The Maiden Voyage of Aerath

Welcome to the maiden voyage of my Toy Collector's Essentials blog. Call me Aerath. I'm pretty excited to be entering the "blogosphere" for the first time. This is all very new to me but, as is my p-type, I want to get right down to business.

I work with a toy reseller called The UrbanStash.com (www.urbanstash.com). I work as a curator of toys for this company. We have been in the business of selling collectible toys since July 1998.

We are based out of Columbus, OH and have an affiliation with a local Sports card and collectibles store (Starchild CCG & Sports Cards).

Between the two stores (The UrbanStash.com is primarily a virtual store whereas Starchild is a "brick & mortar" storefront) we have thousands of items that date back 50 years or so (at least as far as some of the sports cards collectibles). Mostly, however, the toys and figures we have are from the '80's, '90's and 21st century.

Without a doubt our most popular line is Star Wars. We have a few toys and figures that date back to the original release of that seminal film, but most of the stuff is from the more recent releases. It's all very cool but I tell you, we have way too many pieces to put on the web site storefront (www.urbanstash.com). We can talk more about these items later. Other brands we are into include the original Battlestar Galactica toys, Batman, Lady Death, Hellboy toys (by Mezco & Dark Horse), Lord of the Rings (by Toybiz), Tonner Dolls Harry Potter, McFarlane Sports figures (at least when they were cool in the early 2000's) etc. More recently we have gotten into the Marvel Legends Mighty Muggs (and DC universe version figures dubbed Uni-Formz)and the Star Wars Mighty Muggs. Also, Transformers, GI Joe and Indiana Jones have products in the Mighty Muggs line, but their not as interesting as the Marvel lineup.


While we love our toys, we have more recently discovered a small company here in Central Ohio that is producing some very edgy work in the casual clothing area. The line of T-shirts in which they are specializing we have dubbed "crunkwear" because of the Hip Hop appeal and just the sheer irreverence these guys show for playing "by the rules".

We call the line "PC-Tees" and currently a few of their works are available at www.urbanstash.com. What makes these works exciting (to me,at least) is how the PC-Tees have been able to capture the fear, anger and most of all sense of humor shared by many Americans during these difficult social and economic times. There is definite emotional tension that underlines the designs, but if you check them out you'll see there is also joy and hope.

We hope to be bringing you more about these in a future post as well as more discussion of the present and upcoming collectible toy lines. Well thank you for visiting. I hope to hear from you if you would like to share your thoughts or questions.