My parents gave me 3 storage units as an early inheritance. They collected vintage toys for decades.

Steph Krim inherited her parents' collection of vintage toys. Courtesy of Steph Krim

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Steph Krim . It has been edited for length and clarity.

I had always been that weird kid whose family collected things .

My parents had a catalog toy auction business . This was before eBay existed. We'd travel all around the world, finding things — mainly toys — for our collection.

My mother would photograph the items and paste the photographs into the catalog, and my father would type the descriptions of each item using a typewriter. Then the catalog would be sent out to potential customers, along with a list of how much previous items had sold for. People would call up or send in their bids by mail.

We lived in a long, thin house in Massachusetts .…