I'm totally burnt out on collecting. I'll be selling just about every TF I own over the course of the rest of the year.
I'm the same. I don't feel burnt out, but my interest ebbs when I can't find any new toys on the shelves. Been like that since DOTM wave 1
Oh totally for sure, I absolutely adored Robot Heroes when they were out. What I meant was that sometimes people will pass on something they really want and settle for something they are meh about because they can buy like 20 of them.
I have observed a few things in my long years of toy collecting. 1) Toy Collecting is a very demanding hobby, almost like a Mistress, if you take time off from any line you enjoy and still plan on collecting you may find yourself running the gauntlet to catch up when you start up again. 2) Toy Collecting will tire you out eventually, or as tastes change and evolve you may find yourself wanting desperately to purge yourself of unwanted junk. 3) Toy Collecting is full of Highs and Lows. Ups and Downs. Anyother Comparison You'd Like to Put Here. 4) Toy Collecting, when it becomes a chore or no longer fun just saps the collector's life essence to the point where he or she begins to feel the urge to purge. 5) Toy Collecting is an Expensive Hobby to start and an even Expensiver Hobby to quit. (How so you may ask, simple, when you want to quite collecting but still decide to keep something special to you eventually it could lead to re-kindling your love of collecting and starting back up again at a feverish pace.) 6) Toy Collecting is not for everyone. Some will never understand why you enjoy the hobby. Others will only ever see the huge prices that a MISB G1 Optimus gets on E-Bay and figure that it must be an investment worth getting into, like Art or First Edition Literature Collections. To this I say, Do not start collecting if you believe this, for it is to laugh, in today's modern era of mass production. 7) Toy Collecting will Consume Your Soul if you Aren't Careful. And so on and so forth, with many variations of the same being just that, variations. Some of those things I just said could easily be similar to each other. Toy Collecting is, to put it bluntly, a Job. No. I mean Like A Job. You can spend hours, days, weeks, months at a time churning out more and more toys for your collection or scouring the area like a Job Seeker on the Prowl hunting for that elusive piece that will unlock the door to happiness. But eventually you will begin to stress out if you aren't careful and have some form of moderation, or something to help keep you from losing it. Taking time off from collecting is nothing new. It's just like when you take your Vacation from Work. The thing is, it is a bit different, as when you take a few weeks off from work you aren't going to be scrambling madly to complete holes in your collection once you start working again. The same can't be said for toy collectors. Which is probably why I don't actively hunt down everything I want these days, if I get it, I get it. If I don't... Well the wanting of it will still be there, but that just means I don't have something I could have were I willing/capable of shelling out the dough for it. I think it is healthier to collect in small doses, don't scramble madly to fill in holes and buy up a complete collection just for the sake of having one, some of those pieces might not be to your liking or tastes. Read Reviews, Watch them on Youtube, experiment with a fellow collector's figure if you can before deciding on picking up something you have your eye on. Treat your Hobby less like a Job and more like what it should be, I have never flat out said I wasn't collecting anything anymore and meant it. Every year I seem to tell myself that I'm going to stop collecting the latest main line stuff, and every year I seem to just ignore that. You can never really know what the future is going to bring. I do however find myself re-evaluating collecting every once and a while and refining how I handle my collection. It is the way of things. I strongly advise collectors not to leap at something just because it's an older figure or rare. There are always going to be collectors who decide to sell off a piece for whatever reason, and the more mass produced stuff like Classics and things are never going to be Impossible To Find if you're just observant and keep your eyes and ears open. Enjoy the Hobby. Don't Work as a Toy Collector.
I think we all get burnt out with this hobby or any hobby for that matter. It's time consuming and it costs a lot of money! There's always a period during the year where I take a break. I stop going to the toy isles, I cut my time on this site to remote levels, and I focus on some other aspect that's completely non-related. The way to keep the passion alive though? Friends. There's nothing better than connecting with fellow collectors and building friendships. I cannot express how awesome it is to go to a BotCon and just hang out at the bar, restaurants, etc. That's what it's all about.
For me it was after the Beast Era ended, I'm not counting Universe. I'm talking figures with Maximal, Predacon, and Vehicon logos on them. There just came a point were it was like "Oh another car, another jet, on joy another tank." I wanted beast mode transformers and each year they just became harder and harder to find. So I pretty much just went from got to get them all from BW to just getting what I really liked. I passed over countless figures simply because they just didn't intrest me at the time. It wasn't really until Animated came around that I got the passion again. It reminded me so much of my beloved Beast Wars. So it was my first series since Beast Wars that I really hit hard and now Transformers Prime is looking like it will follow that path as well.
Really good discussion here. I like what Scrapper6 said, kind of like a "top 10 observations on collecting" or something. My thinking on collecting, as with life, and career - if you do it for the right reasons, and in the right way, you will not go wrong. Collecting to make money is risky. I could not collect purely for investment or to resell. I collect cuz I love the stuff, because I have the passion. Collecting should be fun, and if it ever ceases to be fun, it's time to get out. Going with that philosophy, I've spent $150+ on a single figure and loved it and had no regrets because I love the figure. But if I spend $ on a toy that I'm not going to open or enjoy, and am getting just because it's popular, I won't enjoy it so much. There are definitely highs and lows, and it does feel to me as if collecting has gotten more cut throat in the last 5 years or so. I think that takes some of the fun away from the hobby, but it is what it is. I've met enough cool people in the TF community with whom I have been able to share the passion, that it has kept the hobby fun. I'm always gonna love TF, collecting on the other hand is full of ups and downs.
After collecting for ten years, I've finally gotten sick of the hobby. While it hasn't been necessarily good on my wallet, it at least gave me something to do as a teen, unlike other people I knew that did drugs and alcohol instead. To be honest, I would have been worse off without collecting, but hey, if someone put a gun to my head and told me to either buy plastic toys or buy drugs, I'd say the former. But to me, there just isn't any good Transformers toy out there anymore. Sure, there are a few that I still want, but now I'm questioning myself before I buy, like "Is this worth my time," or "will I get tired of this toy and sell it because of buyer's remorse". It's questions like those that an adult like me has to make before I buy anything nowadays. I've almost gotten rid of every toy in my collection except the Beast Wars toys, the Micromasters, and G2 Seaspray. The reason I'm keeping those is because they remind me of my childhood, and I'm willing to take at least one of them to the grave with me. I won't stop being a Transformers fan, but I'm just not going to be as active about it as I used to be.
i started to feel burnt out then i saw this. i've been collecting a lot of prime fe, rid and cv. we all know how frustrating fe is. the only other tf's i own are a g1 op and a g1 megatron so the shock of collecting the prime line has caught up to me. now, they're talking about introducing the dinobots and combiners into the show. in the end, i do enjoy every bit of it.
At points where i've been playing catch up, whilst there's a steady flow of new items, yes. Currently. No.
You'll burn out on anything if you overdo it. Just be selective, and remember everything *EVERYTHING* is replaceable, so don't worry if you miss something. There are collectors out there you can pay to store things for you until you need them.
I've slowed down a lot over the last year just because I have everything I want (I only collect G1 reissues) rather than feeling burned out. As soon as they release another reissue I want I'll jump right back in.
i just got off a break from collecting made my 1st transformers purchase in over a year and im glad im back
great thing about this is if you ever get burned out you can stop and just pick it back up when you regain the interest. thats what I did after BW, Energon Megatron pulled me back in.
To be honest, Transformers: Prime has really burned me out on the hobby. With all of the issues/angst (case assortments, the First Edition fiasco, quality) that Prime has had/caused, it has become a complete chore to keep up with and I'm close to dumping off the ones I have. As of right now, the only things I'm looking forward to this year are the US version of MP-10, Generations Shockwave and maybe the SDCC Bruticus set.
I think I'm currently in burned out mode. Save for the latest two Masterpieces, I can't say much of anything currently out or announced as coming soon really interests me. I -was- into the TFP figures... until the whole superior First Editions vs. cheapened RID versions fiasco happened. Rather than deal with it, I just bailed on the entire line. And unfortunately, not one of the FOC figures that we've been shown remotely grabs my interest. I'll grab Shockwave and maybe Starscream for collector sake, but the rest are all easy passes. All I really care about is more 84-86 character Classics/Generations, so clearly it's going to be a very long and frustrating wait.
I find it interesting that some have stated when they get burned out, they sell off everything. Personally for me, if I do get burned out, I would just store the majority because I know I'll probably regret selling off my hard work I've sold off my whole collection in the past and regret it now so maybe I'm just speaking from personal experience. I do think I would sell off some of my not so favorite guys to build up some cash for future purchases though.
I can't say I have ever burned out from the hobby and I have never sold off my collections either. I have over 25 years worth of transformers toys in my collection from G1 through to TFP and even though they are not all proudly displayed on shelves and in glass cabinets I am still happy knowing that I have them. What I do sometimes feel though is guilt. You know that feeling when you step back and look at your collection and think OMG how much money have I poured into this hobby? When I think about the amount of money I have spent and am still spending especially of late with 3rd party items and exclusives (nearly $600 spent on botcon exclusive sets off online retailers because I don't live in the US!) I do sometimes feel guilty like I have been really naughty. My partner would die if she ever knew the truth about how much I spend on transformers as she does not get the deal with hobbies and just think they are a waste of time and money (yes I envy people with partners that get their hobbies and even buy them toys!). But my reasoning is that while I can do it I will. We plan on buying a house next year and that will change my financial standings. At which point I may have to consider slowing right down and maybe even selling off some of my collections but I definitely won't quit completely. I've been through the painful ordeal of missing certain pieces for whatever reasons and then hunting for them later down the track and paying double to triple the original retail price on the secondary market. That is something I do not want to go through often...
I collect in years when there's a Classics-type line on the shelves. When that's not the case, I lose interest.
