I’ve often found myself caught between two worlds—clinging to nostalgia and conducting great annual purges once Christmas is put away and a new year begins.
That means throwing out half-working strings of exterior illumination, socks with holes in them, and making Goodwill runs to deliver VHS copies of Jean Claude Van Damme movies for a tax credit before New Year’s Eve. But it also means clinging to a t-shirt I’ve had since college, a Star Trek III collector’s glass from Taco Bell, and thousands of baseball cards that will maybe one day become valuable again (right?).
But then one year I read Marie Kondo’s the life-changing joy of tidying up. And like a Crazy Eddie’s electronics sale commercial, I declared “EVERYTHING MUST GO!” So, the college t-shirt went. And the fish aquarium that’s been dry since 2008. All the exercise equipment used only in January before collecting dust for 11 months. It took four trips to Goodwill to haul the 20+ big trash bags full of stuff that no longer sparked joy in our lives.
And then Halloween rolled around, and that 90’s jumpsuit that was going to be great for my Vanilla Ice costume idea? Some other Goodwill shopper is going to be flowing like harpoon daily and nightly in that fly gear. And then we got quarantined... and my wife asked about that exercise equipment she thought we might still have since her gym was closed. Nope, somebody else who got a great deal on like-new home work out stuff at a thrift store is using it.
It was all a reminder of a great regret of mine. One that was quite costly, because unlike the scads of Mark McGwire and Dwight Gooden rookie cards that will probably never reclaim their value, this regret was definitively staggering in its fiscal loss:
Selling Out of a galaxy far, far away – Many people regret George Lucas creating the Star Wars prequels. Some regret things about the sequels. I’m thankful for Star Wars anything—even The Ewok Adventure (which I once owned on VHS), so I have no regrets concerning the greatest of space operas. Except for the toys, vehicles and playsets associated with it. Because I sold all I had at a garage sale, like some cheap, used parts at Toshi Station (sorry for the geek speak here).
I’m talking Millennium Falcon, Dagobah playset, X-wing, tauntauns, Droid Factory, Landspeeder, Planet Hoth playset—the freaking Death Star—and even a Darth Vader action figure case/holder. Just what’s listed here could pay for a semester of college. Add everything else and I could probably have funded an associate’s degree. Instead, I made about $50 for it all back in late 1980’s—something that was probably spent on M.C. Hammer and Vanilla Ice cassettes.
The Force was not strong with this decision.
Lessons Learned: Horde a few things. Forget about sparking joy. Find a way back in time to 1989 to keep the Star Wars stuff but sell all my baseball cards when they were worth something.
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