King's Day 2014: this year's haul

And so the first true King's Day has passed. I spent my day as I used to do on Queen's Day: raiding flea markets in search of neat dinosaur toys, comics books and general nerd stuff. Now that there was no coronation going on in Amsterdam (thankfully!), I visited that city again, for two reasons. First, it yielded a great harvest the two years prior to last, and second, last year's dismal experiences in other towns made me hungry to repeat past successes. Did I do just that? I came pretty close, as you can see. I scored a total of sixty dinosaurs, most of them the quality brands I collect, though many of them not new to my collection (so more doubles to sell off to the right people). The figures new to myself were not as sought after as those of the past two visits to Amsterdam, but still combined to make for a great overall score. I also got some comic books/graphic novels (Marvel and Donald Duck) and a Star Wars artbook. A few issues of Spider-Man that were high on my wish list can now be written off, but in total, the number of comics and books isn't as spectacular as before. All in all, Amsterdam treated me well enough this year. Can't say the same for Alkmaar the night before, which was just dreadfully dull, unlike last year (no cheap Blu-Rays this time!). So far, the change from Queen's to King's Day hasn't worked against me. Hopefully it won't ever.

I gotta admit, the staggering amounts of Chinasaurs I was confronted with as opposed to the number of quality brand specimens gives me pause. I can only draw one of two possible conclusions. First, kids are finally developing good taste and keep the best stuff to themselves. Second, and more likely, the number of quality brands found in Dutch stores is slowly but surely deteriorating, a trend I feared to notice when visiting toy stores over the past decade. Hopefully, the former conclusion proves true, with the exception that kids still mean to sell of their dinosaur toys when they grow older, since I'm not looking for their competition...