Sunday’s Vancouver Toy Junkies toy and record show was the first of its kind for sellers Paige and Ryan Ramey of Portland.
There, with the other 110 vendor booths, they had for sale “Star Wars” action figures, GI Joes and Marvel superheroes — most, Paige said, from her husband’s collection.
“We’re trying to rotate the collection down a little bit more,” she said, pausing to laugh. “To support the collecting habit.”
The Rameys joined hundreds of the young and young at heart, selling and buying, for collecting or play, thousands of toys, records, games and other pop culture collectibles on offer at the show, held Sunday at WareHouse ’23.
On offer were characters and spaceships from decades of “Star Trek” and “Star Wars.” Morphing-robot fans could find Transformers of all eras, and even some Gobots. One room of the packed event space had wall-to-wall model trains. Another was lined with boxes of record albums, comic books and concert and movie posters. In between all that, there was Barbie, Cabbage Patch, Popeye and myriad others.
“A lot of neat people come here,” Paige Ramey said. “It’s fun to meet everybody and have a little mini-conversation about what they’re into. It’s a good experience.”
Vendors might indulge a bit themselves, as well.
“We did get a Chewie,” she said. “There’s a little bit for everybody.”
Rob Williams, another vendor, usually works with vintage or antique toys. He gets to be a bit more specialized that way, which he likes.
One of his favorite offerings was a 1960s-era Mattel Strange Change Machine toy, with a theme based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Lost World.”
Kids would insert a plastic block into a little oven-like space, and the heat would cause the blocks to re-form into a new object, which, in the case of this toy, would be a dinosaur. The process worked in reverse as well. It’s similar to heat-shrink tubing around wires.
“Not many of them survived,” he said. “The molds got used and then tossed.”
His gifts for himself? An Arthur Fonzarelli doll — Fonzie from the old TV sitcom “Happy Days” — and a $300 Frankenstein’s monster figure.
“This was probably $1.99 or $1.50 new. Actually, I remember passing them at K-Mart and not liking them” as a child, he said.
Interest in monster toys, he said, rarely wanes among shoppers and collectors.
“Other stuff goes in cycles, where it gets hot, and then there’s enough of it, and everybody that wanted it got it, and it circles around and it takes a dive and you gotta wait 10 or 20 years and it’ll cycle again,” he said. “Monster stuff, ‘Star Wars’ stuff, there’s a few things that kinda never slow down.”
Williams, from the Seattle area, has been organizing the Seattle Lake City Toy Show for more than 20 years. Sunday’s show organizer, Mike McClafferty, contacted him several years ago when he wanted to start a show in Vancouver.
McClafferty, manager at Vancouver Pizza Company, started the show four or five years ago, with about eight vendor tables set up at the restaurant.
“I think the first show made a profit of $20. I took my wife out for dinner,” he said. “I had to pay for my meal, but with the profit I bought her a Thai dinner.”
As word got out, vendor and buyer interest grew. This year’s show had 110 vendor tables, with total turnout likely doubling last year’s, he said.
“At the time, there was not a vintage toy show in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area, so I wanted to do something that was part of downtown Vancouver, and I took a big chance, and people showed up, which was exciting,” he said.
McClafferty makes a point to note his shows prohibit vendors from doing any buying, selling or trading before the show starts.
As an avid collector and picker himself, he’s visited too many antique or record shows, sometimes after buying an early-bird entry fee, to see all the vendors make off with the good stuff.
He also tries to bring in a diverse array of collectors and vendors.
“I’ll be honest with you, even though I’m into this stuff, I don’t like comic conventions. … I joke that my show is a ‘non-con,’ ” he said. “There are no B-movie celebrities, there are no cosplayers — God bless them — there are no gimmicks. Closest thing I got to a gimmick is the cotton candy lady.
“It’s about people who enjoy the nostalgia and the pleasure of looking at true vintage and antique toys.”
Collectors can be cliquey and particular, he said — woe to he who calls model trains a toy in the wrong circles, for instance — and just because someone’s into one thing doesn’t mean they’re enthusiastic about something else.
At least they might not think so initially, he said.
“What I try to do is bring them all together in one room, and what happens is the comic guy brings a really cool record. The record guy brings this random old toy,” he said.
Vancouver’s Dusty Low staffed a table with her husband and their three kids, making it their second show of the kind after an ill-fated trip to a doll show in Clackamas, Ore.
On Sunday, they had her Strawberry Shortcake toys on offer, along with her kids’ Monster High and Shopkins toys. Dolls, she said, seemed to be a lot more niche.
“But this is better for all sorts of people,” she said. “As soon as the doors opened we sold stuff. … And it cleans out my garage!”
