Have Fun With a Toy Hobby

Someone who has a toy hobby is usually an adult. After all, all children collect toys - the more the merrier for them, but a person who has a toy hobby usually collects one type of toy - like, say, train sets or a precise maker of train set. These adults keep their childhood fascination with fantasy. They are not childish, but are childlike while they begin talking on the topic of or playing with their favourite toys.

Some toy hobbyists like to share their hobby with children, frequently grandparents come into this category, and some toy hobbyists do not, often single men who are scared that children might damage their often valuable collection.

These collections of toys can be very valuable, because people tend to collect the toys from their childhood, so a grandparent is mostly collecting toys from fifty or sixty years ago.

A favourite toy hobby for women is collecting antique dolls or dolls from other countries. Occasionally this interest in dolls will spill over into an interest for dolls' prams or dolls' clothes and they might begin to create dolls' clothes and even their own garments. Some women and some men as well get into manufacturing dolls and even dolls' houses.

Rag dolls are a particular favourite both for the collector and the crafter because they are easy to manufacture and easy to mend. Teddy bears could also be put in the category of dolls. Numerous homes have a small collection of teddy bears if there have been children raised there and it is not unusual to see hundreds of teddy bears on shelves scattered around a house.

Many older men collect train sets or model cars. Hornby, Marxs, Marklin and Lionel come to mind for train sets and Matchbox and Dinky for small but detailed, die cast model cars. Tonka is well-known for larger, maybe less detailed, model trucks, but people liked to play with their bulldozers, trucks and earth-movers as kids.

More modern toys that have become collectible include Beanie Babies. Beanie Babies are childlike representations of babies. So there are baby kangaroos, baby elephants, in fact babies of each sort of animal you can think of and every one has its own distinct personality.

They are not expensive and lovable and there are hundreds of them - exactly the blend that some collectors want. Teddy bear collectors often have a few Beanie Babies too.

Other well-liked toy hobbies are flying radio-controlled, powered model aircraft and racing motor-powered radio-controlled cars and trucks. There are also hobbyists that collect or and manufacture radio-controlled boats. Some collectors of radio-controlled aircraft, boats and vehicles may not like being referred to as toy hobbyists, but it is what they are after all.

Wooden toys have always been well-liked as well. A hundred years ago and the rest, all toys would have been manufactured of timber, particularly those of the working class and there are still a great deal of parents and grandparents who like to give or manufacture wooden toys themselves. A toy hobby is a fascinating pastime for those who remember their childhood fondly and never really got out of the habit of playing.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a number of topics, but is now involved with Silver Cross Rocking Horses. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Rocking Horses for sale.