From Star Wars to Strawberry Shortcake, People Everywhere Are Buying Back Their Youth

In case you missed it, the buying craze for vintage toys is on. Hard to believe that the toys we played with in our childhood are now called vintage, but they are. You want to begin collecting back your youth, but where do you begin?

For those of you that don't know about it, eBay is here. The eBay market place is truly amazing, selling over 200,000,000 items from around the world every single day (source: ebay.com). With such a staggering number it is easy to understand why so many people are flocking there to find treasures from their past.

Whether your favorite toy was from Star Wars, Barbie, Hot Wheels, Strawberry Shortcake or any other vintage toy, you can find it on eBay. All you have to do is go to ebay.com and type in your passion in the search bar in the upper right hand corner. You will then be connected with a smorgasbord of goodies from many different sellers. If you want something more specific, type that into the search bar. The more info you type, the better.

Once you find what you're looking for, you can open a free buyers account with eBay and bid on the item (or items) you desire. It's very easy to get started buying items on eBay and they even offer video tutorials to help you get started. But what if you can't find what you want on eBay, is there anything else?

Another website that is sweeping the nation is craigslist.com were you can search by state and then by area of the state (for example, Florida and then South Florida). Craigslist.com allows sellers to post most adds for free and breaks down items being sold into different categories. If vintage toys are your desire you can search the category of games and toys or collectables. The nice thing about criagslist.com is that you can deal with someone locally and actually get to see and hold the item before you purchase it.

There are also many specialty websites for pretty much any vintage toy you could ever want. To find these, just go to the Google or Yahoo search bar and type in what you want. The drawback here is that you will usually have to pay a premium price to get what you are after. But hey, when it comes to that coveted toy from your childhood, sometimes the price isn't that important.

Who can say for sure why this sudden rush to buy back our youth has hit Americans, but it has. Maybe it takes us back to simpler and happier days when we didn't have to worry about things like mortgages and bosses. If you feel strange about buying old toys, do what I do. I buy vintage GI Joe and Star Wars figures in big lots from eBay or craigslist. I then go through the lots and cherry pick the ones I want from the lots for my personal collection. Then I resell the rest on eBay and sometimes through craigslist and thusly call myself a "vintage toy dealer." This however doesn't fool anyone and my fiancé makes fun of me regularly for playing with old toys. But to me it is a fun hobby that I enjoy and judging by the prices I pay for some of these lots, I am far from the only person doing this. So what are you waiting for? Get out there and start collecting those vintage toys from your childhood. It will bring you hours of fun and is guaranteed to bring back some fond memories from your past.