Visiting Toy Hunters in San Antonio

[@echohunter4199]

Stumbled onto your video while I was curious if there were videos of the shop on YT. My name is Kevin D and I help out Ernie by doing repairs on toys and figurines that we either buy from people or if requested by a customer needing minor repairs. I’m just a retired Army Grunt so I come in a couple times a week and work in the back area and chat with Mike’s father Larry while working. I’ve known Mike and Ernie for a long time now and I still remember when Ernie, Larry and Mike were building the display stands and shelving. Ernie has slowly replaced shelves with higher quality and larger shelves that he finds second hand from store closures or other sales outlets. In what I do, restoring/repairing an item has to be carefully considered before doing work on it since if I can’t do the job well then it may not be possible so often we’ll wait until we find another one and use parts from it to fix the first one. We always disclose every repair and paint touch up and I make a small 3”x5” card that’s a summary of repairs and I list everything done so the customer can decide if they want to buy it or not and we pride accordingly when repairs are done and often the item is so rare that repairing is often the only way to go. I saw the big Mothra figure in your video, that thing came to us by a ‘walk-in’ and it was in bad shape, 4 of the legs were damaged or missing as well as the two mandibles on the head. To repair the mandibles I drill a small hole on each side of the broken resin then glue in a small metal pin to reinforce the repair and I use a variety of adhesives, glues and cements to ensure the repair is properly done as per the type of polymer, nylon or resin material the item is made out of, I don’t just superglue things together and call it good, it’ll break apart before the customer got it home if I did that, lol. For the paints I mainly use acrylic paints and I blend the various colors to match the items paint colors and paint the items in direct sunlight to ensure I got the color shade as close to original as possible. I encourage collectors to get a small bottle of silicone oil that comes in a small bottle and has a needle thin metal tip so it can put oil precisely where each drop needs to be. Silicone oil will not damage the plastics or resin and ensures the many joints stay easy to move. Often a collector will have an item that spent months in a hot garage or storage unit and the heat makes the plastic swell up and later become very brittle which cracks easily. We’re always looking for signs of heat damage when we buy someone’s items they bring in since we know exactly what can become a problem later on. I enjoy helping people out and Ernie is very good to me and I only associate with people who have great ethics and doesn’t screw customers. Since you visited we’ve expanded our inventory by about 15% and we have more stuff back in the two storage areas closed to the public that we’re still sorting through. I’m not a big collector other than a few Star Wars pieces from my generation but I do model railroading which is where I picked up methods to repair items. Thank you for the great review of the shop, I don’t know if Ernie saw this but I’ll let him know tomorrow. All my best sir. Kevin D.