Help... Christmas present for new son!  

+1
For wooden building type toys.
And I would also like to apologize for my stance on NOT collecting things. It might have sounded more snarky than my intent.
I sort of felt the same way about starting my kid off with something cool when I found out my wife was pregnant. And it is natural to want to teach your kids about things you are passionate about and to have something to share with them.
But now my son is 18 months. And I can tell you he is not interested in anything other than smashing things and getting his hands dirty!!!
I'll give it another try when he's old enough to appreciate abstract ideas!!
Unicahome has some neat toys. There are a lot of cool new designs that aren't too expensive that will probably be worth something one day (if they survive your little angel's bouts of energy). The other problem with vintage toys is that they are usually brittle and don't have the same strict safety regulations. We recently bought Anders a vintage metal toy push mower, because he wants a kid sized version of everything I have. It's pretty wobbly and could probably break just by sneezing on it!!!
Here's a few things I really like from Unicahome. Other ideas that are neat are yo-yos, model planes, simple wooden toys and stuff like that. The 8 year old in my neighborhood is really proud of his rock collection. Perhaps cool rocks from special places. You can even label them!

All that being said, my original stance was only based on my own experience. I destroyed around 100 GI Joes or so, which would have been worth something today, in one afternoon with a bag full of fireworks given to me by my well intentioned grandmother! Kids just don't appreciate things like we do!!