Story Time!

How CPJ Collectibles came to be.

I’ve always been a fan of Video Games and Action Figures dating all the way back to my childhood. My parents weren’t rich by any means but I can remember having a pretty great collection of figures! I played a lot of sports growing up and my dad one day decided to sell off my action figures (not my video games thankfully) at a yard sale... (thanks dad) lol.

I never really thought about the feeling of nostalgia at that time but always remembered the epic battles I would set up in my room involving Transformers, GI Joe, He-Man, X-Men and all kinds of other toys and figures.

Fast Forward to when I was attending University and needed cash for Books, Food etc. I still had my video games and thought, what the heck, I’ll sell them on Ebay.. and at that moment I figured out that you could make some pretty decent cash selling Video Games online.

But the question was how to find more? This is when I started Yard Sailing and Thrifting. I would go out and look for Games and while out and about, I’d see some of those EXACT same toys from when I was little and I had to grab them for the memories! Now as some of you know, collecting is an expensive hobby, so it ended up making more sense to buy a bunch of figures in a box, lot or sale and keep the one I wanted, while selling the rest.

Doing that is how I ended up learning so much about old toys and pricing for some of the stuff I had NO IDEA the value of or popularity (looking at you Polly Pocket and Barbie).

Once I had my oldest daughter Paighton Jane (aka PJ) I decided to move into buying and selling as more of a job (side job at first). With my name being Craig I just combined it into CPJ Collectibles.

What started slowly at first quickly became bigger and bigger, and in 2020 it really grew quite a lot to the point it was a full time job.

I had an extremely small social media page with 300 followers on Instagram at that time (mostly friends and family) and wasn’t consistently posting anything. PJ told me I should do short videos of some of the stuff I had in the store and put them online, because she had watched some similar ones and thought it could be an idea for me....I said and I quote “I am not a TikToker” .

But the idea stuck with me and I decided to try it out, and little did I know where it would lead me... from that one idea, to all the videos I am posting now and all the memories that are being unlocked. All came from the ideas of one little girl!

So that’s the story, CPJ Collectibles is just me and my now two daughters (PJ and Evie). There’s no giant team, just a dad and his two girls showing cool toys from back in the day!

And yes to answer a question I am sure that you wanna know, they play with the toys all the time! Particularly the Fisher Price Food, Little People, Barbies, Polly Pockets and Legos!

So thank you all for supporting me and here’s to many more videos and unlocked memories!