It's a word I hear thrown around a lot, toy karma. I don't think it really hit it's stride till the popularity of the Toy Hunter show. I don't care for the Toy Hunter show and I'll go into greater detail in the near future. In fact, I'll go so far as to say I hadn't really heard of the term till it's repeated use on the show. Now I hear everyone talk about it, throwing it around but I'm fairly sure they don't know what they are talking about. I have to say that when I hear it, I wince and close whatever tab on my browser it came from. I hear it and I'm almost feel like it's some kind of open-ended threat like, "Oh yeah, send me something good and I'll get around to sending you something junky that you'll just have to accept because it's a trade in good faith." Seriously, it's shit like that I've dealt with personally and it makes me sick. Almost to the point of just not dealing online.
Firstly, I need to get something clear, I am nowhere near stingy. I have random giveaways and I always pack the boxes with extras. Everytime I pack a box for a sale or a trade, it gets filled with extra goodies. Every transaction that leaves my house gets a little something extra packed it. I don't think of this as toy karma, I think of this as being a decent person. Early in my toy dealing career I would do business with some friends I made overseas. I'd get whatever Godzilla or Ultraman figure I was buying but I'd also get like an old magazine (sometimes a month old or a few years old), some candy, another smaller toy....just whatever. I came to find out it's a very Eastern way of doing business. Later on I'd see KidRobot adhere to the same cultural ideal when doing business with them. Which I have to say the Dunny Swatch we got from them was the coolest thing in the box and we didn't even order it. It's a way of life I adhered to a while back and I don't expect anything in return, I think I'd feel bad for expecting someone to reciprocate when it wasn't part of the agreed deal in the first place.
Now, this last year I had gotten sucked into five open-ended trades. Two panned out and to be honest I felt like it was a little one sided when you give six vintage Star Wars figures and get modern Happy Meal toys from the last couple of years or incomplete 90s Toy Biz Marvel figures. And somehow I feel like a poor sport complaining but I'd rather had held onto my vintage extras and I sent the pile of Croods Happy Meal toys back to the sender and terminated communication with them. The other three never came to fruition and it's probably for the best. I'm not going to hound someone to come through on their end of a deal, I'm just going to remember it down the line when something else comes up. Everything I've given away (and that's how I pretty much consider it because I donated those toys when it comes down to it) I'm not going to miss, I've got plenty of stuff to burn through but I do have to say I'm personally insulted.
I have to say the personal insult I've endured is what makes the phrase a turn off for me. And I know people who don't mean it in the way my brain has misconstrued it and I know I can't be the only person that has gotten seriously jipped in one of these transactions.
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