Tommy Gelinas was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley in Southern California. He grew up visiting restaurants, malls, and many other venues that slowly declined and eventually, for the most part, completely disappeared by the time he reached adulthood. In the 1990s, Tommy began collecting Valley-relevant items off of eBay and eventually amassed a collection large enough to open the Valley Relics Museum. In 2018, the museum moved to a much larger location at the Van Nuys Airport in Lake Balboa, CA and contains thousands of relics from the San Fernando Valley and the surrounding area.