Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
“PAWN STARS” Expert Joel Magee Hunting for Toytreasures
EVERYONE DREAMS OF HAVING THEIR very own time machine. Joel Magee found his at a Midwestern flea market in 1982 for just $20. “I went over and looked at this old G.I. Joe lunch box,” recalled the 57-year Sioux City, Iowa native. “All of a sudden, a flood of memories came back. I could see myself eating a ham and cheese sandwich in the gym at Crescent Park Elementary. I could see my friends and I could see everything like I was in a time machine turning back the clock to 1967.
Such was the power of a humble lunch box. These days Magee helps bring the power of vintage toys to others while showing off his love for collecting at shows nationwide. From board games to action figures, from model cars to Comic books, Magee has seen it all. He’s also bought a considerable amount of it. And like any good collector, he owns one of the first Barbie dolls ever made from way back in 1959 and he owns a copy of the original 1962 comic which brought Spider Man to life for the first time. Plus, he’s even got a rare Jawa from Star Wars with a plastic cape.
“In the movie, the Jawa had a cloth cape and somebody at the factory put on a plastic cape,” Magee said. “George Lucas went crazy, saying, This figure is not supposed to have a plastic cape’ and he made them change it to cloth. But about 100 of them still made it out of the factory.”
Any of those toys would fetch thousands on the open market and Magee knows that such items can be found lying forgotten and gathering dust in attics and garages coast to coast. Just four years after his lunch box find, he was on the road going to toy shows looking for lost treasures and today he encourages folks to attend his buying events where old toys can be appraised and exchanged for cold cash. His company, The Toy Scout, is managed by himself, his wife, Kimmy, and his daughter, Tiffany.
“I’ve had people come back five or six times over the course of a couple of days.” Magee said. “People bring me toys by the thousands and at every event there are toys I’ve never seen before.”
Now recognized nationwide as “America’s Toy Scout”, he’s set to create a TV pilot for his very own show under that name. It certainly won’t be his first radio in the world of broadcast, having already come to the public eye on the History Channel’s hit show “Pawn Stars” as an expert on everything Disney related, including the theme parks.
Joel says it was an extreme honor working as the disney expert on the show and a blast to work with Rick , Corey and Chumlee , if you visit Las Vegas you must visit Ricks "PAWN PLAZA " next door to the Pawn Shop and his famous restaurant , "Rick's Rollin Smoke BBQ & Tavern also Chumlee has a Candy Shop next door with just about every treat you could imagine , and a Must See is the Behind - The - Scenes Tours of the Famous Gold and Silver Pawn Shop right on Las Vegas Blvd as seen on PAWN STARS on the history channel , make sure to visit www.gspawn.com for details.
But Magee still loves the one-on-one personal interaction of finding old toys and hearing new stories from their owners. He encourages everyone to rifle through childhood items in search of hitting hidden dirt.
Joel is often asked how old do toys have to be to have an interest? And the magical answer is when people reach about the age of 40 they begin to reminisce about there childhood and think about getting their old toys back to revisit their childhood memories. That now puts us to the 1980s and older. The 90s and newer will have their day but not quite yet. Joel does give some important advice. Be careful not to accidentally wash the pay dirt off before you show it to him. Well intentioned efforts at cleaning could destroy a valuable discovery. “People spray a toy with Windex and the paint starts dripping off,” he said. “Even if a toy is covered in grime, I can still appraise it.”
Another piece of advice? The worst way to start a collection is with items labeled “collectible.”
“That word or ‘limited edition’ items typically denote something with little potential to rise in value,” he said. “It’s just a gimmick.” Magee said that promotional toys can be among the most valuable to save.
“The best toys to buy are those that are made to go along with movie or TV promotions,” he said. “If they become hits, then the toys related to them will also be a hit and the values will go up.”
Of course, if they don’t, they won’t be worth anything. There is no telling what those old toys you still have from decades gone by might be worth–at least not until an expert like Magee can get a look at them. That’s why he loves talking to the public and seeing all the items they bring to him.
“No matter what news I give them, whether their find is valuable or worthless,” he said, “I think people appreciate getting a solid answer so they can finally resolve that nagging question of whether there is any money in that old cob web covered toy box in eternal storage back home.”
“Over time, everyone started calling me ‘The Toy Scout’ because I was traveling all over looking for this stuff, and people began to ask me to find toys from their youth, too,” he said. The truth is that Magee collects more than just toys. He is a keeper of the past.
“For the last 30 years I have been scouting America to reunite people with their childhood memories.”