My personal collection has grown and evolved in a lot of different ways since I first started collecting in the mid- to late-70s. I think for me the first big "golden age" of collecting was the 80s themselves. I can start the laundry list with Star Wars, GI Joe, Transformers, Masters of the Universe, Super Powers, Secret Wars, Visionaries, Crystar, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and so forth and so on. For me, that's when it all exploded, and today these vintage toy lines form the foundation of many of our collections. The 90s to me was an extension of this first golden age. The second golden age, or era, to me was the start of the "anniversary" series of toy lines that started around 2007 or so. This included GI Joe: A Real American Hero 25th Anniversary and all of the related Joe lines that followed it using the same updated construction. Then the Star Wars Legacy Collection lines and The Vintage Collection, all of which building on the same modern, super-articulated form of construction. And all of the other anniversary and commemorative series and other re-releases that allowed us to buy new, updated versions of the vintage originals, or all-new versions of the same characters with new sculpting and articulation. Not to mention the expansion of these existing universes with new characters, vehicles and playsets; new versions of them; or ones that had not previously been released. For me, the third major era, and something that has forever changed my collection and my collecting habits, has been the current trend of heavily modifiable and customizable figures from companies like Boss Fight Studio, Marauder Gun Runners, Fresh Monkey Fiction, Chicken Fried Toys, and others. These toy lines, like Vitruvian HACKS, Marauder Task Force, Eagle Force Returns, and Dime Novel Legends have completely revolutionized how my collection looks and grows at this point. Not only do I build out the figures as released in a lot of cases, but I have been able to use the interchangeable parts and pieces to create my own custom collections that I never thought I would be able to have in 1:18 scale. In a future article I might get into the nuances of scale as it relates to these major eras of my toy collecting evolution, such as the back-and-forth between 12-inch, 3 3/4-inch and the 6 to 7-inch collector scales. The big question now though is, what will the next big era of toy collecting be?