There's a story behind my most recent purchase, as it is over 30 years in the making.
In the early 90s when I was probably 7-9 years old I went to the local strip mall with my parents, which was pretty bustling back in the day lots of people there and that same strip mall now is a ghost town because of online shopping and such. Different times. But anyway we were going to different stores and I stopped at Kay Bee toys. They used to have these large bins with a bunch of different toys all piled in there. I don't remember if they were clearance bins or just where they put toys they didn't have room to hang on the walls, but they had a bunch of them. And even had some bins outside the store up against the wall in the summer... I guess stores were more trustworthy back then. I was digging through one of the bins and saw a figure of my favorite comic book character. I was like oooh I really want this. But my parents were calling me to go to the next store, so I put it back in the bin toward he bottom and piled a bunch of toys on top of it so it would stay hidden. I asked my parents if I could go back and get it on the way back to the car and they said yeah.
So about 20 minutes or so later after we went into another store, we were headed back toward Kay Bee again and I went in to get the figure and I couldn't find it. Then I was like damn did I misremember what bin it was in? So I dug through all the bins and I could not for the life of me find it. I thought at the time it would've been so unlikely that someone happened to dig through that same bin and buy that same figure during those 20 minutes we were in the other store. My parents gave me like 15 minutes to try and find it and eventually I just gave up and went home. They said next time we go back to Kay Bee, hopefully we'll find it and we'll get it for you. Over the years and months, whenever we went to Toys R Us or Kay Bee or Clover(remember Clover back in the day?) and any other store that had toys, I'd make a b line to the toy section and look for that figure and could never find it. I asked for it for Christmas and my birthday every year for multiple years and every year they told me they couldn't find that figure anywhere. I looked for it at every store I went to until I was like 14 or 15 and eventually gave up. I never saw that figure ever again. That one time where I pulled it out of that bin and held it for a few seconds before putting it in that bin was the only time I ever saw that figure in person. It was my white whale of toys.
Finally was able to get one all these years later. Closure, over 30 years in the making! The figure?