Ponies of Pony Collectors Lost

[Gator]

I apologize if this is in the wrong forum.  I didn't know if it was more pony related or more people related to be Off Topic.

Recently someone posted about a former arena member who passed away.  I recently won a U.S. Goodwill auction that had a G1 Sweet Clover, Macau Peachy and an Italian Bowtie.  It got me to wondering.  How did these three world-traveled ponies end up in a Goodwill store in Washington state?  Did someone who lived in Europe as a child move to the USA with her toys, outgrow them, and donate them?  Did a pony collector loose interest in the hobby, and instead of selling them, dump them at Goodwill?  Or did a collector pass away, and their loved and hard-earned ponies get tossed out by family members who didn't know their worth?

These are just random thoughts I have.  With Covid I worry about my collections.  I'm not in the best of health, I'm sure covid could take me out.  Then what will my family do?  Yard sale!  Goodwill!  Salvation army! 

 

[BlackCurtains]

I've thought about this since I'm not in good health either (without my meds I'm suicidal too). I have a small journal that I wrote all my online information in, like my Arena log in, and said I wanted my collection to go back to the community. I gave detailed instructions about how to do that. How to ask for help about selling them, etc. I did it for all my collections, one of which is way more lucrative than ponies.

I'm not sure if information in a journal can be considered a will or not, but I don't know what else to do. Except make a formal will but that requires lawyers and money (I think?).

More on topic, once at Goodwill I found someone's collection of Goldberg merchandise (the wrestler). I bought it all 👀 So now I am the proud owner of a 90s Goldberg phone

[Aeryala]

I always wonder about the stories of things at thrift shops..  if those ponies did belong to a collector who passed away, I'm sure that person would be so happy that they ended up in your hands, Gator!


That's a good idea, BlackCurtains.  It doesn't have to be in a will to still be helpful to your family.  I've told my husband he can give my toys away (he will definitely not have the wherewithal to negotiate sales) if something happens to me, but that I want them to go to a collector.

[Taffeta]

I know in the case of my very first trade partner, her collection was probably the foremost collection that there has ever been in the history of pony collections. And it's some years now since she passed away, and sadly her collection was largely dispersed. When I first met her in 1998 she was in her seventies already. She'd started collecting ponies originally for her grandkids and ended up getting hooked herself.

My sister and I owe a lot of the rarer ponies in our collection to her kindness, as well as the fact she gave us a reference and paved the way for us to trade with other people when we hardly knew anybody. I have such fond memories of her and cherish a lot of the ponies we got from her (including both my Mimic and my Rapunzel, but most especially my Baby Shady who she sent to me as a sweet 16 present after hearing I had Shady as a kid but that the UK didn't ever get her baby).

Of course, among those ponies were probably a few hundred I traded to her, as well as many other people, some still here, some no longer still in the community.

I still think it's the ultimate tragedy that her collection was separated like it was.

But on a lighter note!

When we were carbooting, we found a lot of unexpected ponies at our local sale. Some of them came from a collector who sold up and I don't know where some of hers came from, but she had Night Glider and Sand Dollar, as well as a few Macau ponies and things which may or may not have come from overseas.

But others, like Italian Surprise, German Skydancer, Baby Leaper, Mimic (yeah, genuinely xD), SS Hippety Hop (omg the confusion for us having never seen a SS pony before!)...no idea how they came here or who they came from originally to get to the UK. Also my Glory and Moondancer who must have travelled in from the US I think at some point.

I genuinely wish ponies could talk.

In my collection though I also have a Tropical Breeze who I bought from the US. I bought her because she came with her UK box and a Harrods price label. And I had Tropi as a kid and wanted that box. So I asked the seller, why do you have her with the UK box? And the answer was that she was a pony bought on holiday to London in 1987. And she had bought a bunch of ponies here that she had not seen in the US before she left, including Hopscotch and Honeycomb who she was keeping. I kind of liked the idea of this UK sold Tropi being bought by a little girl in Harrods and then spending her pony life in the US, only to come back to the UK in the end. So I kept her as well as her box.

I'd like to know the stories of more of my ponies though.

And I'd really like to know where in the world some of the ponies I traded to people over the years are now and who they are with. In 20+ years I must've traded two or three thousand ponies around the globe. It would be amazing to know where ponies from childhood collections in this local area ended up. This was a really good area in the late 1990s for finding ponies as we had very little competition from other collectors once that one sold up in 1998. So who knows? If you're reading this, you might have a pony in your collection that started his or her life here in the welsh borders with a little British kid

[Gator]

You guys may have heard me tell this story, but in 1995-1998 sometime, I found a Brazil Heart Throb at a thrift store.  Beat up, obviously well loved by a child, but I remember thinking Egads!!!  What is this ugly thing?  I didn't learn until years later after joining the arena about Brazilian ponies and who she was.
And again, how did she end up in a thrift store in the southern United States?  What is her story?

[mlp4me]

Did the lot come out of Oregon, that's a hot spot for oddities that you wouldn't expected to be on US shelves...
I just watched a lot with Italian Medley sell this week on shopgoodwill. There were 2 of the same starlight babies too.

[Gator]

Yes!  I was watching that lot too!  I was wondering about Flutterbye with that lot, I thought maybe her symbols were the non-glittery kind.

[brightberry]

I have a feeling my ponies and almost all my other belongings will end up in a thrift store one day.  My family just doesn't have the patience to sort through people's things.  But, they are here for me to enjoy for the now... so that's ok.

[toyjunky]

Writing a note and letting them know what the most important (or valuable) things are is the best option (verses nothing) and of course letting them know where the note is. I would also add that a documentation list of accounts and passwords that would need to be closed is also VERY helpful (even if it is just a file on a computer).

As someone who has unfortunately cleaned through a number of relatives households after their passing (and currently working on my grandmother's) the reality is that everything comes down to four options 1)Keep, 2)Donate, 3)Sell, 4)Trash. Not going to lie here, number 4 -Trash is a pretty common thing in regards to toys (especially if they look a little beaten up) if they don't go to Donate. I just stopped one of my aunts from trashing some old toys the other day at my grandmother's (she didn't believe they were worth bothering with) that we then sold at a yard sale for anywhere between $5-$30 dollars depending on the toy.

Depending on the circumstance of the situation, many people can just find it overwhelming to try and sell items that belonged to family members. Donation becomes a simpler option. Also the amount of time available to clean through someones possessions or house can limit the options available (if they are renting vs. owning).

It would be interesting to hear the stories they could tell us if our toys could talk.