About

I've been a toy collector since the late eighties when I started hunting yard sales and flea markets for the earlier eighties toys that were no longer in stores. For me, there is a distinct difference between the toys of the first half of the eighties and the second. I have a great love for both, but since I was a toddler during the height of Strawberry Shortcake, Rose Petal Place, Charmkins, etc. most of those toys and dolls of mine didn’t survive (or they were in rough shape). I hunted them down everywhere I could and even purchased a large boxed SSC collection with my birthday money when I was around 10 years old. I’m still hunting! My passion is Strawberry Shortcake but I love almost anything from that era including stationary and stickers. If you know me, it has to be “minty”. There is something special about an item that looks like time hasn’t touched it; like those long-gone years aren’t so far away after all.

I started selling duplicates on eBay around 1998 to fund my missing pieces and eventually turned my hobby into a business. I’ve taken breaks from collecting for long periods due to life experiences including college, marriage, babies, and divorce. My childhood toys have always been a source of comfort during tough times and even though they were usually stored away, I could always dig in my bins for that familiar feeling of nostalgia. I’ve downsized my collection several times because it can get out of control, but I still have enough to make me happy.

In the late nineties when the internet took hold, I got the idea to create a collecting guide. I wanted to document everything in a visually appealing way. At first, it was a website - one that I never finished or even made public - which ended up being more of a personal project just for fun. I loved creating the graphics in Photoshop. My collection was small so I did not have pictures of most items and that became a major setback. Fast forward to 2018 - I began to collect again after a break and I started photographing everything. My collector’s guide was finally published in the spring of 2022 and is available here and Amazon.

Check out our LIS Facebook collecting group for discussions, tutorials, book updates, giveaways, and the “sticker project”. We have scanned many sticker sheets for you to print out to restore your vintage playsets. (They’re for personal use only; not to be sold as it’s illegal to sell artwork that belongs to someone else. There are so many toys in great shape besides their stickers and this is a way to give them new life and keep them out of the recycling bin.)

We’re 46K strong and would love to see you there!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/lifeissweetvintage/

〰️♥ Dana