The passing of our dear friend and business partner Ray Haradin has hit many that knew him very hard. He possessed a sweet caring soul and an unerring sense of doing right by people. This was matched by his keen intellect, his deep probing inquisitiveness and an uncontainable contagious sense of good humor. For Leon and me, we saw Ray as representing the very best of humanity, someone to emulate as best as one possibly can. Many of us old timers (never thought I would refer to myself as that) have known Ray and the Haradin family through decades of antique toy and bank camaraderie. Reviewing aspects of Ray's amazing life gives us the chance to reflect on our own lives as it relates to the passionate pursuit of old toys and the friendships we have made along the way.

So let's start at the very beginning. We first met Ray and his parents during the summer of 1972. We were attending an auction of old toys and banks at Garth's in Delaware, Ohio. At that time, Leon and I were just two skinny teenagers and Ray was a beautiful energetic blonde-haired boy of perhaps 7 1/2 years. I clearly recall playing with him in the parking lot before the sale began. Leon and I had never before met another child who shared our fascination in antique toys. So the three of us seemed to bond almost instantly. Our mothers were talking to each other, both expressing happy wonder that their children had passion for a hobby at such a young age. I can still hear her my mother's stern voice warning my father to let the nice young couple buy some of the great old toys. As the auction transpired, we were compelled to bid several times against the Haradin's, sometimes they were the victors and other times we were the successful buyers. In the end, each family returned home with several great additions for their collections.

It would be many years before we ran into Ray and his family again. Leon and I finished university in 1979 and Ray would have been in high school until 1982. Sometime in the early 1980's, Kelly Tariga, Bob Bostoff and Phil Caputo started staging antique toy shows at Kennedy Airport and Philadelphia International Airport. They added a third show at Newark soon thereafter. These events provided a great venue for both American and European dealers to offer their wares to collectors. In those days, there were literally thousands of enthusiastic buyers of old toys. Then, in 1983, famous show promoter Norman Schaut founded the Atlantique City Fair. This was the ultimate extravaganza for the display and sale of old toys. It was at these various annual occasions that our friendship with Ray blossomed in our "young adult" years. We would all good-naturedly run around the event floors, hoping to find that great rare undervalued bargain; pieces for our own collection or pieces for our business inventory. Other notable dealers on the prowl included: Bill Bertoia, Oliver Clark, Jay Lowe, Tom Sage, the Morphy Clan, Donal Markey, Bob Brady, John Haley and David Pressland, to name but a few. The sense of competition was urgent and powerful, but it was always carried out with great integrity. It was in these days that Leon and I discovered that Ray had become a very extraordinary young man and a very committed collector. His knowledge of the field was as thorough and enlightening as our own. So it was always sheer delight to talk with him and to trade stories about what was going on in our respective business ventures and personal lives. I will always remember the 1980's with great nostalgia.

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Steven Weiss, along with Leon Weiss and the RSL Team

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