i only have 14 pieces (15-18 are on their way) and then there's possibly the not-insecticons and not-devestator and i'm pretty good. may get 2-3 more henkei figures but after that it'll be a very few and far between. like whenever new masterpiece/3rd party stuff comes out. it's been semi-expensive but thank god i'm not a completionist.
1click for me EDIT: when 1years ago I pressed and bought my first TF ever (well since my mom sold or gave away my childhood bots) a Masterpiece Mp-01 Prime MIB for 110shipped
I never found it to be that bad up until the first movie came out back in 2007 and toy lines never seemed to be as big as they are now... To me anyway. I know back in 2005-06 I had somewhere around 300-350 figures and now I'm somewhere over a 1000 mark, which really shows the selection that’s been out there in the past 5 years. Typically, with more options the more you'll spend; which really was the case for me because i've almost tripled my collection in the past 5 years and about 30% of my collection now is moive figures.
It isn't that expensive for me because I'm very selective, I only concern myself with the characters in the US, G1 cartoon series and or their updates in the form of MP's, classics and third party products which have to be highly screen accurate in both modes and I'm not a completionist as well. There are some figures that will never make it into my collection, like the throttlebots for instance! Never owned one and will never do so some figures in G1 just dont do it for me, so I'm very fortunate in that sense!
Step one was Alternators, I got into them at the tail end of them being at retail, so I had a lot of catching up to do. Step two was when I got into Masterpieces. I love them, but spending over a hundo on any one figure (200 in Rodimus' case) is a little too hard to swallow sometimes. Step three is the very slippery slope of 3rd party products. Especially the ones that are based on Masterpieces!
Several years ago I average up how much it would cost over the long run. Even with my modest collecting aims I knew it would still be costly. With the advent of classics line the price has gone down a bit but I'm still a long way from being finished.
When I started my current g1 collection. Fortunately I was able to aquire most of my must-haves prior to the massive price increases with the announcement and lead-up to the '07 movie. I knew it wasnt going to be cheap, but damn, I've spent ALOT of money in the past 8 yrs.
Oh man...and I didn't order much from online back then...I happened to luck out by running into every figure I wanted in-store. Then I went back and did the math...OUCH...even at retail price, 20-something toys at $20 apiece adds up...but at least it was over the course of several years. MP Prime brought me into the hobby...ALT Sideswipe kept it going, and Classics kept pushing me. Next thing I know, I'm going and going and going...and then I got introduced to 3rd party...OUCH...
The morning after I bought Leader Meg and Prime for the first movie. I remember setting them down on my kitchen table, staring at them while eating Cheerios, thinking, "Did I really just drop $80 on this crap?"
A whole new world! A dazzling place I never knewwwwww.... nobody to tell us no, or where to go, or say we're only dreaming... a whole new woorrrlldd! ... What did I just do? ON TOPIC NOW... I realized once I was given my own money to spend with, and I actually had my own finance to keep tack of.
That, happened to be the 2nd (or was it 3rd) TFs which I'd gotten for myself. Seriously, I don't even find 'em costly back then, though I was paying 4-digits upwards for some of those already. (We're talking about like 12 years ago?) The realization only came-a-knocking when I'm well into my 30s. That's when I started to really think about the kind of $$$ that I've been blowing on plastics. (I'm spending close to a grand on TFs every month) Plus, having a family & now with Junior hitting on 4 months old, I'm definitely taking longer time to purchase the really costly pieces.
All the time, If you live here in guatemala you will quickly realize Legends: 50 Scouts 100 Deluxe 150 Voyagers 200 or 300 HA: 300 Leaders Price may vary
A long time ago . Just the other day I forked out way too much money for all three '87 Targetmaster Decepticons. Yeah, that pretty much sums up my spending habits right there...
When I first dropped triple digit cash for each of my first masterpieces... MP-04 Prime and MP-05 Megs... Then I knew I was moving from casual retail consumer to spendy collector!
