How did you start collecting Windstones?

My husband actually got his first piece, a gardian dragon, at the Medival Times in Cali. Then I got him a peacock emperor, and slowly got more and more, now we have 60 pieces of windstone.

I popped out of the womb loving dragons- no honestly, I can’t remember a time before I started loving them. Then later in life discovered gryphons and other fantasy critters and fell in love with them too.

When I was about 5, a small local gift shop started carrying Windstones. I remember seeing the first lines in there (old browns, greens… peacocks, the original griffins, kirins..). As a child I never had an allowance and my family, though very loving, couldn’t afford such things, so I’d go to the small local mall and stare at them. It wasn’t until I was 18 or 19 did I purchase my first Windstone (and the only Windstone I’ve ever bought for myself, actually!) which was a griffin candlelamp. I’ve since been gifted a few Windstones by wonderful friends and have been able to trade for my others. 🙂

I read the Pern books back in High School and tired to imagine what those dragons would look like then one day I was in a shop in SF and saw the Windstone Brown Male Dragon and was hooked, as I walked over to it I saw the Female now Mother dragon and was kooked for life

The Pern books played a pretty central role for me too, as they were hands-down the best darned dragon stories I’d ever read . . . and still are. I started reading those in junior high, so by high school I was pretty solidly locked into dragons. Freshman year, our marching band was invited to compete at the Fiesta Bowl Competition of Bands in Arizona. This led to a nine-bus caravan snorting its way down the freeway, loaded to the gills with bored kids and harried chaperones. It was nearly a twelve-hour drive in those slow things. As a reward of sorts for not hijacking the buses 😉 we were turned loose in the Scottsdale Mall for a few hours. There I ran across a shop that had these incredible brown and green dragons in its front window. I don’t think I moved from that window for half an hour. I didn’t have twenty bucks to spare, so even the Hatcher was out of my reach, but I went from dragon to dragon anyway trying to decide which one I would buy if I could. (I eventually decided I liked the browns a little bit better.)

Leaving those dragons behind was extremely hard, and I moped about it for months. Then, a few years later, I discovered an Old Green Mother in our local Wicks’n’Sticks. It was nearly Christmas, and I only had enough cash left for half of her price. Mom, however, let herself be convinced that if she paid half and I paid half, then this dragon could be her Christmas present to me. I think Mom was happy to get off so easily, and there was little question that I liked the gift! 😆 That dragon followed me throughout my penniless college years. It wasn’t until I’d been out and working for over five years that it even occurred to me that I could start collecting these in earnest. I found an Old Brown family on eBay, bid like a frenzied mongoose, and have been building the collection ever since. Although I have learned to not do the mongoose bidding thing most of the time. 🙄

I got the two my brother had. You know…come to think of it, he has a prototype OW. I think I will try to weasel that one away from him too…

Okay, listen, I’ll admit it. I had both of these things. 😆 It was a purple banana seat bike, the seat was white with a unicorn on it, and heaven help me I think it had rainbow tassels. The handlebar grips were white too. My temperature changing boots were rubber and purple too.

I don’t even like purple. 😆