Even as a Classified-only collector, I still find money and available space crucial to which products I buy. I have a tier list and I’m curious if any of you have one as well.
1. HasLab
2. Small and mid-size vehicles
3. Exclusives
4. Retro Cardbacks
5. Everything else
1) Great ********
2) Is an amazing cook
3) Free stuff
4) Super cheap
5) Clearance
6) Retail as a last resort
Wait... just Classified....
1) "Must Have" individual figures I know will sell out fast at retail and I love the figure concept ( The first Snow Serpent is a good example, amazing figure, I know everyone will want one or multiples, and while I can hold off for a sale for a little while, odds are you need to pull the trigger in relatively short order or watch them disappear. I've observed Snow Job, Low Light V1 and Rock N Roll were also fast sellers for example. They didnt' disappear overnight, but they won't be "evergreens")
2) Targets of opportunity individual figures. ( So I think Road Pig looks cool but I'm not apt to spend the 50 bucks for him at retail. But if I can get him on a super clearance or a discount outlet will get him, I'd be happy to pick him up. The blue Marauders BBQ fit this category in real life. Had no interest in him in Category 1, but if I can get him at a clearance price or as an additional figure in a big loose lot buy, then happy to have him incoming) Small vehicles and mid sized vehicles land here too. If I can get a smoking deal, I'm open to it, but otherwise I'm OK with holding off. Something like Big Ben and Tunnel Rat fit here too, I'd want them in the collection, but believe I can time a good sale.
3) Army builders/Squad builders individual figures as the situation permits. I'm willing to spend a good chunk all at once if I can get less than retail/MSRP but the price is going to be above clearance, to get things like BATs or Vipers. Like if I could get 10 BATs for 150 before shipping in a loose complete lot, I'd trigger that, something like that.
The only exception to any of that was I bought an ungodly number of Rattlers. I didn't have one as a kid and wanted one badly as a kid. So that kind of falls into the category like the Voltron Lions, I also didn't have it as a kid and wanted it as a kid, those things that hit a kind of "grail/nostalgia" category are outliers and will spend outside my more current budget collecting way to get them. I'm sure part of it is completely psychological in nature. I grew up with holes in my clothes, no jacket in the winter time, went to bed hungry lots of nights. I'm not saying that for folks to feel badly for me, because lots of people grew up rough or had it even worse than me, but most people can't understand what it's like to be a kid and covet something like the Voltron Lions over regular food every night. Here around fellow collectors, I think people for the most part understand where and how a kid would think like that or covet like that. There was a girl in my math class in middle school, she said that once, out loud in front of me, and it was kind of a distracted kind of way, the kind of way where you saying way too much truth and you don't realize it. She basically wore the same clothes every day, I went to school with other kids like that, and she just said, "I'm just so tired of being poor" Poverty messes with you, how you see material items and how you buy things. You have to fight it's worst tendencies as an adult. I have to mentally constantly fight off the urge to buy 4 of everything immediately now. I have a budget and I stay in that budget. I could spend more, but I've seen others go out of control before with a hobby, and I can't go there. More to point, how we collect, my thinking on it is it's partially a function of how we had to grow up and deal with money.
I pick and choose now, whereas before I was a hard line completist for a lot of things. The decade I took off entirely from the hobby did me good in so many ways. I was not in a good place before my hiatus, and I knew I couldn't handle myself for better things and still be a collector at the same time. So I just left. Again, I'm in a forum, a subforum here, with fellow collectors, and I truly do believe that people here, most of them, can actually understand where I am coming from here. Sometimes this stuff for me is a time machine, to go back to a better version of my past that I never got to have. But instead of needing that fix all the time, now it's just where it needs to be - nostalgia with limits.
