You Never Know What Will Sell

I've been enjoying listing View-Master reels on eBay for a few months now, and mostly, they sell pretty slowly, which I don't mind because really I just enjoy finding them, viewing them, and sharing them with people (and their kids) who will enjoy them, too. Now and then one of the sets of reels I list surprises me and moves quickly, which happened recently with a Berenstain Bears set. It sold within a few days of me listing it. It was one of many sets in a big stack of reels that my mom spotted at the Goodwill when we were shopping one weekend.

I actually had received a message about these reels, too, from someone in Canada before someone in the US bought them. Who knew the Berenstain Bears were so popular for View-Master?

Best ViewMaster Viewer Ever

When I think about View-Master viewers, I usually think of the classic red plastic ones, as those were the ones that were common in the 1980s when I was a grade school kid and View-Master fan. Well, I found a viewer at the thrift store the other day that I just love. It was made in 2005 and is in the shape of an elephant!

How cute is this? I think the best part is that it can stand up on the eyepieces, which double as the elephant's legs. No wait, the best part is the handle to advance the slides: it's like the elephant is waving at you. Well, this is definitely something to keep in my collection rather than sell on eBay!

Keep or Sell?

When I started picking up View-Master reels with the idea of selling them on eBay, I would get out a viewer, look at the reels once, and figure I'd enjoyed them and could pass them along. Now I've started to feel more of a dilemma and been more inclined to keep some of the sets. After all, they don't take up much space, right?

I was looking through some reels I'd picked up last week and there were some very cute Sesame Street ones. Won't my little nephew want to look at these one day? Also, there was a great Godzilla set which took place in Seattle, with Godzilla rising from Puget Sound with the Space Needle in the background; as a lifelong Seattle area resident, I wasn't sure I should part with that one.

On the one hand, I could focus more on selling things on eBay I feel more detached about, and then this dilemma would never arise, but on the other hand, it's much more fun to sell things you really enjoy.

I listed a couple of vintage sets last night and this morning, including this one from The Black Hole, a Disney live-action sci-fi movie from the 1970s. It has lots of cool retro images of robots and spaceships. I never saw the movie myself, so it doesn't have a hold on me the way other Disney movies like, oh, The Parent Trap with Hayley Mills does.

View-Masters I Have Owned

When I think back on the View-Master toys I had as a kid, I can remember having a classic red viewer, and I can also remember having a blue projector. I think my brother and I got the projector for Christmas one year (Santa would sometimes give us a shared present), and it came with a bunch of reels from The Muppets. I asked my mom the other day if she thought this set was still up in the attic, and she said she might have taken it to preschool (she's a retired preschool teacher). Well, I guess we'll see if it turns up one day; I don't care about the projector, but I'd love to have the Muppet reels!

Yesterday at a local Goodwill store, I found a three-reel set telling the story of Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, which wasn't a set I had as a kid, but I had a Disney storybook with that story and loved it very much. So it was almost like finding a View-Master set I could remember from my childhood.

Are there specific sets you remember?