Why And When Did You Start Collecting?

[IrritatorRaji]

So yeah, I'm rather curious as to what drew you to collecting dinosaur models / toys / etc. The dinosaur model collecting community is a lot bigger than I first thought it was, so I'm sure there's a lot of interesting stories behind what sparked our interests in model collecting.


My story is, unfortunately, really cliché and kinda that typical internet sob story. I began collecting 2 years ago to cope with mental illnesses, but it's helped a lot. Collecting allowed me to find a place where people don't think I'm a loony for being an adult who loves dinosaur toys

[laticauda]

I actually started collecting when I was a kid due to me falling in love with the Carnegie collection.  Of course as I became older I didn't collect prehistoric toys anymore, but honestly I grew up in a small town and I didn't even know there were all these other companies out there making figures.  Even though I stopped collecting, my Carnegie diplodocus has followed me everywhere I have gone (except college).  What really drew me in is kind of cliché as well.  My kids.  My wife asked me about dinosaurs toys and she bought a couple for our first kid, I found my old ones, and I fell right into this community.  Now I get to share this with them which is awesome. 

Another reason I enjoy collecting prehistoric toys, is not just due to my interest in animals past and present, which I do, but due to the unique and diverse community of people who share this passion.  The people here are awesome. 

[Arul]

I started collecting since 2012 till this day. Most of my toys are dinosaurs and big cats species from Papo, i love collecting Collecta horses too. I love dinosaur, horse, and big cat species since i was elementary school (now im studied at medical faculty). Really love to take a photograph of my toys in outdoor and make them look alived.

[Jose S.M.]

I started about year and a half ago, and it's basically fullfilment of a childhood's dream. Living in Costa Rica I didn't knew about brands as a kid but I remebered going to the shop of a children's museum and seeing lots of nice and accurate (for the time) dinosaurs, later I learned they were Carnegies. Those were more expensive than the bags of chinasaurs my parents used to get me so I couldn't get one. About two years ago I was looking on amazon for some toys to gift and I met Safari and CollectA figures there, I was so excited and told my partner I would have love to have them as a kid, then one day my partner came and gave me CollectA's Torosaurus and that was it, Toro couldn't be alone so I started getting friends for it, first a batch of all Safari ceratopsians released at the time, and the rest is history  .

[Pachyrhinosaurus]

I've been collecting toy dinosaurs for 12 years as of last September. I had animal and dinosaur toys here and there before that but then my class was learning about dinosaurs in school and we had to do a shoebox diorama which was when I got my first proper figures and it took off from there.

[Libraraptor]

When I was six years old I had been infected with the Dinosaur virus.  A friend of mine had drawn an Ornithosuchus on the blackboard at school,  I had never seen such a thing before. My first real serious figure came from Invicta when I was eleven I think.  So is must have been the late eighties when I started collecting.  I am 40 years old.

[Ravonium]

I started (seriously) collecting dinosaurs about a year and a few months ago. I had already collected dinosaurs over the last several years, but nearly all of these were inaccurate Schleich-level trash (but there were no chinasaurs). I would initally discontinue collecting dinosaurs back in 2014 in favour of my (to this day) larger modern animal collection. I don't fully regret that decision because, as I explained earlier, very few of the figures in my collection are well regarded. But I would eventually reverse this decision when I looked at a major company's website (As an extant collector, I was actually familiar with pretty much all modern companies discussed on the forum) and ventured into the dinosaur section. I looked at a pictures of the more recent figures and I thought they looked good, so I searched for pictures of them in hand and voilà, I found the DTB in late 2016. Today, I'm not as obsessed with dinosaur figures as I was when I first found this website, but I still collect them regularly in addition to my modern animal figures.


As for why I started collecting, I guess it's because I've always been fascinated by animals, both living and extinct. Since I wouldn't see most of the most popular animals or any dinosaur in the wild in my life, I realised that the next best thing would be to collect realistic figures of them. It appears that this interest hasn't waned since and so I am where I am at today.

[BlueKrono]

It might just be my generation, but I first fell in love with dinosaur toys thanks to the Carnegie Collection 20-some years ago. I lusted for the toys I wanted for many years, but really had no means. It was about four years ago that I finally got into jobs that afforded me some spare change and was able to begin acquiring the rare, expensive stuff.

[Moodyraptor]

As a kid, I loved natural history museums, and the NHM in London was my favourite place in the world.  I started buying Invictas from there, and Carnegies from local toy stores, and my collection is still majority Invicta and Carnegie to this day.  I've continued collecting on and off throughout my life, though I go through phases when I'm buying lots of stuff and phases where I'll go for ages without buying anything new.  I don't want my collection to grow beyond my shelf space, so I'm quite selective, and not at all completest, and sometimes I'll sell models I'm less fond of to clear some room. 

[Reptilia]

My passion for dinosaurs has been revamped by "Jurassic World" back in late 2014, when the first trailer showed up. Of course as a little kid I had lots of chinasaurs and all of the earlier JP toys, but I didn't have any real interest for almost twenty years, to the point that I completely ignored TLW and JP3 when they originally came out. I discovered Papo figures while searching for JP-style dinos, and consequentially I came across the DTB, this forum, and all other different companies producing prehistoric figures. I decided to limit myself to Papo mostly for money and space issues, but also cause it's the only brand I truly like and enjoy to collect. I tried a few others, bought some Schleichs and Rebors, seen in hand quite a few Safaris, but nothing's like Papo figures for me. Most of my collection is from the prehistoric line, but I'm slowly getting into the extant range too.

[Halichoeres]

I collected dinosaurs as a kid, but almost all of those are long gone. I got back into it about three years ago when somebody got me a small stone stegosaur from the gift shop of the museum in Sydney. I was working at a museum in Chicago at the time, and I wandered through their gift shop and fell in love with the Carnegies and Papos; they were just so much more beautiful and detailed than what I'd had as a kid. I started my collection with Papos but I'm a biologist so it became difficult to tolerate their inaccuracies in the cases where there were better-researched alternatives. I still have a few of the nicer Papos left, maybe 8 or 9 of them, and I buy one or two of their new ones per year, but now I have hundreds of figures from six dozen different companies.

[stargatedalek]

Since I was very little I was always buying figures from gift shops or what not, I have plenty older than I can remember (though very few I would consider genuinely nostalgic).

[QuetzalcoatlusKing]

I have always enjoyed prehistoric creatures, so I just asked for them for holidays and birthdays. I don't have any big names really some imm going to ask for some Safari models, and one other brand. which should it be?

[Newt]

I'm not sure I can be considered a collector- I have just a handful of figures, but I would like to start buying more once I get some more pressing issues dealt with. Anyhow, this website is actually the spark that caused me to start buying figures. I found the DTF through a cross-post on a model kit forum; I had found that forum while searching for sculpting advice. Seeing all the wonderful modern toys available rekindled my childhood love of dinosaur toys.

[mgaguilar]

I was that dinosaur kid even before Kindergarten. I think I was influenced by much of the amazing media that was covering prehistoric times (Jurassic Park, WWD, WWPB, etc.).
I fell in love with the thought of the earth being occupied by something for millions of years other than humans.

[EmperorDinobot]

When I was four.

I started with Batman, moved into Jurassic Park and it's never really ended.

[Doug Watson]

I got my first dinosaur toys as a child and had most of the Marx toys when they first came out but all were given away except for two when I got older I didn't become a true collector until the ripe old age of 45. The catalyst was a copy of Prehistoric Times magazine that I got my hands on at a friend's house. After that plus acquiring a copy of the book Dinosaur Collectibles I started hunting down all the dinosaur toys I had as a child and then all the dinosaur toys I wished I'd had. My first acquisition was to have Mike Fredericks put together my complete set of Marx original issue prehistoric animals. I have most of what I was after now but there are still a few loose ends to snag. 

[ceratopsian]

Prehistoric Times was the catalyst for me too.

[Georassic]

I was a huge dinosaur fan as a child, and had dozens of toy figures and the Aurora models into my teens before losing interest.

All those figures/models are long-gone and I'm now 53, but six years ago, my brother came to visit me in Colorado with his young daughters. One day while I was working, he took them to one of the area dinosaur attractions. They brought me a souvenir--the Carnegie Microraptor.  I was so out of touch with the world of dinosaurs, I'd never heard of Microraptor. But as someone else posted above, I was awed by how much the quality and detail on figures had improved since my youth. Couple that with the fact that I had recently become a first-time father (my boys are 7 and 4 now) so my life and home were filling with toys for the first time in decades, and something clicked with that Microraptor. I was hooked. By end of year I had 10 figures.

A few months later, I discovered this forum, which revealed a new world of collecting to me. Now over 500 figures, and my oldest son is starting his own collection and wants to be a paleontologist. Of course, he's 7, so I know this may be passing phase, but it sure is fun riding it with him.

[Mini Minmi]

I started collecting Papo dinosaurs to decorate my desk when I started working at THQ 7 years ago. Every pay check I'd add one more. I've always loved toys in general and dinosaurs, I just never really collected them before, my "fun" funds being mostly used on my stuffed animals collection. The main reason behind my stuffed animal collection is that I love wild animals enough to leave them alone in their habitat. So the next best thing is to live with a toy version. I find it exciting to look for rarer animals. It's a bit the same with dinosaurs. I can't get the real thing so I'll get a toy instead. I started with Papo because their highly detailed sculpt appealed to me. Now I've added some Collecta and Safari to the mix. While my collection has been relocated at home since Ubisoft bought THQ, I still have a dinosaur at my desk: Axe Cop's Wexter!