It's hard to explain my attachment to material things (i.e., the toys and collectibles I treasure). They can be expensive, time consuming to gather, and certainly take up a lot of space and make displaying, storage, inventory management, and moving extremely challenging at times. But the connections they represent are invaluable and irreplacable to me. Toys and collectibles can "hold" things that matter to us. Memories. Associations. Connections to people and times past. To this day I can walk through an antique mall, see something on a shelf from my childhood, and immediately associate it with sights, sites, and sounds from years long past. I can remember the exact Christmas or birthday I received it. I can recall the exact day at the mall I found it with family members in tow. Sometimes I can even remember what we had for lunch or dinner that same day. (And keep in mind, we're talking about the 70s and 80s at this point!) I can often remember the exact movie playing on HBO, or the exact TV show on PBS, as I opened the item for the first time and added it to my fledgling armies. I can even conjure up images of the clothes I wore in the backyard to play with it and the friends (few as they may have been) that came over to share in my backyard adventures. Even in modern times, buying new versions of long-lost characters and vehicles still bring about those same associations. Those same feelings of simpler, happier, and more carefree times. I often say that "every day is Saturday to a toy collector." In truth, being a collector is very hard work, in a lot of different ways. But the grounding it provides, and the connections to our past that it maintains, is a huge part of what makes me tick.