I still collect GI Joes and Transformers due to loving them as a kid. At first it was the old ones for nostalgia’s sake, but 40 year old toys do not hold up very well and I did not want to run a museum so I switched to newer versions of the old toys.
I bought a vintage 1960s or 1970s ice cream scoop off EBay, identical to the one we used growing up and my parents (age 94 and 100) still use. Ice cream is important.
Is it an aluminum spade-shaped one (not a “baller”)? IMHO, they’re the best. I must have three or four of them here. If I see one at a yard sale, I’ll pick up another.
Best ice cream scoop ever
In elementary school, I checked out…multiple, multiple times this Frankenstein 'graphic novel." Vivid memories of it…and for years I searched for it. My wife, who is a librarian, even tried to find it. No luck. I think I even talked about it on this board before? No one could find it the correct one. “Frankenstein comic” or “illustrated Frankenstein” brought up 1000s of hits. Bernie Wrightson’s version takes up a lot of that space–it is a masterpiece of course.
I remember I was about to post a last minute hail Mary ask in like an old head horror comics FB group…and I decided to google one last time… Found it. No idea what alchemy I used at that moment.
Bought it on ebay… still think its great. While my memory was a little more stylized, I did not remember how kind of gory it was for a 8 year old to see.
So that’s what that is! I have something very similar and it’s mostly used to serve spaghetti sauce.
That rubber handle is eventually going to crack down the side and split off from the metal part. I’d rather have an ice cream scoop that’s all one solid piece of metal. Not that they’re particularly easy to find.
AHunter3, you are spot on! When I mentioned my scoops, the flat style is exactly what I meant. The things are indestructible. Wit no plastic parts, you can do just about anything to it. Plus, no handle to unscrew. I haven’t bent one yet.
And they nest pretty well. I can put several in a single large glass of water to use when scooping different flavors at picnics.
The two I regularly use are over 50 years old each, so the problem is more theoretical than reality.
When I was a kid, my parents didn’t own many albums but my mom had a few. Among those few, I mainly listened to Air Supply’s Greatest Hits, Bonnie Tyler’s “Faster Than the Speed of Night” and Dan Fogelburg’s Greatest Hits. I picked up the Fogelburg album a while back but never came across the other two when out record shopping. I could have easily bought them online but kept them as something to look for when I remembered at the stores. Yesterday, I was at a record store browsing their used stuff and came across both. So now I’m the owner of the triumvirate of my classic childhood albums. Plus I unironically like them! Dated and all that but they hit the spot in a bombastic 80s Steinman sort of way.
A week ago, I saw a Facebook post that included a dinosaur book from my youth. I remembered it vividly, but not the title/author. Just seeing it made me remember how much I liked it and I found a $12 copy that’s en route to me now. I’ll likely just flip through it once or twice since I don’t usually need outdated dinosaur facts from 1968 but I’ll be happy to see it again just the same.
Not purchased but I always make a scan at the used book stores and thrift shops for the original “Joy of Sex” book. My parents had it in a nightstand when I was a kid and I always leafed through it and read the entries when they weren’t around. I came into my age loaded with academic, if not practical, knowledge about the subject. I don’t ever expect to find it (again, could easily order an old copy online) but it gives me something to browse the spines for in the antique malls.
As a teen, I used to babysit for a family that had the book. I learned a lot after those kids went to bed…
My girlfriend gave it to me as a gag gift in the late 80s/early90s, when it was already outdated and seemed funny to us (we were in our early twenties). All I remember is that the people in the drawn illustrations all were very hairy, 70s hairy. I still must have that book somewhere, I don’t know where, my book collection is a mess.
I have…somewhere…a copy of it, which my first real girlfriend bought for me, in 1983. She went through it with a highlighter, to make sure I knew some of her favorite things. 
I just downloaded Tom Wolfe’s Pump House Gang to my Kindle. I haven’t read it since High School. There are a few word choices that are quite shocking to the modern ear. Let’s just say, Tom wasn’t shy about calling a ***** a ***** …in the worst sense of the word.
Speaking of Spaceships and sex. The Joy of sex was illustrated by none other than Chris Foss the legendary science fiction artist.
I bought a slide rule to bring back my high school days when I used it in chemistry and physics, and took one along to class in college in case my calculator died.
My dad taught me and my siblings how to use a slide rule because calculators were expensive and he was a cheap engineer. I have no nostalgia for them.
Slide rules? I was taking a multivariate stat course in grad school a long time ago and the instructor allowed calculators (but not programmable calculators). I asked if I could also bring a slide rule. The slide rule was an immense help, as it allowed me to rule out many possible answers in the multiple choice section. Using a slide rule to find the first two or three significant digits was faster and easier than many functions executed on a calculator. They’re great for “the answer is approximately this” work.
When I was very young we had a Kodak “Brownie Hawkeye” camera around the house. I don’t know who it belonged to, my parents or perhaps my older brother. I used to carry that camera around and pretend I was a TV cameraman. (Like I said, I was very young.) My parents threw it out years ago in one of their house cleaning sprees. Sometime in the 1980s or 90s I saw one at an antique store for $10 and couldn’t resist buying it. It sits on a shelf in the living room with a variety of other old cameras I’ve collected.