My collecting days are over. Way over. I never really collected anything anyway. I bought a lot of junk, real junk. I liked buying junk. It made me happy. Then it became this giant chain around my neck. All of a sudden I was being forced to justify being surrounded by this junk. I had always thought that wanting something was reason enough to have it. The wheels seem to have come off on that train of thought.
I have managed to rid myself of a lot of the junk, passed it on to other junk lovers, sold it at garage sales, on eBay and now Craig's list. There is still a lot of junk, don't get me wrong. Guitars that I will never really play, books that I probably won't ever read, records that I may never listen to again. All of this junk sits there and sends out an ever weakening signal, pleading with me to pick it up, dust it off and recapture a bit of the spark that went off when we first met.
Yet there is room in my life for one more piece of junk. It's my holy grail of junk, the one thing that ever since it left my life, so many years ago, I have been trying to replace it.
The James Bond Attache Case.
I was one of the lucky ones. I had this toy as a boy. I have never loved any material item more. I played with it constantly, putting together the rifle, setting up the booby traps and basically threating my sister with constant bodily harm. Things took a turn for the better when I found out I could load a pencil into the single shot that was built into the case and shoot it right through sheet rock. Those were the days! Besides the gun, the highlight of the toy was the secret decoder. Sadly, I didn't know one other junior agent with whom I could trade secret messages. Now that I am in my fifties and no longer have this toy it seems as if every other guy I meet is trying to get theirs back as well.
And try is about all we can do.
They are pretty much up on eBay all of the time and if you find one that has all of the pieces (especially the knife and the golf pencil with "007" embossed on the side) you can expect to pay close to a thousand bucks. There is even a cottage industry of repro items for the toy - the bullets, the knife, the handle, the silencer, the money, business cards, instructions and original box can all be purchased as repros to complete your set.
I've come close a few times and I keep waiting for my wife to understand and buy me the damn thing. Sadly, that will never happen. After my little health scare this year I was determined to do a bunch of the things that I have been putting off. So far, I have put off trying to do the things I have been putting off. But something tells me this will be the year of the James Bond Attache.
