well I started out with baseball cards back in 88, then it jumped to comic books in 90. At this point i was cleaning out my old toy bins and started putting all my transformers back together and decided to look up some TF on ebay. At the same time I looked up macross toys, but they were waaaay too expensive back then. Like the strike which goes for about 200 minty fresh nowadays, went for about 800+ back then. So I just stuck with buying G1 TF. This is a picture of my TF collection in 96:
Now I have all the original G1 TF. Along the way I picked up some macross stuff here and there. I actually pieced together a Strike Valkyrie within a whole year! Started off with the valk with leg armor, then went to the rest of the armor, then the little minmay figure, then the heatshield, then I won an auction for just the box, styrofoam and sticker sheet, then someone just happened to have the file card and instructions. Man it was a long process but I did it! then I ended up buying 4 other strike valks in box all at once from a member here. So now I have a bunch of vintage macross toys and the new stuff.