So talking about the storage find made me think about this again.
In the discussion thread about the forum, there was also some comments raised about new people finding it harder to settle here, which bothered me a lot because we've all been newbies at some point in the past.
So I thought maybe it would help to go back and share some of those kinds of stories, just to show everyone that we're all the same, we all had help at the beginning, and it's ok to ask someone for help because people will.
It doesn't matter if you were new to the pony community 20 years ago or 2 months ago. It also doesn't matter if the person is an online person, or a real life person, or how it happened.
But when you first started collecting ponies again, or first joined the pony community, what mistakes did you make and/or who were the people who helped you out along the way to prevent you making mistakes?
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My Newbie SaviourFor me
the first pony person I met was a lady called Helen. (For a while she went by the online name of pinkember but she didn't do a lot of pony posting/discussing online on forums etc).
She was a grandmother who began collecting ponies for her grandkids but ultimately got the bug and started collecting herself. She lived in the US, and I live in the UK, so this is one of those stories of awesome and trust that I think is quite rare, especially now.
In 1997 the local library by me had internet, and I'd go there and google MLP and find DV and print pages off. I also found the Trade Post. I had no email address at that time, we weren't allowed to use the library email to receive email and I don't think online email addresses were a thing here then - or if they were, I didn't know about them. I was 15.
I had my parents' permission to post on the TP and leave a phone number. I had just discovered that Medley, Firefly etc actually existed and I was super excited. But these ponies were in the US. Nobody in the US is going to phone a UK number, right?
...Wrong.
Some weeks pass. We get a phonecall from this lady in the US. It's Helen. And so began my first ever online/real life trading relationship and friendship.
Helen was an awesome lady. She understood I was young and my sister was younger. She knew all of this happened with my parents' knowledge and consent, they were always around. There were very few people in the UK collecting and online then, and I had access to UK ponies so she had taken the gamble on contacting me to see if I could get hold of stuff for her.
Right then there were a lot of UK ponies not known about. She didn't know who Snowflake was, and I remember her asking me "is it true that the UK had boy ponies? I don't know they're fake or not but people keep talking about some UK boys." And so I sent her photos (actual physical photos) of the Mountain Boys, and those got added to the 'can you look for them' list.
...I wasn't able, aged 15, to ship tons of ponies to the US. I didn't have that kind of money. But she had family over here, and she was going to visit them in April 1998. So we agreed I would collect ponies up for her here, and she'd bring a case of ponies over for us, and we'd do an inperson trade in April 1998.
This lady had no reason to trust a 15 year old kid in another country. Despite that, she sent Mimic and Best Wishes, then Powder and Truly as 'advance ponies' for my sister and I, in time for my sister's birthday. Mimic was my first ever online trade pony. But she's special to me not because she's rare (I didn't know that at the time) but because she came from Helen on trust.
She also sent me Baby Shady for my 16th birthday, as I had said to her how much I loved Shady...and she sent us Bushwoolies for Christmas.
In April, she came to see us. She came early and we went to the carboot first. She saw Mountain Boys and I remember her hesitating, and asking me if I was buying them, as it was 'my patch', but I told her to just buy what she wanted, and she was super excited about it all.
We went back home and did a massive trade of about 98 ponies apiece. She also showed me a colorswirl pony she was going to give to her granddaughter, and three what we would now call Nirvana ponies - a brazilian baby cuddles, argentinian peekaboo baby, and peruvian baby cotton candy. She had variants way before anyone was talking about variants.
Helen trusted me and took a gamble on me. When I was online properly, she was not only a reference for me, but a guide for safe and unsafe trading. I learned a lot from her, and a lot of my rarest ponies came from her.
Sadly Helen passed away a few years ago - she was in her nineties. I miss her greatly, and she's very fondly remembered by my family as well. She was my newbie rescuer.
In my folder of leaflets and other things, I still have one letter from her. I'm sure I had others, once, but I don't know what happened to them. However, I'm happy to still have that one
I mentioned it in the other thread, but people who knew Helen knew that her collection was out of this world. She sold off parts of it while she was still alive and yet still had huge amounts when she passed away. Sadly the collection got dispersed after her death. I don't know of anyone before or since who had a collection like hers. People talk about the Delaneys a lot but that's only because they put themselves out there, had the Palooza and showed their collection a lot more. Helen's was much much bigger than theirs, but she didn't like the spotlight. I don't know if she'd like it, me saying that here and now - but I really want her to be remembered, because she remains the most awesome pony collector I ever knew, and I'd like other people to think of her that way too.
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