I was looking for a picture of something I sold a few years back. I took several pictures back in the day with the old 35mm film. More recently, as I sold off most of my stuff I was taking pictures, too.
Well, I didn't find the picture I was looking for. And in some ways I thought I was taking too many G.I.Joe pictures then but I actually wish I had done more now.
Two random pictures that were not in the spot with the rest of them I thought I would put up here.
Well, I didn't find the picture I was looking for. And in some ways I thought I was taking too many G.I.Joe pictures then but I actually wish I had done more now.
Two random pictures that were not in the spot with the rest of them I thought I would put up here.
Coming up first is my G.I.Joe team in December of 1997. This is a scan of the photo taken by my old point and shoot 35mm camera. In those days, things were lean, but had been improving and I was in my second year of a technical school program. The school was near what used to be the short lived Toys R Us in that area. There was a Children's Palace store near that location but it had closed by early 1995 I think. But that Toys R Us and having cash from working plus I think the K B toys was still in the mall, also in this area.
So in this photo from December 1997 you can see I have the new Slugger . I didn't open up the Gung-ho figure that was in this one. I had a Battle Corps Gung-ho and that older '84 figure simply was going to replace him. The Battle Corps Gung-ho didn't slide into the Slugger, either. In the Slugger it looks like I chose Back Stop. If I remember right, Back Stop was a Goodwill store find, and it was a few years to be until I even got a helmet for him.
What else is going on is you can see how I finally got that A.W.E. Striker and V.A.M.P. added to my collection. Yes, that is the 1995 Stargate All Terrain Cruiser that I likely got on clearance in 1996. The chassis of the single seat Stargate vehicle was replaced by my Eco-Striker chassis. I wanted that A.W.E. Striker and swapping some parts back in the day resulted in a rather solid substitute for those years. Of course I was still stuck with that spring fire rocket launcher, I just wanted the classic gun on top.
And then the V.A.M.P., which is of course the Street Fighter Street Striker. I had a very well used '83 V.A.M.P. I bought from a person who had had a "collection sale" ad in a newspaper for. This was before internet reached us on the lower end, I don't think I used the internet really until the fall of 1996. No matter, but the old used V.A.M.P. I had for that short time was easily replaced by not just one, but TWO of the Street Strikers as I came across one on clearance likely after this photo. I had one that I stickered to emulate the G.I.Joe V.A.M.P. and the other I kept sticker free. In the photo I see some white looking rockets, maybe I put some W.H.A.L.E. rockets in it for the picture? Eventually, the second one I traded or sold to VolleyDan for his most awesome V.A.M.P. collection. (That is still a cool thing to see so many V.A.M.P.s like that to me)
Finally we come to the loaded A.P.C.. With a likely amount of 33 figures throughout the photo, this is likely most of all my G.I.Joe team figures at this point in time. I remember when I bought the 1991 Snake Eyes that that figure had become my actual 50th total figure. The two boxes in the photo were my storage boxes for figures. The one on the left is looking full and is likely holding all my Cobra figures. In the box to the right is most likely an '84 Deep Six, a loose-kneed worn '84 Cutter, and then one might find an '86 Wet Suit replaced by a '91 Wet suit, and perhaps a '91 Hawk, while '86 Hawk was in the A.P.C. Then again, I might have gotten that A-10 at this point and the new Hawk is in there somewhere. The photo is fuzzy and hard to tell, but still some more figures in the boxes that were doubles of characters in the A.P.C.. You can find Dinohunter Low Light in the A.P.C., too, that was a favorite figure of mine for some time, so the play worn '86 Low Light is most definitely in the box.
So in this photo from December 1997 you can see I have the new Slugger . I didn't open up the Gung-ho figure that was in this one. I had a Battle Corps Gung-ho and that older '84 figure simply was going to replace him. The Battle Corps Gung-ho didn't slide into the Slugger, either. In the Slugger it looks like I chose Back Stop. If I remember right, Back Stop was a Goodwill store find, and it was a few years to be until I even got a helmet for him.
What else is going on is you can see how I finally got that A.W.E. Striker and V.A.M.P. added to my collection. Yes, that is the 1995 Stargate All Terrain Cruiser that I likely got on clearance in 1996. The chassis of the single seat Stargate vehicle was replaced by my Eco-Striker chassis. I wanted that A.W.E. Striker and swapping some parts back in the day resulted in a rather solid substitute for those years. Of course I was still stuck with that spring fire rocket launcher, I just wanted the classic gun on top.
And then the V.A.M.P., which is of course the Street Fighter Street Striker. I had a very well used '83 V.A.M.P. I bought from a person who had had a "collection sale" ad in a newspaper for. This was before internet reached us on the lower end, I don't think I used the internet really until the fall of 1996. No matter, but the old used V.A.M.P. I had for that short time was easily replaced by not just one, but TWO of the Street Strikers as I came across one on clearance likely after this photo. I had one that I stickered to emulate the G.I.Joe V.A.M.P. and the other I kept sticker free. In the photo I see some white looking rockets, maybe I put some W.H.A.L.E. rockets in it for the picture? Eventually, the second one I traded or sold to VolleyDan for his most awesome V.A.M.P. collection. (That is still a cool thing to see so many V.A.M.P.s like that to me)
Finally we come to the loaded A.P.C.. With a likely amount of 33 figures throughout the photo, this is likely most of all my G.I.Joe team figures at this point in time. I remember when I bought the 1991 Snake Eyes that that figure had become my actual 50th total figure. The two boxes in the photo were my storage boxes for figures. The one on the left is looking full and is likely holding all my Cobra figures. In the box to the right is most likely an '84 Deep Six, a loose-kneed worn '84 Cutter, and then one might find an '86 Wet Suit replaced by a '91 Wet suit, and perhaps a '91 Hawk, while '86 Hawk was in the A.P.C. Then again, I might have gotten that A-10 at this point and the new Hawk is in there somewhere. The photo is fuzzy and hard to tell, but still some more figures in the boxes that were doubles of characters in the A.P.C.. You can find Dinohunter Low Light in the A.P.C., too, that was a favorite figure of mine for some time, so the play worn '86 Low Light is most definitely in the box.
Here's one of the groupings of things I was selling off somewhere between 2010 and 2012. This is from my (more or less) point and shoot digital, and the date had to be reset every use so I regretfully didn't get more tight dates on the more modern photos. Not that my old 35mm point and shoots date function works anymore, either, that battery is also most done.
I had already traded out my Street Fighter vehicles for the most part and as this point in my life I was making more decisions based on what kind of collector I was. I had a variety of things at the "high point" of collecting, but I started to really narrow down on what I was and what I wasn't. One of the things I wasn't was a Street Fighter collector. Even though I think the Street Fighter G.I.Joe line would make a really excellent and rarer collection, it just wasn't "my" G.I.Joe, and so these figures were out. And yes, even the Mortal Kombat "Budo" figure acquired at the 2005 convention, had to go.
I think the file cards and packaging are from figures that I had already sold off and discovered I still had them. This happened as I really did have a lot of random stuff and I missed them.
That's my original L.A.W. in the picture. Even when I was really younger, and I didn't feel like setting up the whole '83 H.Q., the L.A.W. would often become a little base in itself. There were much fewer figures in those days, too. And then the Air Defense, I bought that one a very short time before selling it again. I wanted to use earnings from what I sold to buy more focused things for my collection, the Air Defense sort of added to my Headquarters, but as I add more of these "base" ornaments, the more actual shelf real estate was almost needed. And in the case of the Headquarters, if I went in the direction of the large sprawling base it was going to need some big space to really be cool. And at that time we were renting and things were up in the air, so the entire "what kind of collector" I was question started to focus more on my collection becoming truly a mobile collection.
I didn't have the battlefield vehicles very long, either. The howitzer felt antique, the bomb disposal and weapons transport were interesting but rather limiting, and best suited to a "large base" set up. The M.M.S., that's one I maybe should have kept, but as I started thinking of making my collection "mobile," I guess I don't know, would a mobile force stop and set up a rocket trailer when a vehicle or figure, already had a similar capability?
So, that's kind of that for this bit of random. You can see that Jurassic park figure and other random figure in the mix, too. The Jurassic Park figure had hung around for years not doing anything when I bought the vehicle to "customize." Neither lasted, but I hung onto it for too long. I probably shouldn't have bought some things to begin with.