IT'S been a very good week for one pensioner from Flintshire in North Wales.

This lady, who remains anonymous, worked in a toy shop in the 1970s and bought her grandson a collection of 20 Star Wars action figures for 49 pence each.

In case the boy lost any of them, she also bought an extra set and put them away. Which is why the grandmother, now in her 80s, was able to sell at auction a mint condition set of boxed Star Wars figures for £10,100. Well, the Force is certainly with some people.

Even though I was a Star Wars-crazy child in the 1970s, I didn't buy any of these figures. I reasoned that 49 pence was a lot of money and the toys seemed a bit small and plasticky.

Certainly they bore only a vague resemblance to the characters that had knocked us out on the cinema screen.

It's tempting to think that, by not buying them, I did myself out of a small fortune. Until you consider this fact. The collector who snapped up these toys at auction paid £1,162 each for a plastic Luke Skywalker and a Chewbacca. But if they had not been in their original packaging, they would have been worth approximately £2.

So, the toy is worth £2 but the box is worth £1,160.

That's the problem I have with these stories of toys, comics or books that attain huge value over the years. Their monetary worth is always dependent on them not having actually been enjoyed in the intervening time.

Why the obsession with preserving such ephemera in pristine form? Isn't it a bit obsessive? After all, is an antique piano better for never having been played, or a painting greater for never having been hung?

If we pass this kind of thinking on to our children, we will have a generation of kids who would rather admire their toys in the packaging than get them onto the living room carpet and play with them.

And isn't that sort of missing the point?

I bet the collector who bought those Star Wars figures at auction is a happy man. But as he sits there observing his collection through a glass cabinet, I bet he feels a bit of a yearning to rip open the packets and play with the things.

Either that or he thinks: "You know, £1,160 is a lot of money. They seem a bit small and plasticky."