How To Beat Collecting Addiction.

[Jay1138]

With the few things I do still collect, the recent inflation and price hikes are starting to draw a line in the sand on how much and for how much longer I'm gonna stay with them. Companies certainly don't seem to use the 'Collect em All' strategy anymore.

Also there is a recent, small wave of preorders that have gone live that would peak my interest. But I'm in an interesting position of going forward on a few things or letting them pass by.

 

[Zurdo95D]

[...}
I mildly contemplated getting the Mandalorian Scout Trooper with Speeder because it'd be a nice experience to see it, but, I have no desire to own it.

Well, I guess this didn't pan out very well

 

[goatchumby]

Companies certainly don't seem to use the 'Collect em All' strategy anymore.

For me, this is one of the biggest bummers about collecting nowadays. I know that now things are pricey enough where every piece is a centerpiece on its own, but I really love hunting down items to fill out a line. Checklists, special editions; it was tons of fun in the past (comics, card sets) and it's still fun for me now.

Then again...

• 1990 TMNT collection: $40.
• 2022 TMNT collection $4k (and counting)

 

[MeatHookGekko]

Has anyone went through this to where they having trouble saying NO to items? If so how did you beat it? I have thought now about doing only 12 inch figures. That does give me a cheaper price point, but so many more items to choose from. Could be the same problem. Then I have thought about finding one character that I like the most. That would be Vader and I could just collect his items and be done with it.

Any advice on how to beat tame or beat this collection addiction would be great.

I was out of the hobby for about a decade. In the time I was gone, I don't feel like I've missed too much. ( I'm not a huge Marvel/Star Wars fan, so that was probably a big part of that)

I only came back recently as I started looking for a Mandalorian for a gift for a relative.

I started on the 1/6th military side of the hobby and back then, a full boxed figure was 30-40 dollars each. The loose parts market was also less brutal back then, a good weapon was 7-8 dollars and a nude figure with head and hands was like 10 bucks. Then again shipping, back then some online dealers had a flat rate of 5 dollars total. LOL.

Something I learned from the military 1/6th side of the hobby is a person can only really enjoy and display and work on, manageably, about 40 total figures. More than that, and it starts to stack up in boxes and bags and you don't even look at it anymore. It's just more boxes stacked on top of more boxes.

The general rules I have for myself are

1) No more than 40 total figures of any kind period

2) If I choose to insert a new member into the collection, I must sell an older one within a month's time

3) I keep a price point in my head where I won't breach and I won't breach it for any figure. No matter how much I want it.

4) I stick to one scale ( I think the 1/12th new stuff is cool and I've always loved things like Legos, but I just stick to 1/6th figures)

5) If you have to start dumping a collection, if I get to that point, it's a long game. So play it long. I.E. don't try to dump 5 years of collecting in 2 months. You'll take some brutal hits in your return. But there is a trade off for time/effort spent to resell something. It took a long time to build a collection, it will take a long long time to dump one.

6) Have a space limit in your head,i.e.where you will keep your hobby stuff. Leave it there and nowhere else. Compartmentalize it in one location.

7) If you are a customizer, and if I want to do a custom, then work on it like 10 minutes a night. Not three hours once every 7 months. Be in the hobby or get out.

8) For loose parts, get a single card board box. That's your limit. You can fill that box and you can add things for future projects, but once you fill it, if you want to add something in, you need to sell something out.

9) If you can't fit your entire collection in the trunk of your car, I mean everything in terms of loose and complete, then it's probably too much for one person to really enjoy.

10) The resell market is really built around loose parts. In most cases, dumping a collection, breaking down a set is just far more manageable in terms of getting rid of things at a good pace ( it's far more work though)

I'm happy I got into Predators and Colonial Marines when I did, but I do regret some other stuff I bought.

Currently, looking at prices, I'm definitely mostly priced out at this point. I can't rationalize spending 70 dollars on a single headsculpt or 65 dollars on a single rifle. I won't judge how other spend their money though. I feel really fortunate I was able to enjoy this hobby when HT stuff was around the 150 a boxed set range and loose parts prices were slightly more forgiving. I've also met some geniunely kind and decent people in this hobby and I'm also grateful for that. I'm really grateful for this hobby period. But I realize it's just stuff. I also want to say you can still have a blast in 1/6th without the latest and great and newest stuff on the market. There are always deals to be had and big loose lots someone is selling or dumping and you can just start building something fun and creative.

Some people have addictive personalities. And in our society, some addictions are seen as more "approval worthy" You however can't define your life by what other people think and say. You might have an addiction that needs a different direction. I turned a 1/6th military collector onto Lego custom mini figures. Now he focuses on that, left 1/6th, and it's far cheaper and less space eating and it gives him his fix.

I find having some rules/guidelines for yourself really helps. And you've then created boundaries for yourself that limit your investment/risk here.

Well, this is a pretty old thread. If you are still around, hopefully something I've said sparks some thought for you. Good luck.

 

[MeatHookGekko]

Regret over missing a piece is worse

My viewpoint on this is if it's a hot enough property/license and the demand is that strong, then it will make a return.

I remember the first HT Iron Man and everyone wanted one and prices blew up on the secondary/Ebay market, and I was so glad I'm not an Iron Man collector, but it was pretty clear they were going to make more and more and more.

If you sit long enough, there's a decent chance someone will dump that set you want down the road. Always? No, not always, but once the trend and new shine is gone, lots of people dump things out at good prices. The hobby is built on impulse purchasing but cost control in collecting is like a slow grind, it's a kind of dull leaking faucet that just keeps dripping non stop.

And if that license doesn't return? I guess focus on some other alternative. Well I try to do that.

I'm glad I got the Samurai Predator when it came out. If it came out today, it would probably be like 750 dollars or something. LOL. But if I had missed it, I guess I'd be OK. Eating disappointment sometimes is probably good for the soul. My take on it.

 

[DeltaForceChung]

I am about a year into collecting Sideshow PF. I have a total of 9 items. Being a Star Wars fan I was only going to collect Star Wars items. But as you know these items are so great that I have found myself purchasing non Star Wars items also. For instance...I really like the Hulk, but without much hesitation I purchased HULK, Grey Hulk, and Red Hulk without even thinking. It's to the point that I am having trouble saying NO to just about anything that I can tie to my childhood that I may have liked.

Has anyone went through this to where they having trouble saying NO to items? If so how did you beat it? I have thought now about doing only 12 inch figures. That does give me a cheaper price point, but so many more items to choose from. Could be the same problem. Then I have thought about finding one character that I like the most. That would be Vader and I could just collect his items and be done with it.

Any advice on how to beat tame or beat this collection addiction would be great.

--

Get an opportunistic girlfriend and/or get married.

You'll run out of $, thus your collecting problem is solved and two more non-collecting problems arise.

 

[budafett]

I have a few rules:

1) Budget for items I want. Never let my collection interfere with real life money issues. Collecting is an escape not another source for stress.
2) Have a clear goal / focus. I focus on Boba Fett / Mandalorians for my high end items and save space for other licenses but those are usually first to go if I started to run out of space.
3) Enjoy them first and think as them as investments secondly.

 

[MeatHookGekko]

I have a few rules:

2) Have a clear goal / focus....

Knowing what you want and what area helps with pre-ordering.

Whatever someone's hobby budget, the goal is always to maximize it. The danger of pre-order is you can get trigger happy with future money spent. The benefit is you lock in on getting something you want and you can get it for sure, most dealers offer some kind of preorder discount to entice you and you can shop around and look for best pricing/free shipping.

Right now, I see shipping costs as the most brutal part of holding together a collecting budget. I feel badly for international collectors because lots of US traders/sellers won't engage with people overseas. What PayPal has done with it's fee structure is also a massive deterrent to some potential sellers and the non stop changes to Ebay has choked out much of it's former "garage sale" type glory.

This was years ago, one of the hobby dealers back in the day was in a thread and flat out said the best thing any collector can do is to spread sheet out their expenditures by month and year. Including shipping and taxes. Doing this will show just how brutal shipping costs can be in a full year without realizing it.

Where I think where the hobby has gone is splitting in half. One side are impulse buying completists. They may or may not like Axe Woves from Mandalorian, but if they have all the other figures, they feel compelled to keep going. The other side are center piece/event type sets or figures. Like a Hulkbuster or a Batmobile. That kind of stuff will appeal to folks who only go to the theater to see the big event movies like Avatar or LOTR and won't go for some random Ryan Reynolds comedy.

Something I used to ask myself is what I can build. For example, I loved GI JOE RAH as a kid. I know I can build a Beachhead given enough source parts. The military side of the hobby has been robust for a couple of decades so just about any 1/6th modern military collector can cobble together a Beachhead or a Rock & Roll or a Dusty. But I can't really easily make a Zartan or a Crimson Guard. The army building Cobra troopers, if you make a resin mold of the helmet, and if you have a good source of military parts, you can punch out a lot of army builders without spending X gobs of money buying cases of the same figure. If you want to make a Jack Bauer, you really just need the head. Or a Two Face. Or an Agent Coulson. Etc, etc.

The other thing I ask myself, back when I was more of a completist, was what did I think the odds were of someone randomly liquidating that line down the road. I think we are all going to see a massive wave of Avengers figures on the secondary market for a long long time. Not all of them obviously.

The other interesting wrinkle is the accessibility/cost structure around current 3D printers. Which I believe is a total game changer. Back in the day, I knew a guy making custom Predator masks for the HT Predators, just resin ones that he painted quickly and they looked really nice. He told me he funded all his other collecting that way. So I think if someone found a nice little simple cottage niche in the hobby that's not too brutal, one could find a way to fund the hobby outside of traditional means.

I don't think one can beat the addiction, I believe though one can modify the situation with more efficiency, structure and creativity and still have a lot of fun with it all.

I agree with budafett though, knowing what you want and what your limits are to getting it is going to save someone a ton of long term pain.

 

[medicomsucks]

When you see boxes stacked floor to ceiling and comtemplate buying a bigger house instead of downsizing, I guess that would be a sign of being addicted.

I just dont like the hassle of packaging up figures and then trying to offload stuff, trying to come out ahead on the price, then have to go to the post office to ship it out.

Thats why if someone said they would take it all at once 'as is" it would be a tempting offer, of course they are going to get major $ off.

The problem then is I would think 'wow look at all this space! Time to go shopping!

 

[Llarian]

I was out of the hobby for about a decade. In the time I was gone, I don't feel like I've missed too much. ( I'm not a huge Marvel/Star Wars fan, so that was probably a big part of that)

I only came back recently as I started looking for a Mandalorian for a gift for a relative.

I started on the 1/6th military side of the hobby and back then, a full boxed figure was 30-40 dollars each. The loose parts market was also less brutal back then, a good weapon was 7-8 dollars and a nude figure with head and hands was like 10 bucks. Then again shipping, back then some online dealers had a flat rate of 5 dollars total. LOL.

Something I learned from the military 1/6th side of the hobby is a person can only really enjoy and display and work on, manageably, about 40 total figures. More than that, and it starts to stack up in boxes and bags and you don't even look at it anymore. It's just more boxes stacked on top of more boxes.

The general rules I have for myself are

1) No more than 40 total figures of any kind period

2) If I choose to insert a new member into the collection, I must sell an older one within a month's time

3) I keep a price point in my head where I won't breach and I won't breach it for any figure. No matter how much I want it.

4) I stick to one scale ( I think the 1/12th new stuff is cool and I've always loved things like Legos, but I just stick to 1/6th figures)

5) If you have to start dumping a collection, if I get to that point, it's a long game. So play it long. I.E. don't try to dump 5 years of collecting in 2 months. You'll take some brutal hits in your return. But there is a trade off for time/effort spent to resell something. It took a long time to build a collection, it will take a long long time to dump one.

6) Have a space limit in your head,i.e.where you will keep your hobby stuff. Leave it there and nowhere else. Compartmentalize it in one location.

7) If you are a customizer, and if I want to do a custom, then work on it like 10 minutes a night. Not three hours once every 7 months. Be in the hobby or get out.

8) For loose parts, get a single card board box. That's your limit. You can fill that box and you can add things for future projects, but once you fill it, if you want to add something in, you need to sell something out.

9) If you can't fit your entire collection in the trunk of your car, I mean everything in terms of loose and complete, then it's probably too much for one person to really enjoy.

10) The resell market is really built around loose parts. In most cases, dumping a collection, breaking down a set is just far more manageable in terms of getting rid of things at a good pace ( it's far more work though)

I'm happy I got into Predators and Colonial Marines when I did, but I do regret some other stuff I bought.

Currently, looking at prices, I'm definitely mostly priced out at this point. I can't rationalize spending 70 dollars on a single headsculpt or 65 dollars on a single rifle. I won't judge how other spend their money though. I feel really fortunate I was able to enjoy this hobby when HT stuff was around the 150 a boxed set range and loose parts prices were slightly more forgiving. I've also met some geniunely kind and decent people in this hobby and I'm also grateful for that. I'm really grateful for this hobby period. But I realize it's just stuff. I also want to say you can still have a blast in 1/6th without the latest and great and newest stuff on the market. There are always deals to be had and big loose lots someone is selling or dumping and you can just start building something fun and creative.

Some people have addictive personalities. And in our society, some addictions are seen as more "approval worthy" You however can't define your life by what other people think and say. You might have an addiction that needs a different direction. I turned a 1/6th military collector onto Lego custom mini figures. Now he focuses on that, left 1/6th, and it's far cheaper and less space eating and it gives him his fix.

I find having some rules/guidelines for yourself really helps. And you've then created boundaries for yourself that limit your investment/risk here.

Well, this is a pretty old thread. If you are still around, hopefully something I've said sparks some thought for you. Good luck.

I`m gonna print it and frame it.

 

[More Battle Damage]

9) If you can't fit your entire collection in the trunk of your car, I mean everything in terms of loose and complete, then it's probably too much for one person to really enjoy.

I was out of the hobby for about a decade as well. Even back before I quit, I could not fit my collection into a car trunk. Now I would consider myself lucky if everything fit into a 12 foot truck. The challenge I have now is display space, which will definitely put a curb in my collecting... eventually

 

[MeatHookGekko]

With the few things I do still collect, the recent inflation and price hikes are starting to draw a line in the sand on how much and for how much longer I'm gonna stay with them. Companies certainly don't seem to use the 'Collect em All' strategy anymore.

Also there is a recent, small wave of preorders that have gone live that would peak my interest. But I'm in an interesting position of going forward on a few things or letting them pass by.

Part of the calculation might be how long someone has been in the hobby and their long term perspective on cost.

For example, when I started participating on SSF long ago, I sold 4 tan flight suits to someone customizing Ghostbusters. I was just looking for small trades back then, hoping people would want 1/6 loose military for hard to find ( for a military collector) pieces inside Sideshow sets like the horror figures, Bond, etc, etc.

It took me a while to really understand what was going on. The guy wanted all four flightsuits because no one really made tan worksuits of any kind or tan coveralls, and the ability to find four at once was probably not so easy. Then he had to find the custom resin headsculpts ( back then there was a big market for that stuff) and he might need to get them painted and be willing to wait a year or more to get them ( if at all, most customizers with huge wait lists just ended up stealing people's money) and that didn't even begin to factor in the Proton packs and traps. And the fatsuit and finding different body types of different heights. Lots of time and money and effort for stuff that is pretty fragile ( resin is just brittle, I've done some resin casting and it's a chore)

Or just wait it out and buy a boxed set that's professionally made, you can get immediate joy out of it and you are protected by your credit card/bank/etc unlike those mass customizers in the old days just plain stealing 10s of thousands of dollars from our hobby.

So I can see how people, wanting to fulfill their childhood nostalgia, will calculate out how paying 250-350 for a figure is still cheaper than the former brutal effort in their collecting past of trying to cobble together a custom.

Something to consider is a lot of old time collectors are no longer the target market anymore. Back in the day, the older GI Joe vintage/Adventure Team collectors would balk at the idea of paying 45-50 dollars for a set to get some cool pieces that had AT application. Then again, their timeline had figures that probably cost 5 dollars for a set when they were kids. People don't really use "forums" anymore, not like the beginning of the widespread Internet. More people are communicating with social media and such. I know that might be hard for some here to hear, but we are all here being edged out of the primary demographic that a brand like Hot Toys wants. Their early offerings were nostalgia based stuff from the 80's and 90's. Now look at what they are releasing. Occasionally we might see a reboot of a previously made mold to try to maximize already expended R&D on a figure, but it's mostly the latest greatest hottest trendy IP out there.

It's like we all here got to enjoy a band we loved before they plain sold out and started doing big movie soundtracks, demanded the world save all endangered two headed llamas and saying bizarre woke **** on their social media accounts.

Most of the time, I try not to think about the way the hobby used to be that was lost, I try to remember the joy I derived from it when I had the moment in time to do so.

 

[Jay1138]

Aside from the few projects I'm waiting and working on, I hit another wall in my collecting. And it's a big one. I got a serious case of the '****-it's' and 'I don't want ANYTHING.' not a terrible thing if you are trying to refocus your collection I suppose.

It's a great time to be a collector for sure, but I'm seeing oversaturation of pretty much everything and it has me thinking "What's the point?" I'm not at the mindset of selling everything and getting out, but rather understanding my thoughts on this.

 

[Sweet Rabbit]

This economy is going to break a lot of peoples habits

 

[Rondesmo]

I’m exactly in the same boat.
After 10 years of collecting, I feel it’s time to slow (stop?).
Too many boxes, too much money spent, I begin to be tired and nervous about that.
Don’t want to buy anything for the moment except a decent 89 Batwing.
The Joost’s one is way too big and expensive for me.

 

[slynger]

In my old house I focused on collecting and kind of deciding on my interests. In my 2nd (hopefully final) home I have a much larger area and have focused on displaying everything right. As that is taking shape and reaching the ending point I'll fill out some empty spots and call it a day. I'm beyond happy with what I have.

 

[More Battle Damage]

This economy is going to break a lot of peoples habits

True, and it will also have a lot of people hoovering up collections

 

[LiamNeesons112]

This economy is going to break a lot of peoples habits

The economy has already turned me into a one dimensional collector and now has me asking myself “do I really need this?”

 

[Jay1138]

The economy has already turned me into a one dimensional collector and now has me asking myself “do I really need this?”

Same. I don't have a lot on preorder but I went through and cancelled several items last night.

 

[potato]

In my old house I focused on collecting and kind of deciding on my interests. In my 2nd (hopefully final) home I have a much larger area and have focused on displaying everything right. As that is taking shape and reaching the ending point I'll fill out some empty spots and call it a day. I'm beyond happy with what I have.

Now you understand why old folks insisting on keeping their old, outdated and obsolete stuffs. Because they reached a point where they felt content and tired of chasing new stuffs. Not because they dont like new stuffs, just they rather listen to old songs than chasing on the latest billboard 100. They figure it would be better to enjoy what they already have than focusing on hoarding new stuffs and deplete them the opportunities to enjoy life. Unless they are like jay leno who has a team to help him gather info, make purchase and sales and maintain their collections. One man only has 24hrs.

I have reached a point i stopped checking out new video games because i realized i was only focusing on gathering games than actually playing. I would love a ps5 but i havent played my ps4 pro for a year.