This is a very relevant issue to me. I have gone through the whole thread. It is amazing just how many people have had the need to chime in on such a transcendental issue, and at length! Besides the original one, many other issues have been raised that turn around the highs and lows of collecting life. Here are my 2 cents on them (and some others I feel are related), and I do expect some serious feedback...!
0) We don't need any of this ****. Let's be honest. ;-)
This is 1st world issues. Nothing relevant at all.
That being said...
1) When collecting this small-time kind of art, you are definitely not throwing away your money. You do not actually buy or spend, you lease or invest. This is my take after having sold a lot (for strategic reasons exclusively) in the last 1.5 years. To sell well, even to make profit, you have to learn the trade and do it before you assemble too much of the wrong stuff. But there is more. Keep reading.
2) There is also a huge problem linked to owning/loving (and investing a lot of money and time on) this stuff that you must consider as soon as possible: how to keep it!! I am talking about theft and disaster. Taking an insurance on something you can barely afford, and that in case of loss won't be easily replaced (if at all) is a nightmarish issue to me right now. More than the money (which is A LOT) it would be losing the TIME I have invested in learning, planning, finding, purchasing, selling and building (at least 5 or 6 years fulltime, if I add it all up since the beginning) that would kill me. On top of that, many items not being available AT ALL anymore would be horrific too. If I lost all my stuff I would really be ****ed up, really big-time, even if my knowledge would survive and I could remake everything from scratch, even if I received the insurance money (I have no insurance yet btw, can't afford it by now). Living with this weight is no good.
3) I won't even get started about the pain that it is to be a collector with a sizeable amount of stuff when the time comes to manage so many art boxes, or to move to some other city, or even to move to some other country (which I am intending to do soon). That is when you realise what you got yourself into, and that your collection is a huge metal ball attached to your neck for the rest of your collecting life.
4) Regarding what to buy: this hobby consists in buying some physical objects whose admiration or manipulation (even creation) makes you happy (let's not discuss why this is so). The amount of stuff you can get is (normally) heavily limited by money, time, space, maintenance, and the people you live with. You must optimize your resources and buy the things that will make you the happiest. Once you get it figured out, you will have to focus and leave the rest out. There is no going around this (and of course, you should not cancel your credit cards: you must cancel your impulsive buying).
But there is more. Keep reading.
5) Regarding your fancying everything: if you die to have everything, you are just being superficial. There is a lot of people who say "I love that thing." when they should rather say "Oh just how nice that thing looks!". Lots of people who should just look at the pictures instead of buying the damn thing. They have some need that they think they'll satisfy just by buying some stuff. But it won't do a thing simply because it is not what they really need. And it is not because they don't know themselves well. And the don't because getting to know oneself deeply is and extremely difficult and protracted process, in part because we lie to ourselves all the time with highly credible big fat lies. So, before deciding WHAT YOU WANT, you must first find out as best as possible WHO YOU ARE (and here I don't mind what your biological age might be). I will give you some tips: being mad about getting every possible form of Darth Vader figs? That is a bad sign. Dying to get the latest figs from the latest blockbuster whose characters you have never had any deep relationship with whatsoever, like TFA or Rogue One? Bad sign.
I can't tell you what would be a good sign, since it depends on each individual. I would dare to say that in any instance, what you take out of your figures has to be enduring, which might mean that you must not just collect merch, but the expression of concepts/values/feelings/memories that takes the shape of merch. And those must be enduring and everlasting. Only so real attachement can exist, and only so you can become selective.
6) On prices: as we all know, a 2006 SSC SW figure costed $60. HT ones now sell for $250. I know quality costs money, but tecnology should reduce costs, and I cannot see that happening. Only thing I see is prices always on the rise. Does any of you know where is this all heading to? Will it get to the point where I will not be able to buy new figures?
7) Final remark on sustainability: should we even buy this stuff in the first place? Do you guys give any thought to the amount of horrible, non-recyclable crap we are generating? Let's be honest about the lifecycle of these things no matter how precious they might be upon release: you buy a fig or statue that is oh so cool, then you sell it to get another one that will make you happier, or that is technically better, the process repeats itself a bunch of times, and even if the item's value might grow bigger, eventually some new version will render it completely obsolete (This is no Van Gogh: think Sideshow's Star Wars 1/6 figs from 12 years ago, or Hasbro's from 18 years ago; and I don't think statues are any different). After the item's value completely sinks, it ends up in the hands of somebody who will eventually destroy or discard it... where? Discard it... how? Chances are it will end up in a landfill, lying there for centuries, or eaten by some animal that will eventually end up in somebody's dish, causing them some kind of cancer when they grow old because of accumulation. Now, this kind of thought, which you might deride but I do not, really makes me feel bad about collecting physical stuff. And I have no solution for it.
m.
EDIT(S): just fixing my lousy English... :-(
