Why Are Vintage Halloween Costumes Being Collected?
Why are vintage Halloween costumes being collected? Why is it that these cheap costumes (probably intended to be “disposable”) are now being bought up - sometimes for $100 or more??
If you think about it, a lot of the people who collect vintage Halloween costumes are right now hitting their 30’s or are in their 40’s. These are kids who wore these costumes in the 1970’s for the most part - when these costumes were prevalent.
My memories are from the 1980’s, when these costumes were in their heyday. They went out of style and become impossible to find in the early 1990’s. You can’t buy these kinds of costumes any longer. (Now, consumers can buy a different type of cheap costume - the pull-on fabric suit.)
But the real question is: why do collectors collect? I’ve been asked this question in so many words, before concerning my comic-book collecting or my music collecting. The reason isn’t that I’m obsessive-compulsive. No, the reason I collect things and other collectors collect things is because the collection serves a few purposes, mainly:
- Halloween costume collecting allows us to hold on to a fond memory of our childhood
- Owning a vintage costume is our way of preserving history
- It’s a challenge to find Halloween items that are now rare or uncommon
- Owning a vintage Halloween costume enhances our memories of the past by giving us a tangible item to look at
Those are all good reasons, I think. My reason can be boiled down to one thing, however: it’s just fun, and the costumes look cool. There. That’s why vintage Halloween costumes are being bought up by collectors.
Oh yeah, and now we have some money to spend.