Who you're dealing with

How it got out of hand

It started at school, swapping figures in the playground back when they weren't vintage yet. They were just toys, and slightly out-of-date ones at that. I never really stopped. The collecting got badly out of hand somewhere in my twenties, the buying and selling grew out of the collecting, and three decades later I've handled more Star Wars figures, Transformers and boxes of mystery loft treasure than I could begin to count.

That matters to you for one practical reason: I can look at a photo of a jumbled shelf and know what I'm seeing. You don't need to identify anything, research anything or clean anything. That's my end of the deal.

Why sell to one buyer instead of a faceless service?

When you deal with me, there's no call centre, no warehouse team, no "valuations department", and none of the games that come with them. No lowball first offer to see if you bite. No offer that mysteriously shrinks once your parcel arrives. The offer I send is the price I pay, and if something significant isn't as the photos showed, you choose between a revised offer and free return of everything. That's the whole rulebook.

I'll also tell you honestly when I'm not the right buyer. Some collections belong at a specialist auction, and I'll say so. I'd rather you got the right outcome than I got every parcel.

Where your toys end up

This is the question sellers ask most quietly, and it deserves a proper answer. Your toys don't disappear into a warehouse. I restore them, complete them from my mountain of spares, and pass them on to collectors who have usually been hunting for exactly that figure, that vehicle, that missing piece. People who'll treasure them.

If you feel a bit odd about selling your childhood, that's normal, and maybe this helps: the box in your loft isn't being enjoyed by anyone. The collector it ends up with will think about it every time they walk past the shelf.