As a child, Michael McClafferty kept the boxes his toys came in, but not as a collector.
He kept them to play with.
When McClafferty wasn’t re-creating an intergalactic battle with his “Star Wars” toys, he was putting them back in their packages, and pretending to go to the store to buy them once more. When McClafferty’s 9-year-old daughter, Camille McClafferty, hears her father describe the way he used to play as a kid, she shakes her head.
“It’s kind of weird,” Camille said. “I guess he thought it was fun to get his toys all over again.”
That’s exactly what McClafferty was doing, and he’s spent the last three or so years trying to bring that same joy to families around Vancouver.
About three years ago, McClafferty started Vancouver Toy Junkies, a company where he produces vintage toy shows around Vancouver.
McClafferty, the manager at Vancouver Pizza Company, said there was another group that used to produce shows in Portland, but they stopped holding them and he saw an opening. With urging of a friend, he decided to try to fill it.
“I took a big risk financially producing my own shows,” McClafferty said. “Toy collectors are notoriously private and extremely competitive. To ask 30 or 40 toy collectors to come in the same room and sell their stuff felt a little like herding cats at first.”
McClafferty had a bunch of toys as a kid and sold them, but started collecting again later. He sold those when he got married. He got back into collecting within the last decade.
Even when he wasn’t collecting toys, McClafferty loved the hunt.
“I’ve always been a shopper and picker,” he said. “I’ve gone to plenty of swap meets at 4:30 in the morning and sorted through stuff while holding a flashlight in my mouth.”
But nothing brought McClafferty the happiness that collecting toys did, and so when he was digging through boxes at swap meets and kept seeing old toys from his childhood over and over, he slowly got back into collecting them.
“My wife and I have four kids and work opposite schedules,” he said. “I can’t afford a hobby. I go to garage sales and estate sales and buy things for dirt cheap. If it’s not worth anything, I keep it. If it is, I sell it. I have a hobby where I can make money. You can’t do that golfing.”
McClafferty puts on two big toy-collecting shows a year, one in the spring and one in the fall. He tries to sprinkle in another one or two smaller ones between those. In the time he’s organized shows, he said each one has drawn more people than the last.
“My shows are successful because I do not allow the vendors to pre-buy,” he said. “At a lot of shows, the vendors can go around and buy things from each other before even the early bird special starts, and they just end up selling all the good stuff to each other. They’re cannibalizing each other. But at my shows, they can’t do that. I want people to think, ‘This is the show where I might actually find something.’ It’s funny, as soon as I ring the bell to open the show, you see all the vendors running around as much as the customers.”
While McClafferty wants the customers to enjoy his shows, he also wants them to be worthwhile for the sellers. At each show, he has one table set aside for a new seller, someone who has never sold items at a show before. He said those tables range from people who are getting rid of old items to younger people just starting out as collectors.
McClafferty also tries to bring in families, hoping to “inspire the younger generation of collectors.” He offers free admission to shows for children, and has been known to offer free admission to “disinterested partners,” whom he said don’t look too thrilled at being dragged to a vintage toy show.
He held his first few shows at the Red Lion Hotel Vancouver at the Quay, which closed at the end of October, and his most recent at the Pearson Air Museum hangar. McClafferty hopes to return to Pearson for his first big show next year, which will take place sometime in April. He plans on having a side room for vinyl record vendors at the show, partly to give those disinterested partners somewhere to go, and partly to try to unite the vinyl- and toy-collecting communities.
“Collecting toys doesn’t have the coolness cachet that collecting records or books does,” he said. “I want people to see that it’s OK to buy and sell and collect vintage toys.”
McClafferty has done some record collecting, as well, and said the most money he’s ever made selling anything came from a record. Years ago, he made about $1,200 selling a copy of The Beatles’ “Yesterday and Today” album with its original “butcher” album cover, in which the four band members are dressed as butchers and covered in meat and body parts from plastic dolls.
But his biggest love has always been toys, and it’s a love of his he’s not really seeing passed down to his kids. While McClafferty’s children like toys, he said they got over them pretty quickly thanks to video games, tablets and cellphones.
“There is so much competition for their eyeballs,” McClafferty said.
One benefit of that, though, is he’s not nervous when his kids and their friends are around any of his old toys. However, if the kids are near his office, McClafferty said they barely look at them. In his office, McClafferty has tons of old “Star Wars” figures and plenty of other famous heroes, including about 10 different kinds of Spider-Man figures. One of his favorites is a Blythe doll that was sold only in 1972 and whose eyes change colors with the pull of a string.
“I’m a genuine collector,” he said. “I still love toys. I still collect them today. I’m not a cynical businessman looking to cash in a trend or anything.”
The recent popularity of comic book movies and mainstream acceptance of “nerd” culture has made it a bit challenging for McClafferty to organize shows.
“When coming up with dates for shows, I need to find one that doesn’t collide with a geekfest,” he said. “There are all these gatherings where kids dress up as Vikings and hit each other with swords, and then go play video games afterwards. It seems like there’s a Comic Con every weekend now. It’s the golden age of geek cons, but it makes it hard for a little guy like me to put on a show.”
Technology has also made it difficult for McClafferty and others looking to sell vintage items. McClafferty said people are much more likely to shop online now, as opposed to dig through bins at shows or in stores that specialize in vintage or antique items. He said he could sell things online, but has no plans to. He would miss the community too much.
“You see a person’s smile when they’re looking at toys, and you can shake their hands,” he said. “These were toys that were played with. Even if we’re just collecting them now, we should be able to get together and enjoy them together.”
