'You're not family if you think stealing from me is okay': Woman reunites with cousin over nostalgic childhood toys she passed down to her daughter, invites her over then finds her selling stolen toys online for $250

Author image for Isabella Penn
Isabella Penn
Jun 9, 2025 4:00 PM EDT

There's a special kind of heartbreak that comes from realizing your childhood toys are gone. Not because you lost them, but because a well-meaning adult "gifted" them to another kid who immediately shoved them in their nose or dropped them in the toilet. Even if you were too old to be playing with them, the sting lingers. My brother is 35 and still brings up the time our mom gave his pristine Hot Wheels collection to a younger cousin without asking like it was a federal crime (though she's the one who probably bought them in the first place).

So when one woman decided to keep her vintage Littlest Pet Shop collection safe for decades, with the dream of passing it down to her daughter one day, we totally got it. What she didn't expect was for her cousin (who she used to trade those toys with as a kid) to come over, play nice, and then try to secretly sell the rarest ones online for $250. Yep. This story spirals fast.

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    This image is for illustration only, and the subjects are models; the image does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • "AITA for "stealing" back some (expensive) toys that used to belong to my cousin, after I discovered she stole them from my house this weekend?"

    To those of you guys who give this crazy, long a story the time of day, I appreciate you endlessly This entire thing is so infuriating and ridiculous, and five of my extended family members are literally angry texting me now. I just don't see how
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  • I'm wrong for this, though. I'm not. My cousin Victoria (28 f and a fake name) and I (29 f) grew up playing with these miniature collectable animal figurines from a toy line. called My Littlest Pet shop. The toys are still
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  • made today so I'm sure a lot of you have heard of them before. Back when we were kids, the toys had a significantly different design to them. Between the two of us, at that point in time, Victorial and I had to have
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  • collected at least 150 of these things. She had more than me, but not by much. We had so many of them, that we often traded them, giving each other the "ugly ones" that we got as Christmas gifts etc. This was all twenty
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  • years ago, and it had taken her and I several years at the time, to grow that collection into what it was, and it undoubtedly cost our extended families an absurd amount of money. I never considered trashing any
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  • of those toys, because I knew one day I wanted kids and I wanted to pass all my best stuff along to them. This included all my old Bratz dolls, my video games, and the LPS of course.
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  • Speaking of nostalgia, read this next: 20+ Nostalgic Movies from Your Childhood That Live Rent-Free in Your Head: 'I will still watch it with no shame'


     

  • I have an almost three- year-old daughter currently, who just recently inherited the majority of my old toys because we've finally reached the point where she doesn't stick everything in her mouth, and I was so excited to
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  • see her playing with them that I shared a photo of it on Facebook last week. My cousin Victoria commented on the photo. at some point that evening and said, "Lol miss playing those things. with you! When can I
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  • come see you and that baby?!" My dumba was thrilled by that, I thought she wanted to connect with my daughter and I, so I made plans with her to come visit Friday. Victoria
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  • and I hung out that entire night, talking about our childhood together and playing with my daughter together. She socialized with my fiance, she even had dinner with us. I left that encounter feeling happy and closer with her than I'd felt in years, as
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  • we had naturally drifted apart when I left for college a decade ago. I thought this night would help bring her and I back to that level of closeness. I thought she had felt that way, too.
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  • I tried reaching out to her the next day (Saturday) asking when I could see her again, and she said, "My work schedule is full this week, I'll let you know. when I'm free!" So I left her be,
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  • anticipating she would do just that. Two day ago, I saw a group on Facebook being suggested to me for buying and selling LPS, and I saw Victoria was a member, so I decided to join it based on that. I assumed she
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  • wanted to buy some for herself maybe since playing with them again brought back those memories.... That was my first thought. I quickly realized how much money people were asking for these things
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  • USED in the group and I knew Victoria was struggling heavily with student debt (she's a nurse) so I was curious if she was there hoping to find a deal or what. It was because of this group, that I realized how
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  • seriously people still take collecting these toys. I educated myself a lot that morning. Original generation toys are the most sought after, and any animals with purple eyes are considered very rare. Almost every toy in
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  • my collection was an original generation, and it felt kinda cool having something that many would pay tons of money to have. It didn't tempt me to sell them, I kept them all these years so my kid could have them, I wasn't going to sell them,
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  • but it was still interesting going through the "high price" list and seeing how many I actually had. As I'm scrolling through this group and beginning to pull out the toys from the box I keep them in, I see the post. Victoria's post.
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  • $250 for a cat. MY CAT. It has a distinctive mark on the eye where the manufacturer messed up the paint, so I knew it was the exact same cat from my collection. Even if the
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  • photo was grainy it was clearly mine, between us there was only one of this particular cat. This b*tch literally stole it from my house, tucked it away in her purse, and was trying to sell it behind my back without mentioning anything about it.
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  • When Victoria and I were just starting our collections, that cat was one of her first ones and she HATED IT. It doesn't have a bobble head, and its tongue sticks out as a feature. She gave me that
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  • cat when we were kids, and she never once asked for it back, and I kept it that entire time, because like I said, SHE HATED IT. So it became mine. Her post said, "Found my old cat and know
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  • someone wants him No low b lls, please," I honestly thought seeing red was a figure of speech. I felt so used, so betrayed, I knew then that she didn't actually give a sh** about our
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  • relationship at all and saw an opportunity to earn money when she saw that picture I shared. I wanted to call her and scream, but instead, I left the Facebook group and called my fiance. I was
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  • actually crying, I know that's silly crying over a toy, but she was so shady about absolutely all of it. I would have talked to her and literally given it to her if she'd been forthright. If she'd said, "I was wondering if I could have.
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  • that cat back because I'm really struggling financially and could really use the money!" I would have told her yes without hesitation, but she didn't. She pulled one over on me, and I absolutely was not going. let it go. I was to
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  • going to get her back in Some way, I just wasn't sure how. I knew she was not aware that I knew of her actions yet, and I knew in my heart she was going to keep this secret the rest of her life if she had never been caught. Victoria was
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  • a pathological liar when we were kids, and it's clear to me she never outgrew it. My fiance suggested to me over the phone about driving over to her house and simply asking for it back, but knowing her,
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  • she'd say something like, "Oh, it's already gone, sorry," when in reality it's just hidden somewhere away from me until she makes the sale. Remember when I said my cousin is a nurse? Well
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  • she's a night shift nurse, and she works every week night. I know this is her schedule, because she told me as much when she came to visit. So I decided to just wait. Wait until I knew for certain she was at work.
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  • Which was last night. I went to her parents house (she lives with them) and told them honestly that Victoria had something of mine and I needed to grab it real quick. My aunt and uncle had no problem letting me go to
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  • Victoria's room, which told me they didn't know about the situation with the toy. I go to her room, and sitting in a pile on her desk beside shipping packages, are several LPS
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  • toys she'd taken from my home, not just the cat. She took SIX. Those specific toys may have initially belonged to her, but they were mine. She gave them to me, and I was the one who decided not to trash them over the years. I grabbed
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  • every single one of them, and stuck them in my purse. Hugged my aunt. and uncle goodbye, then went to my car. I took a picture with them in my hand, sent it to her, then added, "You're not my family if you think
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  • stealing from me is okay. You are not welcome at my house again." I cried for a minute then collected myself before driving home. I called my fiance on the way and he told me he was so proud of me for standing up for myself.
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  • I didn't hear from Victoria the entire night, and the anticipation made me such an anxious mess that I couldn't even sleep really. I knew Victoria was going to be off the clock at 5 a.m. and only then would she see my text.
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  • The phone buzzing is what woke our whole family this morning. The buzzing wouldn't stop, so I turned my phone off and everyone went back to sleep. I honestly wish I had gotten up this morning to
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  • address things, because now her brothers and parents are texting me, they're calling me a thief and saying "how could you manipulate us like that yesterday?" I didn't manipulate anyone, I told them she
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  • had something of mine. because she did. She's telling me she's taking me to small claims court over this because apparently someone already "bought" it and now she has to refund them. Y'all. Advice please???? |
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  • don't have any more energy to deal with this today, I just want to shut down mentally. Does she have an actual case against me in small claims if there are pictures of her as a kid playing with these?
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Tags

seller stolen drama toys kids nostalgia parenting entitled people karma family mom cousins children betrayal millennial-nostalgia
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