How Long Have You Been Collecting Model Dinosaurs And......

[Newt]

I have 30 prehistoric animal figures, not counting whatever's in the box of childhood toys in my mom's attic. 


I am not really a figure collector, I just happened to stumble onto this community and decided I liked it here. I didn't buy any of those 30 until after I started hanging out on this forum back in 2016 or so. Peer pressure, I guess. I do intend to get some more pieces when I have my house better set up for display, but I doubt I will ever have the kind of extensive collection many other forumgoers can boast.

[SRF]

I also wouldn't call myself a true collector. I had quite a lot Dinosaur toys as a kid, of which most of them are still in storage at my parents (I think). Not counting those, I have collected about 30 Dinosaur models, which I've started collecting back in 2014, some twenty years after I've stopped playing with dinosaur toys.  

As a kid I always wanted to have a JP like T. Rex, but my parents never gave me the big red one or even the juvinile Rex from the Kenner toy line. When I discovered Papo back in 2014 I immediately purchased the running Rex and the sitting brown one. The original green sitting Rex was already some years out of production but I did manage to find one. After that it took untill 2017 to add more to my collection, starting with the feathered T. Rex from Safari. After that I've decided to purchase some different species as well.

Then at the end of 2020 PNSO came along and released a figure a week which caught my attention because I was lurking here. After purchasing Winter Wilson, I've decided to register at the forum and since then I'm happy that I found a hobby that I can discuss here as well. Especially since most of my hobbies are more or less on hold due to the pandemic. This is the one hobby I have that isn't affected by the measures we have to take against COVID.

[GojiraGuy1954]

I started at about 2011 and have 222 models, including Mattel, Hasbro, and some models that I plan to get rid of later on. Mostly Schleichs, but also Bullyland and Procon

[Roselaar]

I've been a dinosaur aficionado since I was four years old and have been collecting for 32 years now. Serious collecting only kicked off when I had an actual income of my own, so early twenties. Since then, I've amassed several thousand dinosaur and prehistoric animal figures, somewhere close to 5,000 I would guess.

[indohyus]

Honestly can't remember a time I didn't have them in my life. Been collecting since childhood.

[bmathison1972]

Honestly can't remember a time I didn't have them in my life. Been collecting since childhood.

I had animal toys as a child, but there was a big gap between playing with animal toys as a child and collecting them as an adult  haha. 

[Grimbeard]

I loved dinosaurs since I was a kindergarten kid. My first toy was the grey/black carnergie Triceratops, which I sadly lost during the move in my current appartment (maybe I will find it again some day....). As a kid i tried to collect the medium sized UKRIDs, but never got all off them.  Also had some Kenner JP toys and various Chinasaurs, most of them survived until today.

As a teen, my passion cooled down, but flared back up when I moved from my parents after I finished vocational training and got the Papo Allosaurus as a gift from my sister.

Since then, I slowly started collecting again, first mainly Papos. When Covid hit the world, I started to get more into the hobby, reading reviews on the DTB (and eventually the Forum as well) and soon started to spread out to different Brands such as Safari Ltd, Collecta, Rebor and eventually PNSO and also expanded to non-dinosaur prehistoric life. 

I am currently at 29 "display" models split between two shelves, my current goal is to have at least one model of each major dinosaur clade as well as a broad overview of non-dinosaurs species/clade I considre either interesting or "relevant" enough. Eventually, I hope to turn the shelves into small diaramas displaying a specific time period each.

[Shonisaurus]

@Roselaar You are lucky to have so many dinosaurs. Can you have all of them on shelves or do you have them stored? Interesting your testimony you must have one of the largest collections of toy dinosaurs in the world.

@indohyus  I also collected since my childhood but I lost a lot of the dinosaurs that I had when I sold my summer house as a result of the death of my mother.

@Grimbeard  I think it's a smart choice to pick one from each clearing. Honestly, in my case, I should limit myself to collecting unpublished dinosaurs or prehistoric animals in my collection such as the Centrosaurus or Machairoceratops from PNSO to give two examples.

B @bmathison1972  Over time tastes change with age.

[Nimravus]

I loved dinosaurs, and in general the prehistoric world, when I was a child, and I kept that hobby by reading a lot of books and collecting fossils. Unfortunately from my childhood I just had a couple of UKRDs  . I slowly started collecting Papos when I came back from working in Portugal about 11 years ago, but really steadily collecting extant and prehistoric animals since 2016. I currently have more than 500 pieces, so I am now at that moment of choosing carefully what I want to buy and thinking about selling some of the others, because I do not have too much room .

[MesozoicJohn]

I am really enjoying reading all of your answers.

I had no idea that some people had so many models! I have also noticed that this hoppy appeals to a very wide ranging of age group.

John

[Duck]

I am really enjoying reading all of your answers.

I had no idea that some people had so many models! I have also noticed that this hoppy appeals to a very wide ranging of age group.

John

I was actually thinking the other way round. I noticed there are very few teenage collectors on this forum. The good majority of people here I feel are 30-60 years old or so.
I've only been on the forum for a few months, so I may just not have seen or met all the users yet.

[laticauda]

I am currently at 29 "display" models split between two shelves, my current goal is to have at least one model of each major dinosaur clade as well as a broad overview of non-dinosaurs species/clade I considre either interesting or "relevant" enough. Eventually, I hope to turn the shelves into small diaramas displaying a specific time period each.

I love the idea of having small dioramas for display.  Really cool.  So, what are some of your favorites that you have on the shelf?

[laticauda]

I am really enjoying reading all of your answers.

I had no idea that some people had so many models! I have also noticed that this hoppy appeals to a very wide ranging of age group.

John

I was actually thinking the other way round. I noticed there are very few teenage collectors on this forum. The good majority of people here I feel are 30-60 years old or so.
I've only been on the forum for a few months, so I may just not have seen or met all the users yet.

I do not pay that much attention to age, but if it true there are only a few teenage collectors on the DTF why do you think that is?  Could it be that teens are still trying to find their thing, and dinosaurs are not always the most popular thing in High School.  Any ideas?

[Duck]

I am really enjoying reading all of your answers.

I had no idea that some people had so many models! I have also noticed that this hoppy appeals to a very wide ranging of age group.

John

I was actually thinking the other way round. I noticed there are very few teenage collectors on this forum. The good majority of people here I feel are 30-60 years old or so.
I've only been on the forum for a few months, so I may just not have seen or met all the users yet.

I do not pay that much attention to age, but if it true there are only a few teenage collectors on the DTF why do you think that is?  Could it be that teens are still trying to find their thing, and dinosaurs are not always the most popular thing in High School.  Any ideas?

I think maybe it has something to do with money. Most teenagers don't have full time paying jobs to make enough money to buy figures, like most of the people here. I'm only able to afford them because I had a summer job at my local grocery store from which I was able to save a lot of money from. Other than that, I mostly end up asking for figures for my birthdays and Christmases.
Yes, I can confirm dinosaurs are not the most popular thing at school.

[BlueKrono]

I am really enjoying reading all of your answers.

I had no idea that some people had so many models! I have also noticed that this hoppy appeals to a very wide ranging of age group.

John

I was actually thinking the other way round. I noticed there are very few teenage collectors on this forum. The good majority of people here I feel are 30-60 years old or so.
I've only been on the forum for a few months, so I may just not have seen or met all the users yet.

I do not pay that much attention to age, but if it true there are only a few teenage collectors on the DTF why do you think that is?  Could it be that teens are still trying to find their thing, and dinosaurs are not always the most popular thing in High School.  Any ideas?

I think maybe it has something to do with money. Most teenagers don't have full time paying jobs to make enough money to buy figures, like most of the people here. I'm only able to afford them because I had a summer job at my local grocery store from which I was able to save a lot of money from. Other than that, I mostly end up asking for figures for my birthdays and Christmases.
Yes, I can confirm dinosaurs are not the most popular thing at school.

I think that's exactly it. It wasn't until I was 26 that I got a job were I had any spare money at all and was able to become a "collector". Before that it was mostly just the toys I had left over from childhood.

[bmathison1972]

When I had animal/dinosaur toys as a kid, there was no concept of collecting them and there was no online community to get inspiration from. I donated them when I outgrew them. I started up again in college mainly because one of my entomology professors collected insect figures. I was collecting real insects so I decided to go with figures too!

[Libraraptor]

Why are there so few teenagers on this forum? I think it´s because puberty is a kind of latency period for the fondness towards both dinosaurs and "toys." There was a time for me, too, when I thought I had outgrewn this "quirk".

How wrong can one be?

And, as with many others here, I could not start collecting "seriously" until I had the financial prospects.

[MesozoicJohn]

It is the same in the model railway world. Long gone are the days when HO/OO model locomotives were in the grasp of pocket money savings. Some are now over £200.

Having said that there are plenty of easily affordable Dinosaur models on the market but they may well not be a priority for the majority of youngsters.

John

[Palaeontologica]

I think I started in 2015, which is when I finally got hold of the Papo Allosaurus. I've got about seventy in total (sadly, I am too much of a lazy pillock to count), so I feel very humbled by some of these numbers.

[Fembrogon]

I have always been enthusiastic about dinosaurs, so grew up with plenty of toys around me - from Safari ltd to Imperial to Hasbro and Tim Mee. Of course, as a kid wasn't really aware of brands or companies, although I could tell some figures (ie, the Safari/Carnegie models, mostly) were of a nicer make than others. I think it was 2007 when I started subscribing to Prehistoric Times that I started becoming aware of the scope of the market, and over the next few years I found online shops like The Dinosaur Farm and Dejankins before landing here at the Toy Blog. By 2015 I was fully committed to collecting, splitting the difference between paleontology and kaiju, depending on my budget or what tickled my fancy most at any given time.
Most of my collection is now boxed up and in storage, following my family moving at the start of 2020; but I'm still actively adding new items when I can. I don't know the exact count of my collection, since I had at least a couple bins/containers worth of figures even without the models on display; but my account on DinoToyCollector lists nearly 400 figures from the major companies, at the least.