The MLP Arena
Pony Talk => Pony Corral => Topic started by: Haruna on January 06, 2015, 11:17:27 PM
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I've been thinking lately about how much has changed since I first started collecting ponies in earnest (in 1997, at the tender age of 10 or so!) I can remember certain websites that aren't around anymore, and certain ponies that didn't keep their value! And sometimes I'm not certain whether my memories are getting a little mixed up, because that was a long time ago! Who else wants to reminisce with me?
Do you remember when. . .
. . . you bought from another collector the safest way was to send them a money order?
. . . some of the most sought-after and expensive ponies were Lil' Tot, Hollywood, non-BBE UK and German babies, Mimic (some things never change, lol!), and flutters with wings?
. . . most later-year ponies very popular today were virtually ignored? (like Sweetheart Sisters, Secret Surprise ponies, perfume puff ponies, mermaid babies)
. . . ponies seemed so much cheaper????
. . . Dream Valley was the go-to website for pony identification? And it had pony backcards instead of photographs to help you identify ponies? (Dream Valley will always have a special place for me because it was so instrumental in helping me ID my ponies.)
. . . you bid on an auction, you had to keep refreshing your browser to make sure you weren't outbid? (don't miss that any)
. . . Ebay auctions were not required to have a photo, and it usually wasn't shown in the main listing?
. . . most Nirvana ponies were unknown? (I still feel like a time traveler coming to another century as I learn about all the pony variations from other countries)
. . . it wasn't ridiculously rare to find a pony in a thrift store? (G1, of course!)
. . . Moondancer's Dream was around? Lady Moondancer's website had a huge impact on me, if only because of her awesome fanfiction.
. . . and who else remembers High Queen Tiffany? I'll be quite interested if anyone does. She ran a website called the Ice Palace (I think?) and resigned because of all the flamers and hecklers.
If you were online in the late 90s or early 2000s, what do you remember?
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I was reading along and I saw my name, ahhhhhhh! Hi there!!
HQT ran Dream Castle website and I still have one of her fanfictions saved on my computer (the one about the fairy tale princesses), and I wish I'd saved the other one about Lord Dale. The Ice Palace was run by . . . IceFeather, I want to say? I think she also ran the Church of the Holy MOC Mimic, which was hilarious.
I get really nostalgic about those early days. <3 And YES, Dream Valley when it still had backcards, ahhhh man I POURED over those backcards. So many ponies I'd never heard of before!
Remember the Ponypeople mailing list?
Remember when the Trading Post was black and hot pink?
Remember when you traded by going to someone's website, looking at their want list / sale list, emailing them, and they would provide you references (which were other people's email addys)?
Remember when you had to send cash if you were buying ponies from someone not in your own country?
Remember when you could leave eBay feedback for ANYONE, regardless of whether you'd bought / sold from them ON eBay? (It wasn't abused as much as you'd think!)
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I didn't start buying ponies online until the mid to late 2000s (considering my age I had help :P) but in the early 2000s I loved looking at Dream Valley and trying to ID the few ponies I had. <3 The sites I miss most are actually customizer sites... Lady Minty's Customs *cries* I wish there was an archive somewhere of ALL her photos... I was fortunate enough to obtain one of her customs. There was also another site, 7belles I think..? I have one of her creations too and I really wish all those gorgeous photos of customs still existed...
... remember when you could search my little pony and not be assaulted by FIM? I'm sorry, it's just impossible at times to find anything pre-G4. I really wish I could have been born earlier and experienced the oldest generations while they were new. At least my sister can tell me about it. :)
Definitely following this thread to read all your stories!
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Yes yes yes! I joined the TP in 1996 I think!
I remember all of the above!
Remember: ivys chat? Pony people email list? The dream castle mailing list? Dream castle chat parties? AOL instant messenger?
When baby apple jack and co were discovered and they sold for so much?! I bought a baby bow tie for $70.
Pinwheel and her blinkes?! I still see some to this day on this board and get all nostalgic.
When argie flutterbye was prettybow?
Pony paloza and the unveiling of the Delaneys dream collection?
The pink and blank trading post? And when it reformatted it was so crazy to navigate!
I remember bidding on ebay auctions without pictures! It was always a huge surprise or big let down getting fakies or some cool htf ponies! "My little pony horses lot of 7 pretty hair! Some unicorns!" And we can't forget yahoo auctions!
The days where there would only be 3 or 4 pages of ponies on ebay versus 100s.
The g2 launch controversy.
When people were still finding old stock of g1s at toys r us and white elephant stores?
So many more!
Shout out to some old Pony peeps! Say hi if you're still around!
Katja lahti, garej, JLM, pone, pinwheel, abasca, thunderwing, glitzy, duckie, wildfirechiefsgirl, Baby berry town, baby_katie, jentutu, buckbuddy, saturn cyan, roswita, etoileblue, valeofspring, and so many more!!
Post Merge: January 07, 2015, 12:28:56 AM
Yes yes yes!
I remember all of the above!
Remember: ivys chat? Pony people email list? The dream castle mailing list? Dream castle chat parties? AOL instant messenger?
When baby apple jack and co were discovered and they sold for so much?! I bought a baby bow tie for $70.
Pinwheel and her blinkes?! I still see some to this day on this board and get all nostalgic.
When argie flutterbye was prettybow?
Pony paloza and the unveiling of the Delaneys dream collection?
The pink and blank trading post? And when it reformatted it was so crazy to navigate!
I remember bidding on ebay auctions without pictures! It was always a huge surprise or big let down getting fakies or some cool htf ponies! "My little pony horses lot of 7 pretty hair! Some unicorns!" And we can't forget yahoo auctions!
The days where there would only be 3 or 4 pages of ponies on ebay versus 100s.
The g2 launch controversy.
When people were still finding old stock of g1s at toys r us and white elephant stores?
So many more!
Shout out to some old Pony peeps! Say hi if you're still around!
Katja lahti, garej, JLM, pone, pinwheel, abasca, thunderwing, glitzy, duckie, wildfirechiefsgirl, Baby berry town, baby_katie, jentutu, buckbuddy, saturn cyan, roswita, etoileblue, valeofspring, and so many more!!
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I was a kid in the 90's, and we had dialup, so it was hard to collect/buy toys online! For me I always rode my bike or walked up to walmart or dollar general for toys.When I did get online it was for neopets mostly LOL. Oooooh but I do remember G1s being waaaay more common in the 90s in thrift stores!
[edit for content ~ hathorcat]
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Was born in 1993 so... :P My earliest memory of a MLP were the G2 ones. Must be interesting to be a collector in the 90s though!
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I have been in the community since waaay back in 1996. I even attended Ponypalooza 2000. I saw the Delaney's collection in person, and boy did it live up to the hype! I bought a bunch of stuff from them too. At one point they were selling MIB ponies(Dance 'n Prance, Baby Ponies and Pretty Pals, etc) for like $18-$20 each.
I remember High Queen Tiffany's site, and a lot of the other wonderful sites long gone. Icefeather's site is archived on the Wayback Machine, but you need to have the *exact* URL to access it, and some bits and pieces are missing.
I remember when the German Babies pulled in the big bucks:p I paid $295 for my Baby Cherries Jubilee, and that was a bargain at the time! I also remember when you could pretty easily pick up a Mimic for $30-$40, and Rapunzel sold for under $100.
I remember the first time anybody saw the Greek ponies. I remember that summer when the market was flooded with MIB Greeks, and you could easily get a MIB Baby Minty for $100.
I remember when the Piggy ponies were first discovered and everybody thought they were fakies. I remember someone said they paid some ridiculously cheap price for one(like $20 or something), and everybody thought that person was crazy for wasting their money. Then somebody found one MIP, and then that $20 didn't seem so stupid anymore.
I remember the Ponypeople mailing list. I even ran my own mailing list for a while for accessory collectors:p
I remember the "Shadow Wars" that happened when the G2s came out. I remember all those "love all ponies!" banners that people had to try to stop the flame war:p
Most of all, I remember all my old pony friends. Taffeta, UK Milkyway, TicTacToe, Lady Twilight...I miss seeing them around the boards and chatting with them through emails:(
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Maaaaan, flashbacks!! I was still pretty young in the 90s, which was why I didn't interact too much, I just read all of the websites! I printed out the entirety of Dream Valley's pony pages, which I studied obsessively and made into a sort of collector's guide for myself! I looked up which ponies I remembered from a friend's childhood herd, and planned out which ponies I needed to get on eBay to "complete" my collection... little did I know how addictive THAT would turn out to be! :P
I remember following the MLP webring from site to site, reading about EvilDeadPony, and so many beautiful customizers', fanart and adoptie sites!
I do have a question for all of you; does anyone remember a customizer by the name of Unicorn, or something like that? She made customs, and her specialty was giving them micro-beaded hair. I remember her so clearly because she offered commissions (something amazing to me at the time!) and I remember wanting one of her beaded-hair ponies a lot! I'd be curious if anyone could find her website, or even just a photo of her customs for me! I had it bookmarked, but I lost it about a hundred computers ago...
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Wow I didn't even have the internet until 2007 :lol: I was in my late teens in 1997 yet I didn't even know the internet existed :blush: *is a noob*
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It's neat to hear all of your stories! Unfortunately, in the late 90s I wasn't into MLP. I was into the whole Beanie Baby fad at that time. Although even still I don't think I ever got my hands on anything rare. :sad:
I just had to buy the G4 MLP Beanie Babies as a commemoration of my Beanie Baby fad way back in the day!
I didn't even hear of MLP until 2004, believe it or not. And then all I really knew it for was G3.
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Baby lofty's song site,
As a kid I'd record theose songs on to a casset tape from the computer.
Dream valley,
Was the go to place for just about anything.
I spent time reading the episodes movies ect.
Ring of rainbows..
Pony topia
That was the go to G3 website. For the news. I checked it everyday when I was a G3 collector.
I do recall Hasbros offical web site and the cotton candy behind a tree, with a comming Soon logo.
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Remember when Dream Valley had a "song of the week" from the cartoons on the website? I remember one song which was apparently cut from some versions of "The Glass Princess", which I have never heard since. "Hurry, hurry, there's no time to waste! We all have to scurry--hurry!" or something like that.
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I remember buying ponies on Yahoo Auctions in the early 2000s XD
And any pony sites would take forever to load. No quick ID searches then!
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Back in the day, whoohoo.
Yea, I was around starting in 96 or 97; the whole reason I got online was because I met a fellow collector at a flea market. We just happened to be looking at the same bunch of ponies and we struck up a conversation about ponies. It was really the first person besides my cousin who I had ever met that also liked MLP and collected them. She told me that people are online and that I could find ponies I didn't have. So, whole reason I got online was because of advice from another collector.
If I remember rightly she also attended Pony Polooza, I think she went by baby abacus - I attended both Polooza. Good times!
Dream Valley chat was a great place to be able to chat with other collectors. I remember getting on early just so I could chat with people in England and other countries.
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It wasn't around in the 90's (I don't think?) but the first pony website I ever joined was the My Little Pony Playhouse. The good old days <3 It closed down ages ago *sad*
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Haha, ohhhh my gosh... boy, this brings back a lot of memories! I remember going online and finding Dream Valley for the first time and being super excited. That was a pretty good time for garage sale hunting, because I would find a ton of G1 ponies at garage sales and thrift stores for a quarter or fifty cents. One time in a grocery store I found an unopened G1 Merry-Go-Round board game on the shelf; they must have found it in the stock room somewhere and just dumped it on the shelf. I brought it to the cash register and it didn't come up in their system, so the clerk rang it up for $1. :lol:
I was pretty active online in the late 90's, but I mostly hung out at Quacker County with EvilDeadPony, WildShadow, Kat, Teddy... and a bunch of other people I don't remember any more, sadly. I went by the name Bouncy/Bouncery at the time and spent so many hours hanging out there, and I'd do drawings of the other members' OCs and things. Here, have a super old picture! I actually have a ton of pictures from that time squirreled away on my hard drive still... :lol:
visitors can't see pics , please register or login
(http://imgur.com/CrQdwVu)
I never really hung out at HQT's site, but my now-husband went by the name Lancer "back in the day" and he remembers LadyMoondancer and HQT really well! :lol:
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Shout out to some old Pony peeps! Say hi if you're still around!
Katja lahti, garej, JLM, pone, pinwheel, abasca, thunderwing, glitzy, duckie, wildfirechiefsgirl, Baby berry town, baby_katie, jentutu, buckbuddy, saturn cyan, roswita, etoileblue, valeofspring, and so many more!!
Hello! Wow, so nice to get a shout out:) I was an online collector starting 1998. I still remember when I first did an internet search for "My Little Pony" and being so surprised when I found eBay and Dream Valley and other sites that showed I was not alone in the world!
I did not participate in but do remember "The Shadows" and all the G2 controversy.
Yes, flutters with wings were very expensive. I remember if I found a spare flutter wing in a lot I thought I'd struck gold.
And yes, on eBay there were often no pictures at all. I sold my first lots with no pictures. I bought a wonderful lot based simply on description and I still have most of the ponies from it--I got lucky!
EBay was a super big deal and such a novelty. I remember when Oprah devoted a show to it and a woman on the show had paid $2000 (?) for the Beanie Baby "Wingless Quackers" and someone had sent her a regular Quackers with the wings cut off.
It seems like it was much more common then for people to have their own MLP-themed websites, which in hindsight were often quite primitive. Lots of text that often shifted around as you scrolled the page, and the text was often quite small. I guess now people have many more outlets to share their interests and don't need to build a website from scratch. I still have a Word document that is the text for the website I wanted to create. One of the features was going to be the backcard stories. I think I got scooped on that by . . . the Paradise Estate Library? There was some site called that . . .
It was a fun but somewhat chaotic time to collect. On eBay I remember emailing people who won the accessory lots I wanted and asking them if I could buy certain things if they didn't want them. Sometimes they would sell! You could see who bid on everything, and when some bidders got into the mix (e.g. Delaneys) you had nooooo chance.
:)
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Oh wow. I do remember indeedy! I started collecting online around 10 too! I remember it was when eBay was very new and at the time I was living in Okinawa, Japan. Most sellers refused to ship overseas because back then it use to take about two months just for packages to reach us! And there was no real form of tracking so my mother, the funny little woman that she is, would often bribe these sellers with extra funds to get them to ship to me :) We had to either send checks or money orders. So it was about two weeks for the cash to clear, before they actually shipped them out to us. It was always such a pleasant surprise because I never knew when they were coming. Some would come in 2 mos or even 4 mos later. I was able to amass quite a few rare ponies; nirvanas and UK releases for SUPER CHEAP because most of the sellers had no idea what they had to sell. I bought my first pearlized baby I remember, for just 2 bucks! I got most of the summer wings around that time too and the most I remember spending was 6 bucks on any given pony.
Dream Valley was also my go to online reference for G1s. I loved all the backcards because I had never seen most of them. G1s stopped retailing on the military bases as early as '89 so I only had 5 ponies that I (my parents) actually bought in store. The pamphlets and backcards were always my fave though. I'd mark down which ponies I would one day find and dreamed of creating a set up to display them like the ones on the cards.
It would be years and years though before I realized there was a community of collectors. I cannot express just how isolated and alone I felt collecting MLPs. It never even occurred to me until I was about 24 years old that there were other grown women and men collecting as well! It took me completely aback! I knew of plenty of websites but thought those were hosted by strays like me lol. I managed to find mlparena through the customizing community. I forget her name but she was/is a famous artist, she made the Alien, Stormtropper, and Princess Leia MLP customs in the early 2000s and I saw them on a gaming website I frequented and the trail eventually lead me to the arena! Oh very nice memories all in all :)
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About the auctions without pictures--YES, and if they did have pictures they were from a scanner! Ponies floating on a greenish-black background, and Lemon Drop's hair always looked pink-ish.
I remember taking a chance on an auction with no picture and only the description "MOC Love Letter Pony." Was it a MOC Love Letter . . . or was it a fakie with a heart on her butt or something? I took a chance and won the auction for $20 . . . and it turned out to be MOC Dutch Love Pony, who I'd never even heard of!
I also remember the confusion when an Australian Birthflower ponies appeared on eBay for the first time. It was Holly, who is green with white hair, and some collectors thought she was a customized Minty.
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Wow! I'm loving this thread guys! It sounds like it was an exciting time!
Jules x
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I was buying and selling on eBay when I was ten years old, and that was the late 90s. I remember getting Mimic for only $30. It's amazing how she has skyrocketed in price.
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I think I found my way to collector sites about 2006. I had just started collecting G3 and I was looking to ID my G1's and found Ponytopia and Dream Valley ( she had back cards back in the day!?!?), and being in shock at how many different sets there were!
Its been interesting to see how the community has changed over the years....
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I totally missed out on this stuff so I'm loving this thread! Quick question, though, what were the "shadows"? And what exactly did the G2 controversy entail?
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This thread is great! I love hearing stories like this :>
Remember when Dream Valley had a "song of the week" from the cartoons on the website? I remember one song which was apparently cut from some versions of "The Glass Princess", which I have never heard since. "Hurry, hurry, there's no time to waste! We all have to scurry--hurry!" or something like that.
Someone put it on YouTube here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4jPBKVShFg)! It's not the best quality but it's the only copy I've ever been able to find :( From what I've heard, that episode only aired once or twice with the "Hurry" song in it before the song was cut out for whatever reason.
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I remember all of this!
I've been collecting since 1998 and this thread brings back so many memories!
I had a three ring binder with all of the checklists from Dream Valley and all of the back card pictures so I could identify my ponies. I spent hours browsing that site and drooling over ponies I had wanted as a kid.
I remember the pink and black Trading Post and how hostile it seemed at times. Back then it was common place to have flame threads. I'm so glad that's not the case anymore. Now it's much more pleasant to collect.
I had forgotten about Pretty Bow and Argentina Flutterbye! I remember when I got her and I thought I had this super rare pony. Then once it was discovered she was from Argentina and she wasn't uber hard to find her price plummeted. It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that she wasn't Pretty Bow
I remember all of the super cheap MOC Greeks. Ebay was flooded with them and thankfully I was smart enough to snap some of them up. To this day I can't justify spending 200+ on them when all of mine were $70 or under. :P
I remember money orders and well concealed cash and thinking that was safer than Paypal. It took me a long time to come around to getting a Paypal account.
I spent hours browsing everyone's MLP websites and looking at individual pictures of ponies. It seems funny to think back on that now and all the plans I made to have my own website….it never came to fruition though!
Back in the day I was Up Up and Away and still would be but I took a hiatus from collecting for a few years to have my son and when I came back there was another collector with a similar name who had turned out to be a scammer. I ended up getting so many hate PMs with collectors thinking I was the scammer that I reached out to the mods and changed my name under a new account. Too much time had passed and no one knew who I was anymore. Every now and then I run into an old time collector who remembers UU&A :)
What I miss the most though were the Michigan pony meets that I used to host. I started out co hosting with Pone but when she moved away Babyjluv and I continued on for several years. Now neither Pone nor Babyjluv actively collect anymore and I haven't hosted a meet since then. It's nice to see Ivy starting the tradition up again. I met so many great people by doing that: JLM, Snyfez, Sweet Tune, Wildfirechiefsgirl and so many more. Most aren't around anymore which makes me so sad. :cry:
It's interesting to think back on how much history we all have with collecting. On the surface it's a fun hobby and an interesting way to pass the time. It's obvious from reading this post though that it's so much more than that for all of us. ;)
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Oh the memories! I also remember the eBay auctions with no pictures, soooooo many mail orders, shipping costs were practically nothing! And discovering Dream Valley in 1997 - that's what started me collecting as an adult. And researching customizing techniques for a year before trying my hand at it.
Remember when Woozie introduced us to apoxie sculpt? We were all stunned.
Elf
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I was a teenager last half of the 90's and a first couple of years from the 2000's. I wasn't collecting ponies or toys at the time, actually it was my "toys are for little kids" and "I'm too old for toys" time. In the 90's I wasn't spending much time online and thought MLP was dead and never survived the 80's.
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I was JUST thinking about Pinwheel's blinkies last night! I, unfortunately, lost both of mine: a "LittleSpiffy" blinkie with Cotton Candy and THE MOST EPIC LAST UNICORN BLINKIE!
*sniff* I wish I had saved them :(
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I totally missed out on this stuff so I'm loving this thread! Quick question, though, what were the "shadows"? And what exactly did the G2 controversy entail?
Someone else can answer this better than I can, but if I remember correctly "The Shadows" were an anti-G2 contingent. This was back in the Wild West of late 1990s online MLP and things were quite contentious. Now that we not only have G2 but G3 and G4 I think everyone is used to MLP being an active and changing line, but back then it really was kind of shocking when the G2 reboot happened and the ponies looked so different.
I remember the pink and black Trading Post and how hostile it seemed at times. Back then it was common place to have flame threads. I'm so glad that's not the case anymore. Now it's much more pleasant to collect.
I remember money orders and well concealed cash and thinking that was safer than Paypal. It took me a long time to come around to getting a Paypal account.
Yes and yes! Ha ha, I'd forgotten about the transition over to PayPal. I also didn't trust it ("they connect to your BANK!") and I'd send MOs, checks, and cash. With other collectors online it was really routine to send cash.
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When people were still finding old stock of g1s at toys r us and white elephant stores?
So many more!
Shout out to some old Pony peeps! Say hi if you're still around!
Katja lahti, garej, JLM, pone, pinwheel, abasca, thunderwing, glitzy, duckie, wildfirechiefsgirl, Baby berry town, baby_katie, jentutu, buckbuddy, saturn cyan, roswita, etoileblue, valeofspring, and so many more!!
OMG! Somebody remembers me! I'm still the same ol' Thunderwing. (Sometimes also called Baby Ali or Whizzer). :D I killed so many hours on that Dream Valley chat. Those chats are what made me a fast typist: you had to type and reply before someone else moved. It was first come first serve, so much awesome chaos. Remember when the Dream Valley chat didn't have specific logins - anyone could login under any name, and there'd be occasional drama over a stolen/impersonated username.
I still remember in 1992 finding a MOC (yes, on card) Baby Fifi. With only her brush and sippy cup. On clearance for a crazy price, probably a dollar or something. And being too embarrassed to take her up to the cash to pay for her. :(
Then in ... oh, 1999 or so, at the same store, finding three mint in bag mail order sparkle ponies, and a loose clipper. They were $1.27 each. I asked if they had more, but they said that the rest of the box full (!!!) had been sold already. They had gotten them as old stock from Hasbro for a special price when the G2's were first stocked.
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I'm being reminded of so much through you guys' comments! I love it.
I was reading along and I saw my name, ahhhhhhh! Hi there!!
Hi there!!! I am so very surprised that you're the same LadyMoondancer! I've seen you around on the boards and I just assumed you had the same name. I'm laughing at myself now! I'm so very happy to hear you're still in the pony community. It's kind of like meeting a favorite author. :blush: Your website and fanfiction had a big impact on me as a growing writer! Do you have your fanfictions saved anymore? (sorry, rabid fan!)
HQT ran Dream Castle website and I still have one of her fanfictions saved on my computer (the one about the fairy tale princesses), and I wish I'd saved the other one about Lord Dale. The Ice Palace was run by . . . IceFeather, I want to say? I think she also ran the Church of the Holy MOC Mimic, which was hilarious.
Oh, yes, that's right! HQT ran the Dream Castle website. When she resigned I was terribly sad. And yes, IceFeather, not HQT, ran the Ice Palace, that's right. I have a kinda strange memory of her -- back when you could see who you were bidding against, I was in a fierce, down-to-the-wire bidding war with her over a non-BBE Baby Ribbon, and I won. I was always a little nervous that she was upset with me, but I didn't know her personally, so it was kind of silly. :lol:
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I was on the ponypeople email group in the late 90's. :heart: That was my daily ritual after high school: come home & read the day's worth of pony email.
When I started collecting, I copied all of Dream Valley & later Taffeta's UK Scrapbook into a black & white composition notebook BY HAND because my parents wouldn't let me use that much computer paper to print it out. I still have the notebook with all of my early collection notes including who I bought or traded with & how much I paid for each pony (ahem... $30 Mimic).
I rember when Paypal first launched & gave you a $5 credit for signing up, and for every person you referred you got another $5 credit. Haha!! To think Paypal started out giving money away before all the fees started...
My first international trade got me UK Magic Star for a so soft Gusty, adult sea pony, & a Birthflower mail order. :faint: At the time I thought I got a sweet deal.
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I remember all of this. I started collecting just as the G2 ponies came out and Dream Valley was my place to go for identification. I guess that would have been '98 I believe (that's when I set up my yahoo email address with a pony name).
I remember my first eBay pony purchase (no picture), it was a nasty Blossom for $5 that the seller was kind enough to refund me for when I mentioned the cut tail and the coating of rust and dirt inside her. She's still the worst pony I'd ever come across. I wish I'd taken a picture. And another non picture purchase of Minty that turned out to be the yellow Italian Minty. I was so disappointed that it wasn't the Minty I wanted, I couldn't wait to trade her away. Now I'm sad I did.
The money orders... It was a great day for me to learn that I didn't have to go to the Bank each time for a money order. The post office sells them? Really? And then I got a couple from some sales and misplaced them and was never able to cash them. That was a waste. Loving Paypal now.
I don't recall the pink and black Trading Post, it must have been before my time. I remember some early swaps, man were they different than now but I did get a lovely picture from Tickle out of one of them.
I always wanted to go to Pony Palooza. :(
There are so many awesome half memories that I'd love to share but don't know enough to explain. There was some kind of contest thing and I submitted my idea of the origins of MLPs being from another planet that was accessed from the Stargate. My sci-fi love surfaces. I got an honorable mention for weirdness (maybe originallity, I don't remember).
Ah, the early days. Thanks for the trip down Memory Lane. I loved all my pony peeps from back then, such great community.
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I was in the original boards pre-1997. So many of the oldies might remember me from back then :)
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Oh the days. I would've been 15-16 in the late 90's when I first started collecting again. My poor parents all worried that I was just "giving my address away to ANYONE!". They watched way too much dateline. Because I was underage I begged my parents to get an ebay account and let me use it. In the end I had to settle for Yahoo Auctions because it was free at the time and they didn't want to put their credit card online. Just who WAS this ebay anyway? They could be ANYONE! Finally I managed to convince them to let me have my own eBay account in 99. I was *so* excited!
I still remember the first paypal payment I got, and wondering what the heck it was... My mom worked at a bank so money order were free for employees and I abused the poop out of that. I think the poor tellers hated me by the time I moved away. I lived in Canada, but opened a US dollars account just so I could do pony trading. Back when the Cnd dollar was 60 cents to the US dollar. Good money to made on the exchange alone!
I remember my first obsession with the princess accessories back when the only info we had was Dream Valley's backcard pictures. For the longest time we all thought Taffeta had a blue crown clip. I wondered why I could never find it until I got what I thought was going to be an extra pink crown clip from Pristina, only to discover it was definitely a different color and had to belong to Taffeta! My family had just come back into town late on Sunday night after being gone all weekend; us kids were zonkered in the back seat, but when I opened that package and saw that clip I was so excited! My poor parents just looked at me like I was crazy.
I remember when digital cameras were still new and tons of eBay sellers would use flatbed scanners to get their images (if they had any images at all). My dad was a tech teacher at the school I went to, and it was always a huge deal when he would sign out the digital camera so I could take pictures of the ponies I needed to sell. You had to get a 3.5" floppy, and slide it in the side of the massive thing. You could only take up to 1.44 MB of data at a time. When we finally upgraded to a camera that used memory cards with 4 whole MB's, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
I had The Royal Fortress back in the day too. Ugh, such a hideous website with a *terrible* layout. I'm improved it with The Petite Pocket, and my Princess Accessory Guide was okay, but everytime I see it on Ponyland Tours I want to fix the navigation layout. Odin Deathcrush and I also ran the mlpfaq.com for awhile, but sadly that was created at the end of my collecting and was more or less put out there and then left to collect dust until I cancelled the domain name.
I'm sure there's tons more stuff I'm forgetting but that's all I've got for now. :) I've been playing with the idea of maybe starting a little website again to do some selling on the side, but do people even do that anymore?
Silverdawn
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I had forgotten about Pretty Bow and Argentina Flutterbye! I remember when I got her and I thought I had this super rare pony. Then once it was discovered she was from Argentina and she wasn't uber hard to find her price plummeted. It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that she wasn't Pretty Bow
I still call mine Pretty Bow :biggrin:
I started collecting in 2003 and I didn't join any forums (I wasn't very tech-minded lol) until 2005 so I only used eBay and remember sending cheques for payment lol.
I used Dream Valley for everything.
I remember seeing an auction for Greek Ladybird before I even knew any Greek ponies existed and she went for a huge amount! She was my grail from then on!
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The sites I miss most are actually customizer sites... Lady Minty's Customs *cries* I wish there was an archive somewhere of ALL her photos... I was fortunate enough to obtain one of her customs.
I remember Lady Minty's site, yes! I think she also took in baits that no one could do anything more with, kind of like a horse sanctuary; she had a quote I love from Black Beauty on that bait page, saying something like "My troubles are all over, and I am at home." :)
I remember when the German Babies pulled in the big bucks:p I paid $295 for my Baby Cherries Jubilee, and that was a bargain at the time! I also remember when you could pretty easily pick up a Mimic for $30-$40, and Rapunzel sold for under $100.
. . .
I remember the "Shadow Wars" that happened when the G2s came out. I remember all those "love all ponies!" banners that people had to try to stop the flame war:p
Yes, Rapunzel! That's another later-year pony that didn't get as much attention then as now. Red Roses, also, is another. I'm not sure she even cost more than others in her set back then; does anyone remember?
And, yeah, many people really hated the G2 line. Seeing them in stores is one of the main things that got me back into collecting, though, so though I think Hasbro could have done better, I don't mind them. I think they're kind of cute.
It seems like it was much more common then for people to have their own MLP-themed websites, which in hindsight were often quite primitive. Lots of text that often shifted around as you scrolled the page, and the text was often quite small. I guess now people have many more outlets to share their interests and don't need to build a website from scratch. I still have a Word document that is the text for the website I wanted to create. One of the features was going to be the backcard stories. I think I got scooped on that by . . . the Paradise Estate Library? There was some site called that . . .
Yeah, lots of people had their own websites back then, right! And they were for the most part more primitive. I think most people used plain ol' HTML back then. (Which I like because it's the only programming language I know!) I also had a notebook full of plans for the website I wanted to create. I smile when I think of my little self planning all that. :)
About the auctions without pictures--YES, and if they did have pictures they were from a scanner! Ponies floating on a greenish-black background, and Lemon Drop's hair always looked pink-ish.
That's right, I'd almost forgotten! It was super-common to see pictures of ponies from scanners! We were living in the dark ages! :lol:
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I love reading this thread. I was never part of the online world most describe but I have a story as well. :) I was a young teen when our school got internet and My Little Pony was the last thing I would dare search for, being afraid of being bullied. But I found baby loftys song site and wrote down the adress on a piece of paper I had in my backpack. I also remember reading about the new line of MLP (G2) and searching for them in stores and being dissapoined about not finding them.
My family finally got our own computer in 1999 but it was not until 2002 I found my way in to the onlineworld of collecting mlp. I posted about finding the old VHSs on my page of the largest online communtiy in Sweden at that time and a girl who browsed saw it and invited me to her mlpgroup. I was awed at finding other people who liked MLP and they kept on and on about the Dream Valley and I went there and died of happiness.
Eventually the mlpgroup died, the girl who ran it just dissapeared but before it closed down, a girl managed to get a message in about a (swedish) forum for collectors being created and I went there and somehow became a mod. But the servers was not that good and the place had to be moved a year or so later and when it came about again, I was demoted. Why I didn't know and with school taking all my time I didn't bother to ask, I was rather relieved actually. I did found out eventually that the admin had just forgotten about me as I wasn't as active because of school.
A year later some people there kept on and on about the MLPArena and made it sound like ponyheaven so I finally clicked a link to it and was shocked at the mere size of it. I couldn't imagine so many people liking the same thing as me! It took me almost two years of browsing and lurking before I dared to join. :blush: I remember seeing a lot of the names who are being posted here, I think Abaska was a mod or admin? But when I finally joined most of them had already dissapeared.
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So many memories in this thread... I don't even know where to start. :) I remember probably 98% of everything mentioned, though I was still young and didn't really get "involved" with things, I was collecting and watching everything pony going on around me on the web. I thought it was the most amazing thing ever that other people were into ponies too! I used to be BabyBrightbow(Baby B), then for a while here PonyWisp. Oh how things change...
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In the early 90´s I was receiving my first pony, not for collection, but as a toy.
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Oh man, such nostalgia! I was on the usenet for ponies (I think it was alt.mylittlepony or something?) when the G2 relaunched and 99% of people (including myself) hated them. It was sad to see the very few that liked them doggedly swimming against the current of loathing. Of course now I think they actually are pretty cute and feel like a big jerk for threatening to buy a bunch and make a big bonfire of them :blush: I didn't find the forums until later though. The only collector I remember from the Usenet was Spoosh because I bought a lot of ponies from him and he lived close enough to me at the time he was able to drop them off.
I remember eBay auctions without pictures and the hassle of sending money orders or "well concealed cash" and waiting forever for the seller to get it and then ship out the pony. I remember having little to no recourse if the seller never did ship out the pony.
Ponies that didn't keep their value- anything overseas was crazy expensive in the 90's. I remember the TAF babies going for over 100$ and then the price crashing as more became available. I remember Perfume Puffs were incredibly unloved and hard to sell.
Dream Valley was like... a ray of sunshine. I printed off the entire site on our super slow crappy inkjet printer and my dad being flabbergasted that the ink cartridges never lasted as long as he thought they should :lol: I put all the pages in a binder and took it with me to flea markets so I could ID the ponies on the spot and see if they were worth what the seller was asking. I still visit Dream Valley when I want to ID a pony.
ETA:
Oh and I remember this fanfiction website that had Paradise Estate as kind of a soap opera with monthly installments. Oh the drama! It was delicious fun. I wish I could remember the name of that site. I'm sure it isn't around anymore though.
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So many memories in this thread... I don't even know where to start. :) I remember probably 98% of everything mentioned, though I was still young and didn't really get "involved" with things, I was collecting and watching everything pony going on around me on the web. I thought it was the most amazing thing ever that other people were into ponies too! I used to be BabyBrightbow(Baby B), then for a while here PonyWisp. Oh how things change...
LoL, I didn't know you were BabyBrightbow XD
I wonder if WildfireChiefsGirl or styxxiejones are around here using different names...
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I didn't get around to much interneting until the early 2000's so I don't remember a lot of this, but I love to read about it.
I do have nostalgia for ebay. In the late 90's I had my mom buy me toys from there sometimes, but sadly that was when I was not into ponies - I wasn't playing with them anymore and I wasn't collecting yet either. Such a pity! I mostly wanted Pokemon and Puppy in my Pockets. =P and I do remember having to actively look for which auctions actually had a photo!
Also, am I the only one whose go-to G1 site is still Dream Valley? lol. I mean there are better sites to ID accessories and such but whenever I can't remember a G1's name I immediately hop over to Dream Valley.
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Red roses! I blame tuneful for the price increase on her! She was some what hard to find, but not impossible! I remember I bought mine from a user named Michelle for $7. That was in 99.
I also bought two moc Greeks on ebay for $40 a piece. Orange sunlight and pink parasol. I decarded them both, because there were literally a dozen of them on eBay, and what seemed like an endless supply of Greeks.
Does anyone remember when everyone started decarding their argies because a few members were finding the cardboard was staining them? It was a pretty big fiasco with the decarding versus not decarding.
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Red roses! I blame tuneful for the price increase on her! She was some what hard to find, but not impossible! I remember I bought mine from a user named Michelle for $7. That was in 99.
I also bought two moc Greeks on ebay for $40 a piece. Orange sunlight and pink parasol. I decarded them both, because there were literally a dozen of them on eBay, and what seemed like an endless supply of Greeks.
Does anyone remember when everyone started decarding their argies because a few members were finding the cardboard was staining them? It was a pretty big fiasco with the decarding versus not decarding.
I remember that! There was some sort of massive flood where a bunch of MOC Argies got damaged...then they all hit eBay! Some were dried out, others had mildew growing on the cards, and others were shipped to their new homes *still wet*. I got 3 Argies around that time : gray earth Lofty, a gree first tooth baby, and Arco Iris Sunglider. Sunglider came to me wet, so I decarded her...all of them found new homes Iin recent years <3
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This thread is awesome!!
I don't remember any of this because didn't have access to the internet until 2007(!) when I bought Masquerade from eBay. But it's wonderful to read about. I really wish I'd been there, I'm plenty old enough to have been!! I'm just jealous :D
Jules x
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I *just* missed the 90s collecting era... I started collecting in 2000, so a lot of these things are still familiar to me, especially some of the collectors and buying auctions without pictures! Even when there were pictures, quite often they were poor quality and very few, so there were some surprises to be had in lots especially :)
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I dabbled in trading from 99-2001 on random yahoo groups. I remember trading for ponies from a very nice lady in Canada that wanted Strawberry Shortcake stuff. It was all just random people, no tracking and you hope you got what you had paid or traded for.
Then it was ebay 99-2004. Yes, sending concealed cash or money orders and hoping the pony or ponies arrived. It was still a bidding war then for cheaper lots...
Always used Kimsites, but not when I was first buying online. New ponies really were new to me then... LOL
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Aaaah this thread is so full with awesome memories! I started collecting January 2000, I remember exactly as we got internet late December 1999 and the first thing I did was looking up ponies! I figured I couldn't be the only one crazy enough to still love ponies, right? :D
Buying ponies overseas was a pain though, pre-paypal! I remember sending cash in envelopes, the lady from the bank thought I was nuts when I showed up asking for USD bills the 10th time in a month! :D
Online though, I remember that uhm, I don't recall the name, but that link ring thing where you put a link to the previous and next site so you could browse through all those connected pony sites! My site was in it too, but at some point there were too many dead links and it didn't work well anymore, unfortunately. I always liked that :)
And yes Dreamvalley! I printed the entire thing! :D
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WOWOW soo great topics!! thanks all for sharing such amazing memories!!
I remember the first time anybody saw the Greek ponies. I remember that summer when the market was flooded with MIB Greeks, and you could easily get a MIB Baby Minty for $100.
I remember when the Piggy ponies were first discovered and everybody thought they were fakies. I remember someone said they paid some ridiculously cheap price for one(like $20 or something), and everybody thought that person was crazy for wasting their money. Then somebody found one MIP, and then that $20 didn't seem so stupid anymore.
:drunk: :drunk:
Red roses! I blame tuneful for the price increase on her! She was some what hard to find, but not impossible! I remember I bought mine from a user named Michelle for $7. That was in 99.
I also bought two moc Greeks on ebay for $40 a piece. Orange sunlight and pink parasol. I decarded them both, because there were literally a dozen of them on eBay, and what seemed like an endless supply of Greeks.
Does anyone remember when everyone started decarding their argies because a few members were finding the cardboard was staining them? It was a pretty big fiasco with the decarding versus not decarding.
:shocked: :shocked: :shocked:
So interesting in the 90's I was around 10 and still playing sometimes with my Tickle / Plume :biggrin: :biggrin:!! wow if I have known at that time there was internet and there were others ponies OMG!!!
I just had internet access at the University begin 2000 :lol: and at home I think it was in 2004. And at that period I thought at University first no more pony...
By chance (thanks University and work :biggrin: :biggrin: ) I finally came to pony collecting beginning 2011 ^.^ ^.^
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I remember drooling over the ebay ponies in the late '90s; and Dream Valley as well; though I never joined any forums until recently. The first ponies I bought from ebay were in 2000, and I remember there was a whole communication process with ebay back then where you contacted your seller and you were like, "Hey, I'm going to send you a check." LOL. I had my first credit card so I was fine with paypal, but some sellers didn't use paypal.
I sat down in my dorm room and wrote my check out (spending money from my summer job) and walked that mail down to the college mail center. And then when my ponies came they put a slip in my little mail box that a box had arrived. I only bought very cheap lots and it was definitely a surprise as to what condition they would be in. I still have my Flat Foot Minty from those days. I had no means of cleaning ponies in my dorm other than figuring out for myself that nail polish remover worked pretty well on marks and even using my hair straightener on the dry hair sometimes.
Memories!
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Oooooh pony email and yahoo groups and the old hot pink TP - I remember those days. I think my favourite was when we first spotted a Baby Hopscotch - wow....it was like pony community meltdown she went for hundreds and hundreds of $. I just want to say that Dream Valley is and always will be THE G1 pony ID and info site for me :P I remember lots of things and sites and information having come and gone but its been my one consistent since I started collecting!
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Omg you guys are hitting all the nostalgia feels
I used to have a box of pony websites I loved to frequent (most have already been mentioned here). I will find that box one day and check way back machine lol.
Not sure I have much to add as I wasn't that active in the early years. I was too young so I was more of a lurker online but I was active collector in the 90s and I followed all the stories and sites :D . It wasn't until like 2001 I joined a group and that was "Pony Finders" I think the site was called. Then the TP, then my favorite pony place in the world the Arena! :D
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So many more!
Shout out to some old Pony peeps! Say hi if you're still around!
Katja lahti, garej, JLM, pone, pinwheel, abasca, thunderwing, glitzy, duckie, wildfirechiefsgirl, Baby berry town, baby_katie, jentutu, buckbuddy, saturn cyan, roswita, etoileblue, valeofspring, and so many more!!
I had to twitch at this, I can count 3-4 people who have been banned from the community from this list alone!
Abasca, however, is still a nutter.
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So many more!
Shout out to some old Pony peeps! Say hi if you're still around!
Katja lahti, garej, JLM, pone, pinwheel, abasca, thunderwing, glitzy, duckie, wildfirechiefsgirl, Baby berry town, baby_katie, jentutu, buckbuddy, saturn cyan, roswita, etoileblue, valeofspring, and so many more!!
I had to twitch at this, I can count 3-4 people who have been banned from the community from this list alone!
Abasca, however, is still a nutter.
I was wondering about her! And so many others!! God I feel old!
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I remember a lot of those screen names. I wonder what happened to them?
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I remember Dream Valley! It was my go-to pony place! I spent hours on there :)
I remember when you didn't have to have a picture for ebay listings though I rarely bought from one that didn't have a picture lol. I think you had to pay for pictures, right? Or was it one free picture? And also the money orders. I got scammed a few times with those! XD Someone sent me cash once and I don't think I'll ever see that again lol.
And websites took foreveeeer to load. You had to be very patient :P Never knew what sniping was on ebay lol. And I also remember having to hit refresh when you were bidding! Ah, nostalgia :P
I remember thinking Nirvanas and Piggy Ponies were fakies!
Does anyone remember Marco's pony fanart? They were some beautiful pictures! I can't find his website anymore, but I will find some of his pictures pop up on different sites or google searches.
I remember buying a lot of my ponies on ebay from Lady Flutter. She had SO many ponies for sale and all in minty condition! I bought my first ponies from her. A lot of 3 babies - Baby Glory, Baby Quackers, and Baby Stockings. I used my brother-in-law's account since I didn't have one. I was hooked after that though :lol: I remember on Lady Flutter's auctions that she said to just send her a message about which ponies we wanted to buy and she would put them on ebay. Like she had them all :shocked: I remember asking her for the Sweetberry ponies (Blueberry Baskets and Cranberry Muffins were my grails back then!) and she listed all of them in gorgeous condition. They all went waaaaay too high for me though :P
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I remember Marco's art! To die for! Then the art thieves came out of the woodwork...
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Marco's art was sooo pretty!! I managed to find a blanket with his Twilight on it - I know/knew it wasn't really his (just used his picture) but as Twilight is my fav pony and the artwork was so pretty I had to get it.
Found his website: http://www.burningblood.it/marcoalbiero/animemanga/littlepony.html
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:shocked: thanks for the link!! so beautiful!! and there is one with Tickle!! sooo amazing!! ^.^ ^.^
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And if you did send a check to pay for an eBay auction (which was quite common), you had to wait two weeks before the seller would ship the item--to make sure the check wouldn't bounce!
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Marco's art was sooo pretty!! I managed to find a blanket with his Twilight on it - I know/knew it wasn't really his (just used his picture) but as Twilight is my fav pony and the artwork was so pretty I had to get it.
Found his website: http://www.burningblood.it/marcoalbiero/animemanga/littlepony.html
OMG, thanks for the link!!!! :squee: I remember he was the reason I wanted Mimic, Cool Breeze and TAF Buttons :lol: I had saved the pictures and I had no idea what TAF stood for til I joined the Arena :lol:
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Glad to help a little with the link!! I have always loved his artwork and I wish he'd sell prints so I could legitimately get something from him.
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This thread makes me smile.
I was still in junior high when I entered the online MLP community around 97-98, but I still remember a lot of what you all have already mentioned.
Like some had mentioned, it was very hard for me to convince my parents to allow me to send money to someone I had never met in exchange for ponies for sale. Thankfully, I was able to convince them (and, of course, sent by check)... and my very first online pony purchase was from TabbyMLP. Oddly enough, we kept in contact for several years but eventually lost touch.
Tabby also had the MLP Monthly. Remember that? She issued out a monthly issue (there were 101 of them!) of random pony trivia, stories/fan fic, "pony of the month," etc. HEre's a link to the archives: http://www.fakiespaceman.com/dv/monthly.htm I had many submissions to this publication, including "Gusty and Tabby's Talking Times" (reading it now I'm dying from the ultimate cheese factor...ugh! LoL)
I remember when Spoosh hosted "the most beautiful pony" contest...or something like that! I remember the pictures of each contestant were beautifully done, and there were different rounds. I was picked to "become" Gusty (which was already kind of my pony name around anyway...even though there were several of us running around eventually haha) in the contest. Gusty didn't end up winning the whole thing, but it sure was fun!
I also remember the ponypeople group. I remember a vote on deciding that "International Pony Day" was August 2nd. .. I remember The church of MOC Mimic, HQT, the pony webrings...
I always tried to have a webpage of my own (I think I was calling it Gusty's Arena or Gusty's Ice Rink or something like that), but it would never work properly so I gave up. Good ol' Tripod hosting...
I had a thread about this late last year, but - for those of you who remember Steamerbro - he passed away last year. He was always one of my closest friends in the community. Super sweet guy. A true loss to all toy communities and society as a whole. (Miss you, Justin!) He was always talking to me on Dream Valley chat and on AOL Instant Messenger! I would always get an IM of, "Hey, Gusty!" ... :)
Ah, the good ol' days...
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I miss Tabby's website! I bought so much from her and used it as a reference.
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Nostalgia............
Yes, I was around back then, had just discovered that in USA there where other crazy poeple like me, who actually collected those colorfull little thingies :biggrin:
I hadn´t started to buy/sell online, because I had no idea how to do that to a foreign country, but after some time I managed to get some extras, and then I started to trade, and add to my collection with US specials that way.
My best pony find ever, was when a friend of mine gave me her old ponies, and they contained a yellow Moondancer, Baby Cherries Jubilee, Baby Buttons and 2 baby Lemon Drops. Unfortunately all the babies had severe haircuts :(
Some of you may even remember me, back then I used the name Love in a Mist, because we had to use pony names as user names :)
I started out at the Trading post, but at some point it just got to be too much drama over there, so I found my way here in 05.
I do remember a bunch of the names that has been named, and I remember how difficult it was to actually show off pony pictures, because most of the free webhosts or picture hosts, did not allow remote linking, wich was why I finally got my own domain :)
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Haha, yes, the drama.
OH MY GOODNESS, does anyone remember Roy?
Who went to his home to confront him/get the ponies back that he "scammed" from people? That was outrageous drama. Then most people were cool because he said he wouldn't trade/sell ponies anymore (or something...I remember seeing pictures of a pony meet where everyone, including Roy, seemed happy :) )
I migrated from the TP to the Arena because...hmmm...I think I liked the layout more? It wasn't so much the drama, but the Arena was more adequately staffed. At the time, MLPTP (Jen) was getting quite busy to keep up with the demand.
Is Jen still around? I remember trading with her and being so excited that there was another pony collector in my proximity.
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Haha, yes, the drama.
OH MY GOODNESS, does anyone remember Roy?
Who went to his home to confront him/get the ponies back that he "scammed" from people? That was outrageous drama. Then most people were cool because he said he wouldn't trade/sell ponies anymore (or something...I remember seeing pictures of a pony meet where everyone, including Roy, seemed happy :) )
I migrated from the TP to the Arena because...hmmm...I think I liked the layout more? It wasn't so much the drama, but the Arena was more adequately staffed. At the time, MLPTP (Jen) was getting quite busy to keep up with the demand.
Is Jen still around? I remember trading with her and being so excited that there was another pony collector in my proximity.
OMG I had forgotten all about Roy!!! He scammed me! I remember the thread documenting the collectors who were going to confront him but I don't remember who…I think maybe JLM was one of them but I'm not 100%. I couldn't believe that he was allowed to go to that pony meet but by the end he had made several friends. I wonder if he's still happily scamming people of if he's moved on to other things…...
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Wow, this thread does bring back a lot of memories! I started to collect in 1999- I was 18. I remember going through my toys in storage and coming across the only 2 She-ra figures I owned. I remember how I thought it would be so awesome to collect them, but at the time it felt like an impossible feat. Shortly after that I saw eBay advertised in a magazine and the rest is history. I became a total eBay addict for the first few years. My collecting started with She-ra then Rainbow Brite and then to all the other 80's toy lines that I loved. Currently MLP is what I actively collect the most of right now, because I have almost completed my other toy lines and except for a few pieces missing here and there.
I remember:
-going to the post office very frequently to buy money orders- so happy when they came out with PayPal
-The discovery of toys/ characters from familiar lines that I didn't know existed till the Internet and what an exciting discovery they were
-when a lot of auctions on eBay didn't have pics
-Dream Valley also when the card back pics were used- I still enjoy visiting there :D
-Various individual toy collector web sites for items for sale/trade such as Trish's Treasure Trove
-I did trades a lot more back then
-Dial up and how frustrating it was especially if sites were pic heavy
-Hitting the refresh over and over at the end of auctions- I sniped a lot of auctions back then and had some sniped from me, too
-Also as someone mentioned when I discovered through message boards that there was a large community of adults that collected toys. I was so embarrassed when I first started to collect toys that people would find out. Now I really don't care who knows that I'm a toy collector. I enjoy my hobby ;)
-Toys were much more affordable back then. Now it seems like sellers want an arm and a leg for some things especially if MIB/MOC.
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OMG! I was just talking to Lady North Star about this on tumblr haha You all remember her site The Dream Cloud right? I've spent hours scouring The Wayback Machine for old pony sites! I recently found mine from when I was 13.... I'm so mortified. omg.
We got the internet in '98 when I was 12 or so and I'd been hunting flea markets and antique shows at the fairgrounds for years and randomly decided to look up MLP on the internet. Changed my life! I joined the TP first and bought my first pony online Masquerade!
I remember (and still worship) the Holy MOC Mimic. I remember IceFeather, the Delaneys, dreambooks!, Lullabye Nursery adoptables, money orders and sending cash overseas, hyper-expensive Euro babies, My Little Pony Name Registry, Elite of Ponyland websites, finding Dream Valley was like the holy grail haha.... Wow if I'm not careful I will lose all productivity today! Oh and the 50 most Beautiful Ponies!
Remember when the first NSS Paradise was found and everyone thought she was fake?
And oh the scammers...... I remember 13 year old me saving for so long to buy a Paradise Estate for $300 and winning one om eBay and the jerk never sent it. eBay was no help at all. Glad that has changed!
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I joined several Yahoo groups (1995-96ish), besides people's personal sites.
Learning to customize, finding hair was a nightmare. Most came from scalped dolls, and wigs until we found Dr. Locks and Tartberry, and even then, the colors and types were limited. Using marine epoxy putty for sculpting, needle and thread, or wire for rehairs, and a time on ebay where it seemed like people selling customs were seeing how many feathers, rhinestones, glitter and other stuff they could glue to a pony...=]
My name on the boards at the time was Leanderjj. (I doubt I was active enough to be remembered, was more into CPK at the time)
Kayveryn
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Great thread. Brings back so many memories.
I had Pinwheel make me a Starflower blinkie...wish I still had that.
And Marco would trade artwork request for ponies. I sent him 2 ponies for his Starflower artwork. His artwork was to die for.
Ebay was hilarious, you could see everything and email the winners, and anyone could leave feedback.
I remember when the Argies and Greeks were flooding ebay. I wish I bought more back then. My grail was Baby Cherries Jubilee who was going for hundreds of dollars. No one really cared for Mimic and Punzie back then..should have bought them then I guess lol
I'd always be going to the bank to get a money order or US cash to send. Things took sooo long lol
The birth of paypal which scared the heck out of everyone hahaha
I still have 2 of Iceceather's custom babies. Baby Wizzer and Baby (SS) Twilight. I was so thrilled when I got them. I still love them very much.
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I didn't have the internet until the late 90's and didn't join the online community until 1998, I believe... but I remember much of what has been mentioned. :) I never was very chatty on the boards, so people may not remember me so well. I used to go by Aerosmith_Gal.
I, too, remember having to send payment by money order! It took so long to get ponies in the mail back then... waiting for the person you were buying from to get the MO and then for them to send the pony. Torture! Yahoo! Auctions were my go to for ponies back then. I remember seeing Greek ponies MOC selling for under $100 - definitely won't find that nowadays!
I was soooo excited to find Peppermint Crunch in an auction - I had him as a child and lost him somewhere along the way, he was my very first pony (yes, was always a boy in my herd). He was one of my first online purchases, ever.
I was the only person in the online community from South Dakota at the time who was a collector, I used to think I was the only one in my state! Boy, was I wrong. xD I used to be able to go to thrift stores and flea markets and find ponies, but over time more collectors popped up in the area and my luck faded away.
My best pony collecting friend was littleponysunbright. I miss seeing her around the forums!
edit: I remember Pinwheel's blinkies and always wished I could get one from her! I used to fantasize about what I'd have her make for me, they were so cool.
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I was not active in the community in the late 90's but here is my story.
In mid to late 1998, I was 18 and just graduated high school that spring. It would be years before I had regular access to the internet at home. However, my mom had it at work. During her lunch hour or on the weekends, she would let me come up to her work and use the internet. That was when I first discovered that there were people out there collecting MLP. I had adored MLP when I was younger but put them away during my pre-teens. I still had all of my old collection, though (about 30 between myself and my sister.) Finding out that there were people out there collecting and buying and selling inspired me to pull out my own collection. That's how I started collecting as an adult.
Since my access to the internet was limited and I didn't have much money being a new college student, I never bought or sold online at that time. However, I was reasonably successful finding ponies at garage sales.
I am also one of those people who printed off Dream Valley so that I could put it in a binder and use it at home. I still even have it. I would color in the pony pictures and mark off the ones I had.
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Ebay was hilarious, you could see everything and email the winners, and anyone could leave feedback.
Oh man that reminds me... My sister was sniped on a pony auction and was so mad she sent the winner a "how dare you!" message to which she replied "you should have set your max bid higher" :lol: Ah, ebay had no privacy back then :P
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I didn't have the internet until the late 90's and didn't join the online community until 1998, I believe... but I remember much of what has been mentioned. :) I never was very chatty on the boards, so people may not remember me so well. I used to go by Aerosmith_Gal.
I remember you, Aerosmith_Gal! Were you on LNS's forum maybe? After the Dream Valley chat shut down, I migrated to HQTs forum, and after that to LNS. I remember you from at least one of those places. :) I've been BabyExplorer a long tine, but also used to go by HeartThrob or BabyTiddleyWinks in the DV chat.
I am definitely a fast typer today because of Dram Valley chatroom! I spent hours there. In the day, it was all role play, and all the actions were notated between stars (ex *waves hi to everyone*). You knew you had made a friend if you were asked to be her "sister." I kept a notebook with the names and I addresses of everyone so that I would know if someone was being impersonnated. I imagine that notebook is still at my parents house somewhere. :-P
I was pretty young when I first got into ponies online, 5th grade maybe? I must have only been 10 or 11 when I bought my first pony online. :)
And I remember Spoosh's contests! I was so envious of the people who got to participate. I think I was the "voice" of one of the Top 50 ponies (don't remember which one... Sugarberry maybe?) But she didn't make it very far in the competition. And the Survivor Pony game he ran - I wanted desperately to play in that, so I just posted like a maniac in the Fans section. :) The Lost At Sea version was th e best one. :)
It's fun to remember now and then. I mostly lurk these days, but couldn't help popping my head in here. :)
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Ebay was hilarious, you could see everything and email the winners, and anyone could leave feedback.
Oh man that reminds me... My sister was sniped on a pony auction and was so mad she sent the winner a "how dare you!" message to which she replied "you should have set your max bid higher" :lol: Ah, ebay had no privacy back then :P
Yes! Yes!! And you could also search by bidder! I used to search the Delaneys account (I think it was thedelaneys) to see the latest amazing pony they were bidding on.
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I remember i bought a baby peachy pony on ebay who everyone on the tp dubbed a fakie.
I insisted she looked real and wouldnt let go of the idea. Her hooves werent marked either which
didnt help. She turned out to be the first greek baby ever "discovered" on the boards.
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Ebay was hilarious, you could see everything and email the winners, and anyone could leave feedback.
Oh man that reminds me... My sister was sniped on a pony auction and was so mad she sent the winner a "how dare you!" message to which she replied "you should have set your max bid higher" :lol: Ah, ebay had no privacy back then :P
Yes! Yes!! And you could also search by bidder! I used to search the Delaneys account (I think it was thedelaneys) to see the latest amazing pony they were bidding on.
HAHA, I used to stalk everyone on eBay that way...er, for curiosity purposes only XD
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If there is a copy of the My Little Pony Name Registry around somewhere, you'll find me on it. No surprise, I'm lovesbabysquirmy there too.
Hehehe ahhhh memoriiiiiiiiiiiiiiies... going to the library for the internet, hanging out on Yahoo Groups and Auctions, backpack full of ponies, hand-written notebook checklist in my bag...
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I was not active in the community in the late 90's but here is my story.
In mid to late 1998, I was 18 and just graduated high school that spring. It would be years before I had regular access to the internet at home. However, my mom had it at work. During her lunch hour or on the weekends, she would let me come up to her work and use the internet. That was when I first discovered that there were people out there collecting MLP. I had adored MLP when I was younger but put them away during my pre-teens. I still had all of my old collection, though (about 30 between myself and my sister.) Finding out that there were people out there collecting and buying and selling inspired me to pull out my own collection. That's how I started collecting as an adult.
Since my access to the internet was limited and I didn't have much money being a new college student, I never bought or sold online at that time. However, I was reasonably successful finding ponies at garage sales.
I am also one of those people who printed off Dream Valley so that I could put it in a binder and use it at home. I still even have it. I would color in the pony pictures and mark off the ones I had.
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Oh my gosh this binder is awesome! How amazing you still have it. I remember driving parents nuts by printing loads off on an old printer but never kept them as nice and pretty.
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This is like the best idea for a thread ever lol XD I remember so much from here. I remember having to go to the travel agents one time to get some money changed into foreign currency just so i could send it abroad to get some ponies lol. And when cheques were used to pay for ponies and the waiting it'd take for the seller to make sure it didn't bounce.
I also remember the campaigns online regarding the G2's where people would have little badges on their sites denoting whether it was a G2 friendly site or not XD
And adoptables in the early 2000's. I LOVED pony art back then and used to spend ages looking for pictures people had drawn of my childhood ponies lol. I used to visit the Misty Mountain Nursery, Firefries website, Emerald Valley and Lullaby Nursey (getting all nostalgic lol) I adored the artwork on Misty mountain nursery and Firefries (hope i've spelt that right) art. I used to spend so long admiring them lol.
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P.S. Marco later went on to be hired by the company in charge of the reboot of Sailor Moon in Italy in the 2000's . ;)
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Do you remember when. . .
. . . you bought from another collector the safest way was to send them a money order?
Money orders, wow that brings me back xD MO's were daily for me for the longest while
. . . some of the most sought-after and expensive ponies were Lil' Tot, Hollywood, non-BBE UK and German babies, Mimic (some things never change, lol!), and flutters with wings?
I always thought baby ponies were just rare, lots of others had the same idea :P
. . . most later-year ponies very popular today were virtually ignored? (like Sweetheart Sisters, Secret Surprise ponies, perfume puff ponies, mermaid babies)
No-one wanted a perfume pony, most likely because they still had an...odor >o<
. . . ponies seemed so much cheaper????
G1's at yard sales, everywhere O_O
. . . Dream Valley was the go-to website for pony identification? And it had pony backcards instead of photographs to help you identify ponies? (Dream Valley will always have a special place for me because it was so instrumental in helping me ID my ponies.)
DV was one of the first 'fansites' I found, ever. An entire catalog of G1 ponies growing up in a G2 world, I perfered the original ;)
. . . you bid on an auction, you had to keep refreshing your browser to make sure you weren't outbid? (don't miss that any)
Reason one I lost many items that have become so rare today ;w;
. . . Ebay auctions were not required to have a photo, and it usually wasn't shown in the main listing?
Pictures were my requirement haha :P
. . . most Nirvana ponies were unknown? (I still feel like a time traveler coming to another century as I learn about all the pony variations from other countries)
The modern internet pretty much made Nirvana's uknown at all
. . . it wasn't ridiculously rare to find a pony in a thrift store? (G1, of course!)
I found lots of G2's but I wasn't fond of them once I discovered the sweet-faced G1's existance
. . . Moondancer's Dream was around? Lady Moondancer's website had a huge impact on me, if only because of her awesome fanfiction.
Was never into FF.
. . . and who else remembers High Queen Tiffany? I'll be quite interested if anyone does. She ran a website called the Ice Palace (I think?) and resigned because of all the flamers and hecklers.
Nope.
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I remember when eBay started and the entire toy section, every toy listed for auction, could be scrolled through in a couple minutes.
There was one eBay seller then who always included a free, surprise MIB pretty ups package with each MOC pony Id win.
I was part of an AOL collecting community and we'd use a text file of pony colors and symbols to ID ponies before Dream Valley have us photos. We bought from each other, sight unseen, and with cash in envelopes.
Baby Applejack was selling for hundreds of dollars.
I would find ponies for a quarter each at garage sales, mixed in with small McDonald's toys.