Men collecting stuff at a record rate

ST. LOUIS -- Men are dedicated. Men are faithful. Men are passionate. Especially when it comes to their toys.

If you think the only people hitting garage sales, estate sales and auctions these days are older women in search of glassware, well, you haven't been getting out a lot lately.

Men are collecting stuff at record rates. Consider that on Super Bowl Sunday, about 600 guys attended a toy soldier and action figure show in Florida to take a shot at securing a G.I. Joe Marine Jungle Fighter. It once sold for a buck but now goes for several thousand dollars.

As women probably have figured out, men's collections tend to be more about toys -- and not just your basic baseball-card, coin, stamp or train collections.

A guy collector is someone who can -- with a straight face -- tell another guy that his prized possession is a pink polka-dotted bass lure, or someone who gets genuinely excited about a display in his basement of more than 1,000 Zippo lighters.

Girls grow up

Pam Danzinger, a market researcher, offered a fancy description of the male collector. "Boys are more likely to continue collecting into adulthood," she told The New York Times. "Women tend to re-establishing their interests around 35, or after their prime child-bearing years."

In other words, girls grow up.

Or you can be as fortunate as Doug Feldman, who fell in love with a woman who collects Barbie dolls. Nothing like a shared obsession to make for a happy marriage, Feldman says.

"My wife is absolutely nutty about Barbies," said Feldman. Feldman's collecting of pre-1970 toys was a bone of contention in his first marriage, which ended in divorce. "And my biggest regret from that was that I had to sell off some pieces because of finances while going through the divorce," he said.

Feldman and his wife, Norma, also operate Our Second Childhood, a vintage toy store. Feldman is a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to collecting.

He has about 20 G.I. Joe dolls, all from the 1960s. "I don't fool with the new stuff," he said.

For the uninitiated, the dolls, first made in 1964, were 11.5 inches tall. Hasbro halted production in 1976 after sales steadily dwindled after the Vietnam War, Feldman said. In 1983, the company brought back the figures, but at 3.5 inches. Then, in the early 1990s, Hasbro brought back the taller models.

Feldman said being a collector of new items is a frustrating proposition.

"Everybody is hip to collecting now. In fact, the biggest difference is that now items are sold as collectibles. We bought stuff as kids so we could play with it. Now kids buy stuff specifically to collect it."

Quit smoking

Anyone who has ever been a smoker has at one time or another owned a Zippo. The lighter made in Bradford, Pa., for the past 70 years is a well-recognized piece of Americana.

Just ask Jim Miller, a 66-year-old retired truck mechanic from south St. Louis County. He owns about 1,100 of them. Miller is fairly new to the hobby, but he does belong to a local Zippo collecting club.

"And 1,100 is not even close to as big as some other guys in the club have," said Miller.

"I was a heavy smoker and always had a few Zippos. Then in 1989, I had a collapsed lung and my doctor told me to quit smoking or else," he said. "But it was then that I decided to start collecting the lighters."