Statue Regrets! Why did I buy that!

[Butttornado]

We've all had them! Sometimes you get totally stoked about a statue or get swept up in the hype.... Then once you get it, you regret the purchase. Which suck because this is an expensive hobby!
For me, a lot of times I'll start getting hooked on a statue for these reasons:

A: watched a movie or see something online that gets me hooked on something nostalgiac etc. them I find out there's a statue and I want everything related.

B: hot chick. Must buy.

C: a good deal

D: "grail" statue

E: I love a character

I have many regrets and luckily I've been able to sell all my mistakes and make my money back.
Here are my top buying mistakes:

Apocalypse PF: for whatever reason I just didn't like it.
Joker PF: awesome sculpt, but it never did it for me.
Spidey com original: bought this because of a great deal and it was a grail. I like spidey but this statue was just not as good as other statues I had.
Vampirella PF ex: hot chick. awesome sculpt but was a boring display piece. Best female sculpt I've seen to date.
And many others

With all of these "mistakes", I still have doe impulse buys tgat turned out great and I still live to this day. The conan fury of the beast ex was an impulse buy because it looked bad ass and was a low es. It is still my favorite statue in my collection.
All of the Star Wars mythos statues were also an impulse because I got hooked on clone wars, and I love all those statues

This process has taught me a valuable lesson to be much more selective about my purchases and choose things that really appeal to me from an art standpoint and nostalgia. It's something that we all have gone through in this hobby.

Share your worst regrets!

 

[Ex-Parrot]

I've been collecting for well over a decade, and I don't have any regrets. Not one.

Why?

Because I don't buy based on hype. I don't buy based on edition size. I don't buy based on predicted resale value. I don't buy based on sex appeal. I don't buy based on the flavour of the month. I don't buy based on price or 'bargains'. I don't buy based on what other people think. I don't buy just because I haven't bought anything for a while. I don't buy based on thread page hits or forum excitement. I don't buy based on what is considered 'cool'.

I buy only what appeals directly to me and my own personal tastes, and what I consider to be worth my money. And I buy considering that money, once spent, to be gone. If I were to sell I may get some, or all, of that money back, on rare occasions even more than I spent, but I never buy anything with that consideration as any sort of a safety net. Because I find that if you start thinking that money is gone once spent, you'll be a damn lot more careful on exactly where and how you spend it.

As a result, everything I buy is something I genuinely wanted, and my collection is very much a collection built just for me, with characters and interpretations that mean something to me personally. It's not an investment, it's not something to try and impress other collectors with, or just a passing fad or distraction. And not only does collecting like this stop me from getting burnt out or bored, I never get sick of my collection either, because every part of it reflects a part of who I am as a collector and a person. The old lack of space demon is my biggest problem. Especially as I'm not a fan of overly cluttered looking displays.

We all collect for our own reasons. My suggestion, find yours, define it down to it's core ingredients, and follow that path, making sure you collect for your own tastes, not for the approval of others, or for whatever may be the taste of the moment. And above all, remember, you can't have everything. So make sure the choices you do make are ones that you want to live with, and are going to make you happy. If you can do that, then everything else in this collecting game tends to neatly fall into place.

I shall now bugger off and climb back into my box.

 

[Kohun]

^ good post man.

 

[kloug]

I do have many regrets.
Problem is that it mostly works based on preorders. If you don't preorder and buy on release, you'll regret missing a lot of things that went sold out.
So you preorder, but based on what? Promotional pictures, + brand reliability. And how many times do you get things that clearly don't match pictures, how many do you have to buy to get a clear image of how much a company can lie on pictures?

When I open my boxes I have good & bad surprises, and it's often that I wasn't expecting something amazing and it is, and the opposite.
But then again, I don't much care about the license or style, I only like the beauty of the details/pose of the character, & originality (& things not broken).

 

[Butttornado]

Yeah, on some of my regrets, I genuinely loved thre character and pics for preorder. But when I got the final product, it didn't wow me or give me that warm fuzzy feeling. I've learned now to only keep pieces that give me that feeling right when I open the box. I've only been collecting for a year now, so I went through growing pains. Now I feel like I am at a place where I buy just what I genuinely like. The only issue with it is display space now. I hate a cluttered collection, so now I try to buy only what fits. This is a great hobby. I get to bring all my nostalgiac loves into real form. ... Just sometimes I buy a statue and it disappoint the hell out of me. For as much as these things cost, I need to love it. It's hard to always tell from a photograph if something is gonna be good...

 

[zeus]

Ex-parrot nailed it,the same reasons for me.

 

[grphyx1]

I've never bought for the hype, i'm not made of money like that. if i don't have a connection to the character i don't get it, no matter how amazing the sculpt. no regrets for me.

 

[sarakawa]

I think the only piece I ever got and immediately sold it due to dissipation of excitement was a Bowen X-23 statue. It is the only Bowen piece I ever got and when I did, I was like,"damn this is tiny." I have made a lot of purchases(esp early on) that I ended up selling after a while because I either lost interest, needed space, or needed extra funds for new POs. Here are some examples:

Vampirella PF EX and Vampirella Comi EX: super sexy and really loved both but recently sold both to fund newer more important pieces for my collection

Commander Cody legendary scale bust: really liked this at the time I bought it but i decided to phase out all busts and so I sold it

Ironman Mark III BD life size bust: this was my favorite piece for the longest time and the center piece of my collection but when I made the decision to phase out busts, it just didn't fit my collection. still, i don't regret having it or selling it.

Mystique PF EX: again, great piece and I enjoyed it for the few years I owned it but just lost interest and sold it to clear some space and raise funds.

I either got all my money back or made a profit except for the IM BD bust. Even still, with the profits I made on the others, I ended up making a small profit.

 

[PermaG]

My only regret so far is the Titanfall collectors edition.

Was at the start of getting into this stuff. Dig robots and planned on playing the game with friends.

Game sucked balls, played it for 10 mins.
3A comes out with a figure shortly after.

Only other thing would have been the pace at which I start acquiring things. I probably could have spaced things out better.
But on the bright side, I can only start once.

 

[goatchumby]

My first collectible statue was the SS Mystique premium format. It wowed me over in person so I thought that it might have that same value to someone down the road (it did not). The next statue was the PCS Zangief which I loved, but forced myself to wait a whole week to seal the deal. A week later I felt the same about the statue so I picked it up and it hasn't left my shelf since.

Buying based on resale and hype is buying with other people in mind. Buy what truly appeals to you.

 

[Collectorcol]

Bucky. Enjoyed...Outgrew...Struggled to sell...Lost money.

 

[FriendlySamurai]

My only regrets so far are really just half regrets- that is, spending boatloads on PVC 1/8 scale figs before discovering their more impressive 1/6, 1/5, and 1/4 scale polystone brethren.

Half regret cuz I still love them

 

[creature4000]

I make PO's with regrets, but they rarely make it to my house because I have more time to really think it over. I'm glad for SS's NRD because it keeps me more honest with myself.

But I'd say anything LOTR that I have is my biggest regret. Not cause I don't love LOTR, but because I don't think the lines were very flushed out and made a scattered collection.

 

[karamazov80]

Only one I regretted was the Terminator 1 Premium Format figure. Actually an excellent looking statue. Paint work was fine, too. But it had a QC issue where the jacket would stick to the paint and pull the paint off, damaging the statue. SSC wouldn't let me return it by the time the problem manifested itself, so I had to sell it on eBay for a loss.

 

[Pork Chop Express]

Rhino cq. Great sculpt, decent paint. What I assume is a polystone cast injection mold process left a lot to be desired.

 

[dino76m]

a lot of Hot toys, should have restricted to statues, statue regrets? maybe SS lady death but cant bring myself to sell it either,, but i really dont need it as well

 

[Uncanny Web-Slinger]

I've found this below to be true

 

[a2themonster]

totally agree and good topic; joker pf was one of those 'mistakes' for me, so was the 'grail' wolverine pf…luckily, those were/are very easy to sell off…i was gonna buy gladiator hulk based on how it looked, but passed bcz i have no connection to the character..

 

[comicbookguy]

There are some I really hated that I've but only buy to complete a line. But I had to sell off some for various reasons. These are the ones I hated more than any others. Again personal reasons like sculpt, size, mixed media may not be working etc...

Wolverine PF- sculpt
Punisher PF - too small scale
Cyclops PF- sculpt
Ultron PF - paint job

 

[Butttornado]

totally agree and good topic; joker pf was one of those 'mistakes' for me, so was the 'grail' wolverine pf…luckily, those were/are very easy to sell off…i was gonna buy gladiator hulk based on how it looked, but passed bcz i have no connection to the character..

So does the Wolverine PF really look that bad? I never seen one in person and I really want a nice standalone Wolvie statue. I don't love the XM one and I kind of liked the PF, but there is something about it that looks off also. I don't want to spend 800 on either one. I will probably just keep waiting until SS releases a new one. Also pretty funny you felt the same about Joker.

With Red Sonja, Power Girl, and Bat girl coming out, they all look like bad ass sculpts but they don't fit that well in my collection and I don't have that strong of an attachment to the characters. I will be fighting to not buy them. I have a feeling they may be regrets.