Continuing To Learn About Myself As A Collector

Posted by Chris on 02/11/26 at 07:05 AM Category: Vintage Collection, Collecting

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You'll excuse me if my mood is a little gloomy today, and it's not because my beloved Patriots got embarrassed on the national stage on Sunday. I had come to grips with that after the AFC Championship game. I knew this wasn't a Super Bowl team then. My only hope was that Mike Vrabel would use Robert Loggia's "Ed Genaro" halftime speech from Necessary Roughness to have the team come out like snot-flying, rampaging beasts, which would lead to an early defensive score. The first part happened, but Marcus Jones missed a pick six by a few inches. I knew then that the Patriots' narrow path to victory probably closed. I'm actually happy that I had a rooting interest all the way through January. But my mood is football related. I always get bummed when the NFL season ends and we enter seven months of football-less-ness. When every weekend revolves around the Sunday NFL ritual for five months, it's hard to say goodbye.

Okay, that's my eulogy for the 2025 NFL season, now onto Bantha Skull business. You should all know my feelings about the Star Wars Retro Collection by know. My pet phrase was:

I hate it except for all the times I don't.

I couldn't have cared less about non-OT product in the line, but I would partake in the OT offerings, mostly because they were there. A few did give me a real collecting boost, such as the Retro Mon Mothma, but I mostly bought it as a thing to do. I'm largely indifferent to the line's existence, and I would happily trade the annual Retro wave if it meant we could get just one more newly tooled Vintage Collection figure. I prefer modern figures with better quality and features.

So why then did my heart soar when I saw Mattel's LJN WWF Wrestling Super Stars at Target the other day? The vintage Wrestling Superstars line was one of my favorites as a kid. I was a completist while I was collecting them. If you're unfamiliar with the LJN figures from the 80's they weren't even 5 POA, or 4, 3, 2, or 1 POA for that matter. They were a solid hunk of unarticulated rubber. It's more of everything that irks me about the Retro Collection, but in this case I let out a faint and involuntary "no way" in excitement. I didn't make the purchase because the figure was of a wrestler I don't care about (Dusty Rhodes), but if it were one of my many childhood favorites (King Kong Bundy, The Iron Sheik, The Junkyard Dog, Ricky Steamboat, Nikolai Volkoff or Roddy Piper), I would have sprinted to the cash register like Homer going to collect a free trampoline.

So why the discrepancy? I realized it's something I've mentioned before. I never quit collecting Star Wars figures. It was taken from me. First by my parents in 1984 and then by Kenner in 1985. For almost all of the 36 years where collecting Star Wars was my decision (1978 - 1983 and 1995 to present), I have partaken. There were two brief breaks during modern line, but they lasted about as long as my dietary will power when chicken wings are present. Collecting TVC isn't about reliving my childhood because from my perspective, I never quit. I only want figures that advance in quality and function in perpetuity. I have little need for purposeful terribleness. But those LJN Wrestling Superstars figures are something that I did voluntarily leave in my youth (as well as being a wrestling fan). So the new retro figures tug at all the right nostalgia heartstrings despite how objectively awful they are.

I further realized that this pattern extends to other things. Even though the quality of modern sports cards far, far exceeds the quality of vintage sports cards, I have absolutely no need for these slick modern offerings with the ultra glossy surfaces and lame manufactured scarcity. But show me some 1986 Topps Football cards, and I will turn my head like the guy in the boyfriend meme. So once again, I have nostalgia for the the things I left in childhood, but not the things I brought forward. I want those thing to move forward with me. The analogy I've made before is that I wouldn't have any interest in Sony making a retro standard def CRT television for me to watch my pan and scan E.T. VHS tape on.