By now it's generational trope, told year after year by those pining for their youth, or at least the dollars that their toys/ comic books/ baseball cards/ pogs/ video games could now be generating on Ebay. It goes like this, "I left my X collection at home when I went away to college, and my parents threw out/sold at garage sale all my favourite stuff. It'd be worth a fortune these days".
And for over 20 years, that is what I thought had happened with my 1980's collection of Legoland Space sets. A few months ago, my mother revealed that in fact all the LEGO I had carefuly saved for during my childhood, were in fact intact.
As a kid, I played with these a lot, but I was always careful to keep the boxes, instructions, even the small plastic bags that held the legos. I don't know why, I just did. And for the last couple of decades, I figured they had been thrown out, sold or given away to neighbours. Mostly becase the first time I went home after about 10 years, they were nowhere to be found. I never said anything to my Mom as I did not want her to feel bad.
I've been very busy since, so I've only slowly started to put them back together. There is still a third more to go. I was happy to see that all the catalogs and ephemera I picked up from the toystore was also still together, along with the hand drawn plans and inventories I put together as a 11 year old.
I'll finish up this story in the next episode of the Game Under Podcast.
Phil Fogg