Nostalgia - How toys become real

A few weeks ago, I read "The Velveteen Rabbit or How Toys Become Real" for the first time. The book isn't a children's classic here in Germany, but I had seen it mentioned every, now and then and figured it was about time to read it.
If you don't know it, here's the plot.

Not a velveteen, but an artificial silk plush Steiff
bunny from the 1940s (not complete, but in
wonderful condition)

There are different kinds of collectors.
Collecting can be about diversity of items, a shared detail, about the monetary value or the emotional one, about the perfect or the imperfect look, about color, about use, about rarity, about history, about sentimentality ... I could keep going on like this.

As a collector of Steiff animals, I can say that a unplayed with vintage Steiff, possibly even complete with button, chest and ear tag which get ripped off easily by children's hands (no safety buttons back then), has something very special. It never fails to make me wonder how that is even possible. Has it spent the last 50, 70, 100 years or more in a cabinet, never touched? Has it been living in a bubble (I use the word "living" on purpose, you'll see why)?
I would lie if I said I don't know how breathtaking an old "new" Steiff can be. There are collectors who only look for those, and they are ready to pay the price for the (often) few chosen ones.

And then there are the others.
I'll never forget the fleamarket where I found this little fellow. I ran to drag the ex over to the stand to let him know I had fallen in love.

Now you might not understand how someone can fall in love with the obvious victim of a moth attack that has swingy limbs.
You might even think that this is a bit yucky or disturbing.
I, however, saw an 80 year old friend (over 100 now).

A child loved him so much that he stayed around although he had lost most of his fur, loved him so much that someone made the effort to give this little fellow new paw pads from white leather (now worn as well), sewn on very neatly and secure.
I remember how on edge I was as a kid when my own teddy had holes in his felt paw pads and I watched my mother sew on new fabric ones.

The child is probably not here anymore, but he is, and oh, the stories he could tell! Maybe he was like my teddy and saw his child grow up and get old before ending up at a fleamarket in Marin County just to be found by a pair of Germans and being taken back to within 60 kms from where he once came.

The velveteen rabbit is told: "Real isn't how you are made ... It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real." ...
"Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
Spoiler alert: The nursery magic Fairy turns him Real, a real little rabbit.

I have no doubt that this teddy became Real to his child like the velveteen rabbit to his boy because he was loved (even though he still has his shoe button eyes). Maybe he's still waiting for his fairy and I'll happily give him the spot with some other teddy friends to do so.

Because that's the kind of collectors we were and there are others like us. They don't just love the perfect ones, they love the loved ones, the played with, the "flawed" ones those we wish could tell us their stories, all of them, not just the good ones ...
Just saying.
Each of them has their own beauty.