DrGaz’s Doctor Who Stuff – the lost collection

Today I spent a couple of hours engaged my ongoing monstrously huge project of scanning my old photo albums and saving all the images as hi-res JPEGs. Whilst I did so, I came across some photos of my collection of Doctor Who merchandise from circa 1990 when I was a big fan of the series.

Back then I had tons of stuff and what you see here is only a small chunk of it. I had all the BBC Videos, Sevans models (more info here), a mountain of DWMs (Doctor Who Monthly) and other magazines, some collectables (nothing rare, though), buckets of Target novelisations, annuals, posters etc. It seemed like a lot at the time, but in these days of the internet, I realise that what I owned is nothing compared to true super-fan collectors of today. Check out www.richardwho.com to see exactly what I mean. Scary.

My own collection reached critical mass in around 1989. In fact, my teenage bedroom (according to a mate) was “like a shrine” to Doctor Who. There came a point at around the age of 16 when I could no longer bear to undress in front of a grinning Tom Baker or leering Anthony Ainley and the posters finally came down.

So where is the lost collection now and why did I get rid of it?

In 1989 the BBC axed Doctor Who, which by then had become a dreadful television programme. By this time I’d seriously overdosed on bootleg episodes of older episodes, and after I’d seen almost every episode in existence, Doctor Who had lost its lustre for me.

Without a new series to cling to I lost all interest in Doctor Who in 1991 and decided to sell off everything I owned that related to the show. Before the days of eBay I drew up a catalogue and started selling items through adverts in DWB (Dream Watch Bulletin), and through the local FreeAds. The items that I didn’t manage to sell gathered dust in the attic for years - until as recently as 2006. The last few things were auctioned on eBay, given away, or (if it was just rubbish) thrown away.

All I own today that relates to Doctor Who is a few autographs (only the ones that mean something, because they were personalised to me) and a DVD box-set of the wonderful new 2005 series.

No regrets.

I don’t regret getting rid of it all. Despite my rediscovered passion for Doctor Who, I’m glad not to have all this junk on my hands anymore. I just hope that it all found its way to people who can appreciate it as much as I did when I was a kid. Last year I sold a few old annuals and BBC Videos cheaply at a car boot sale to a woman, who was really happy to have found them, telling me that her children (who had been glued to the new series) would love them.

I can’t honestly think of a better home for them.