Childhood toys can fetch money

Bruce Zalkin has made a living as a broker between people who want to reclaim some space in their homes and those who want to recapture the days of their childhood.

"That's the reason they start collecting in the first place," said Zalkin, of the Antique Toy & Doll Roadshow. "They're trying to buy back their youth."

A slow but nearly constant stream of people came to see Zalkin on a recent trip through Raleigh, N.C., carrying shopping totes, shoeboxes and Ziploc bags in which rattled once-loved pieces of their pasts. Zalkin, who has been in the business more than 25 years, appraised the items, said whether he'd be interested in buying and how much he would pay.

"I collected these as a child," Susan McGuire said as she unpacked about two dozen dolls in costumes representing countries around the world. Birthdays, Christmas and other special occasions were all marked with a new doll. McGuire played with them for a while, then stood them on a shelf in her room. She continued to display them as an adult, until she moved a few years ago and left them all in their boxes.

Unfortunately for her, the dolls weren't that rare.

Michael Walowich of Raleigh has boxes of stuff he and his children picked up at flea markets when they were young. The children are grown now, and Walowich guesses he has moved the boxes about 10 times.

"I got tired of moving it, and I saw the ad in the paper and said, 'Here it comes.'"

Walowich and his wife, Ann, needed a bellman's cart to haul it all into the hotel where the Roadshow was set up.

Later, they used the same cart to haul most of it back to the car. Zalkin buys only what he knows his customers want, and although Walowich's collection of "Star Wars" memorabilia -- including a plastic replica of the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo's spaceship -- was impressive, it wouldn't be worth much, Zalkin gently told him.

As he picked through the boxes, Zalkin did find some Super Heroes glasses and figurines, some "Star Wars" figures and a few larger dolls that, all told, were worth $100 to him.

"He could have gave me $10," Walowich said. "It's all junk to me."

Zalkin said he started out in the collectibles business with his grandmother, buying and selling cut-glass fruit bowls at age 6. At 13, he was attending model train shows with his father, buying pieces for $1 and reselling them for $2.

For 15 years, he put on his own toy trade show, but got out of that business a few years ago as the shows migrated from antiques and into newer playthings. The online auction site eBay took much of his business for a while, but his customers eventually came back.

At his home in Sarasota, Fla., Zalkin keeps a customer list with notes about what each collects. When he finds a piece on a client's wish list, he calls or sends an e-mail message with a photograph.

Zalkin and his wife, Laura, travel about a week each month for buying trips such as the one to Raleigh. Their 15-year-old daughter, Alex, who's getting an informal apprenticeship at her father's elbow, came along.

Zalkin invites people to bring whatever they have, from the 1910-vintage cast-iron horse and cart Janet Hathaway inherited from her late husband, worth $300 wholesale, to the plastic Speedy Gonzales doll from the 1970s, worth $5 after owner Becky Roberts found his arm that had fallen off.

Barbara Little of Apex, N.C., never played with the early Barbie doll collection she brought in. It included a stern-looking blond No. 3 Barbie that Zalkin considers a relatively rare find and a full wardrobe of satin ball gowns, high-heel shoes and wigs.

Little had bought the cache at a garage sale years ago thinking her granddaughter might want it.

She didn't.

Zalkin did. He paid her $700 for the lot.

Little said she planned to use the money on grown-up fun.

"I can use it to pay for my Mediterranean cruise."

(News researcher Denise Jones contributed to this report.)

E-mail Martha Quillin at martha.quillin(at)newsobserver.com.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)