of Transformers toys released in Europe were released by MB and carried an MB logo on the packaging. I’m an avid collector of said line and I never really thought I’d ever see the European version of this mail away watch from MB. Imagine my surprise when my good buddy Maz tipped me about one being on the market! (Yes, I know, I keep mentioning Maz, but credit where credit is due! This guy has been such a help!!) It came inside a box labeled as “Milton Bradley Internation B.V.”,  which is “short” for Milton Bradley International B.V., the Dutch subsidiary of MB that was responsible for the distribution of G1 Transformers in the Netherlands.

Transformers Time Warrior (1985) MB International B.V.

“Mint In Box!”

Not even does this watch come inside its original European mail away packaging, it is also a perfectly working watch, with no wear and a perfectly working spring mechanism! The original owner had thoughtfully removed the original battery to prevent damage from battery leaks. He also included a brand new CR2032 battery which worked just fine. The only thing that is missing is the instruction booklet. The original owner cannot remember if one was included at all, which makes me wonder: did MB simply include a copy of the English instructions or did they create a specific European quad-lingual version of the instructions booklet?

Transformers Time Warrior (1985) MB International B.V.

If you’re a completist, mail aways cannot be missing from your collection. The Time Warrior Watch is one of the earliest and hardest to find G1 Transformers mail aways, so if you see one don’t hesitate to jump on the opportunity! :-)

Two vintage G.I. Joe items in Dutch packaging that I added to my collection recently. First off, another action figure on a Dutch backer card! Woohoo! This one is Havik, which is the Dutch name for Hawk (a literal translation). “Havik” is basicly the same figure as the U.S. release of the v2 Hawk from 1986.

G.I. Joe – Havik (1988) MB International B.V.

I bought Havik from a very cool collector from Spain (thanks Manu!!!) Havik’s packaging has been opened, but the bubble has been so neatly cut that it’s easy to put him right back inside. The only real damage is to the back of the card, where the promotion point was cut out. Fortunately, this has been done very carefully, so there’s hardly any damage visible on the front of the card. It’s a great display piece!

“Series 2”

Havik was part of the second wave of G.I. Joe toys to hit the Netherlands and most of the rest of Europe, west of the Iron Curtain in early 1988. The back of the card has a 1987 copyright notice, although the toy was probably primarily sold during 1988 and 1989 when it was re-released. It might have been available in late 1987 in some places, but for convenience sake it is referred to as a 1988 character.

G.I. Joe – Havik (1988) MB International B.V.

Oh man, some friggin’ awesome art work on the packaging right there. I know I’m a bit biased, but fuck, the 1980’s gave us some of the most awesome looking toy packaging designs ever! Damn, to me Hasbro was really at the top of their game in those years.

“Sweet 16”

Here’s a look at the back of the card, which shows the complete 1988 line up. A total of 16 sweet new action figures and 14 re-released action figures from 1987 make a total of 30 action figures to choose from in 1988:

All the characters available in 1988

“File card”

Havik’s Dutch file card is pretty much identical to the American version. He’s got the same rank, same place of birth and the short biography is a straight translation from English into Dutch. The only peculiarity is that his last name has been changed. In the U.S., Hawk’s real name is Clayton M. Abernathy, while the Dutch file card says he goes by the name of Clayton M. Springfield.

Havik, a.k.a. Clayton M. Springfield

“Dragonfly XH-1”

Next up is the Dragonfly XH-1 helicopter! This was a 1987 release in the Netherlands (and the rest of Europe) and was part of the first wave of G.I. Joe toys to hit the market! Just like Havik, it was distributed in Holland by MB International B.V. This particular Dutch packaging variant might also have been available in Flanders, Belgium where it would have been distributed by MB International B.V.’s Belgian subsidiary Hasbro MB N.V./S.A. (Belgium also had their own specific, dual language French/Dutch packaging variants, by the way).

G.I. Joe – Dragonfly XH-1 (1987) MB International B.V.

Yeah, the packaging has seen better days, but I think I can flatten out some of the dents by putting some heavy weights on top of it for a couple of days. I’m pretty excited with the addition of the Dragonfly helicopter, because now I finally have all of the boxed items that were released in 1987 in my collection in either Dutch or Belgian packaging! That’s everything that is pictured in the 1987 catalog here. My goal is to ultimately have all of them in Dutch only packaging. Currently, my G.I. Joe Checkpoint, Silver Mirage Motorcycle, Armadillo Mini Tank and Skystriker jet are of the Belgian variety (with French and Dutch on the packaging).

The toy itself is in much better shape than the packaging, although it suffers a little from hanging blades, which is a very common “problem” with all vintage Dragonflies. It’s easily fixed by bending them back or hanging the helicopter upside down for a while, but eventually gravity will do its work and pull the blades back down again. I don’t really mind though, because I think it gives the blades a more realistic look when stationary.

G.I. Joe – Dragonfly XH-1 (1987) MB International B.V.

“Wilde Willem”

The Dragonfly came with helicopter pilot Wild Bill, who is called Wilde Willem in the Dutch translation. Again there’s a slight change to the character’s bio compared to the U.S. release. In the U.S. Wild Bill’s real name is William S. Hardy, who hails from Brady, Texas. Yeehaw! The Dutch file card says his real name is Wilhelm Müller and that he was born in Düsseldorf, Germany.

G.I. Joe – Wilde Willem (Wild Bill) Dutch file card

The rest of his biography is a fairly accurate translation of the American text, but with another small exception. Wilde Willem did not follow Flight Warrant Officer School in the U.S. as is implied in the American text, but in Germany. He was trained by U.S. troops who were stationed in Germany. This is a nice and realistic twist to the translation, because there’s a huge number of U.S. military bases in Germany since the end of World War II.

Until next time… “Yo Joe!”  :-)

“Gallery”

[Show slideshow]

[Show slideshow]