Mr. T and Me: About

How We Met

Ebay revolutionized the collectable toy market and opened up an amazing outlet for Mr. T collectibles. Before eBay, the best chance I had to find something rare and unusual was to go to a toy convention or scour flea markets, thrift stores, and collectible stores. Otherwise I could check out “Toy Shop” magazine and hope that what was described was what I would get.

I started bidding on Mr. T items when I found out about eBay in 1998. There were literally HUNDREDS of items that I had never seen before or never even knew existed. It also opened international markets, which produced unknown and inexpensive Mr.T/A-team items.  Items like the Mr.T soap from the UK that I found at a specialty toy store in Los Angeles for $50 could now be bought for $5 on eBay.

Ebay was new and no one was collecting this stuff. I think I had a run of three to four years before anyone would outbid me on T items, and this was some pretty rare stuff. The only times I’d get into bidding wars were with seekers of cross-collectibles, (i.e. anything related to another “collectible” field, cereal boxes, banks, videogames, marbles, etc.)

Then the eBay username “mikeessl” came along. Not only did he begin to outbid me, but when I looked at his completed auctions I found he had pages of completed auctions all focusing on Mr.T. Sometimes I would find A-Team collectors, but no one that specifically focused on Mr.T.

I contacted him through eBay to see if he was a fellow collector. He promptly emailed me back, saying that he had a HUGE collection, and that he was working on a website and a book. I was pretty stoked to finally find someone who I could compare notes with and had as much or maybe even MORE stuff then I did. Mike seemed to think he had the largest Mr.T collection in the world. I think Mike was a little surprised when I sent him photos of my collection. Early estimates might say I had about four times as much stuff as he had, and we decided to make a truce right then and there. Not only did we decide to work on a website and book together, we also made a gentleman’s agreement not to outbid the other person on an item they had already bid on.

We became closer friends over the years, talking about T, eBay auctions, working on this site, finally meeting when I moved to New York. Luckily (for both of us) we are both big dorks, and would have probably been friends even if not for the T fetish. So we instantly clicked and became close friends, dedicated to collecting and documenting every mass produced and one of a kind T-related item from around the world.