You can decide how seriously you take the question. Whether it be in your personal life ("I wish I didn't see that Ebay listing that I missed just by mere seconds") or in the "pony-canon" ("Could have gone living without knowing that Gusty sounds like Bart Simpson").

As for me, I sometimes wish that I didn't know about some of the prototypes we almost got. Posey-pose Birthday Pony for example 

(Sorry for unclear wording in the topic name, couldn't come up with better one.)

So this has been on my mind for a while; How was the MLP community treated in the early (pre  mid 2000s) days? And I mean by those outside of the com. Since I'm fairly young and been here for only around ten years I really don't have any idea of what people thought of MLP pre FiM era. I'm not gonna get into detail since I assume everyone knows how ugly it got at times, but my earliest memories in the community are of people bashing both ponies and especially people who enjoyed them back when FiM and brony phenomenon were mentioned in mainstream news.

That makes me wonder was it always like that? For sure the com was much, much smaller and it's online presence not so public, but there must've been occasions when non-ponyfans came across fans and I assume they had some kind of opinion on it. For example when booking a location for a meetup they would hear what the hotel venue would be used for or someone selling their child's old ponies for an adult who told they were not going to be played with but added to a collection. Did they say rude thing or give weird looks to collectors?

Also something little different but how did other kids react to pre-/teen collectors? I think that children used to continue playing a lot longer back then so it might not have been at all strange to have a 12 year old collecting pony toys but I for sure got teased for it at that age, as ridiculous as it sounds.

Also, apologies if this is a kind of taboo topic and there have been times when this community has been seriously bashed and abused. My intention is not to bring back any bad memories, just curious about history : )

I'm not sure about how this was in other countries, but in Finland we started getting media attention to ponies around the time FiM was released and started to gain recognition due to Brony culture. Many magazines (online and regular ones) were writing articles how original MLP line was now a popular thing to collect. Some of these articles obviously mentioned how collectors were paying hundreds of dollars for a pony, but forgot to tell that these prices are only for the rarer/most wanted ponies, and not for your common Lemon Drops and Peachys.

Of course there is nothing wrong with people outside the community knowing the real worth of their old ponies when they decide to clean their garages & sell whatever toys were buried in there. What I'm getting at is that media created an image that finding any retro pony would make you instantly rich. People wouldn't do the research and soon online auctions would be filled with ponies starting at the 20$ mark, no matter how poor condition or common one, because they read how these are "valuable items" nowadays.

So I'm asking, was this phenomena existing before media picked up on this community or were people overpricing even before this?
(Also I'd like to note that I know prices go up over time, since less and less ponies are on the market now, but it's obvious that many ponies are priced ridiculously, multiple times what's usually said pony's price when selling from collector to other)

The title might be pretty self-explanatory, but I might as explain myself a bit. The main reason I got back into MLP is the fascinating world of nirvana ponies. While I might not collect them myself, the mysteries and theories (yes, I make them sound really dramatic for some reason...) surrounding them can keep me interested for a long time. More than once have I found myself going through arena archives reading about new pony finds and the community's theories.

I'm not an expert by any means but I do know the basics, like what ponies were made in which country and what traits are typical for each nirvana type. But what really hit me the other day is that I have no clue how the first non-china/HK ponies were brought to the community and how they were received. I remember reading that at least Spanish piggys and Columbians were first considered fakies. If there is any old time collectors who were around that time, would you like to enlighten the curious me a bit? What countries were discovered first and how did you come to conclusion that they were indeed a Hasbro licensed product?

Reading about this stuff is something I enjoy so if you want to write a little bit longer answer I'd be happy to read it, but I do understand that posting pony history isn't the highest priority in anyone's life so I'm thankful for all answers I get.

Hello there! I've been meaning to write this introduction for some time now but I've been too shy to do it. (But nevermind that...)

I'm 18 year old girl from Finland. I'm currently in school but in future I'm planning on becoming a librarian. Aside from ponies my major interests include drawing and shoujo manga from 70s and 80s.

I've collected ponies for about six years now. Obviously I'm way too young to be considered original MLP generation but as a child I still got to play with ponies left behind from girls much older than me. Still I never owned any ponies myself so of course I have to compensate that and have all those cute ponies now I think all ponies are cute but for me G1 is the one and only real pony line.

What makes MLP so awesome for me is not only the ponies but the community as well. Nowhere else have I seen so nice and polite group that it also this big, as (G1)pony community. Also the dedication that has been put into listing, researching and archiving this stuff (especially nirvanas) that was originally "just toys" is beyond impressing.

That's about it from me