I spend hundreds of dollars on Transformers each day.

I am in charge of building 3 other peoples collections along with my own. It is hard work but I strive to complete the work I have started.

 

I have 3 active lines I collect

Vintage MIB/MOC G1. I have 28 items left on my want list after that the vintage TF collection is done.

Vintage MOTU, loose and complete is what I am after and I need 12 more to be done.

Vintage SW, loose and complete in C9 condition, I have 55/100 and is getting a few here and there.

I have a ton of newer SW just sitting in the attic in boxes and boxes, I have the TFC and other Reissus doing the same. Same goes for exclusiv repaints and all other crap.
A part of me have been thinking about getting rid of the repaints and that crap, because it will never end. Anyone collecting new stuff will never be done.

I buy the occasionally statue aswell from the likes of Sideshow and so on but that is really limited and only on characters I really want from movies or a game.

 

Think this is probably some of the best advice in here, and a reason why I'm looking at cutting down a bunch of my collection currently too (nice pic btw).

Doesn't have to do with money. Me and my wife get by, pay bills, put food on our table every week so it's not just to get some extra funds (though it never hurts).

I just look at my collection now, and the toys I really cherish the most are my classics, alts, mp, and animated. Since alts and animated are over with, that just leaves classics and MP to narrow myself to collecting in the future, and I think I'm ok with that.

I work in design, so a clean, concise collection would make me value my stuff a lot more. I just had no area of focus before, and was buying everything tf related that just looked cool to me. I feel like I just want to concentrate on a couple lines now.

 

It seems you are already describing a shopping addiction, only that you are concentrated on shopping for toys. So it seems that you are already collecting too much.

 

I went to my singer's house the other day. he had renovated his front yard, put a patio in. Nice patio furniture set, a tent with rope lights, etc. Super awesome. He said, "i just decided i wanted this for my house, and i went out and did it."

I bought a lot of toys this year instead, that go and sit on my shelf. And now that I've got a child on the way, they're getting boxed up.

everyone reaches a point where they question how far they can take this collecting habit. Don't ignore the questions inside you. If you feel you are collecting too much, that is your subconscious's natural instincts coming out. Don't ignore it. No one says you have to stop. But when you add up just how much you spend, and think of the other things you could be getting with that money...it's astounding. i have a collection of over 1200 figures. I am determined to bring that figure significantly down, use some of that money to finish the collection of what small goals i have left, and then call it a day. I enjoy TFs immensely don't get me wrong. But i see people out there enjoying life and not buying a single toy. I watch Thundercats, and have no desire for the figures. I'd like to get that to be the same for TF Prime.

I'm rambling, only because the topic speaks to me, sorry...

tl;dr - Yes you're collecting too much, if you ask yourself if you are or not. I am too.

 

Numbers are useless without context. Somebody who has built a collection of 500 starting in 1992 has a hobby. Somebody who reached that milestone with ROTF alone has a problem.

I started to think I might have a problem when the movies left me adrift and following three or four lines to replace TFs. Luckily that couldn't get too out of control what with distribution issues but still it's like dodging a bullet.

 

These pics are a few months old....but









I've had my entire collection in storage for the past 6 years and I'm still finding new stuff each day (and trying to set up some type of display eventually) Family and friends were rather shocked...and frankly I am as well. This is the pain when you collect several different toy lines.

 

Damn, it looks like the stockroom of a toy store! That's a lot of stuff  

 

Well, money is not problem for me, luckily i am good at math and i know how much to spend and everything. I also dont take collecting way too seriously and buying EVERY figure I see, i just buy the ones i really like and lately there hasnt been one that calls my attention.   BUT i do know that i am collecting too much when i run out of space in my room. ^^' which is something that is happening now. So i stop buying til i clean my room and make some more space.

 

Wow man, that's amazing! Some may look at that and see waste . . . I look at that and see pure and total awesomeness . . . Some plastic see through storage bins, and some shelves may go a long way towards helping you organize that stuff. I did that recently and actually had a lot of fun taking inventory of my stuff, I created a spreadsheet, and I also found things I had forgotten, like the TF toys that my girlfriend (now wife) gave me when we were first getting to know each other. Good stuff.

I, too, collect multiple toylines. GI Joe, Star Wars, and TF for me, with TF being far and away my favorite. I keep trying to drop GI Joe and Star Wars, but I like them enough to still get a few things here and there. Man, it's tough. It sure FEELS like an addiction sometime.

My little guy loves this stuff now as well. He plays with a lot of my TF and Star Wars toys. I tell my wife that he has too many toys, and she replies that it only seems that way because he's always playing with MY toys. Whoops, point taken. I dare say that few other little ones have a toy collection that big.

 

Ya I started with just Star Wars back in the day then started to add GI Joe to the collection, but snipped that off and sold what I had and just remained focused....Then a few years later I just caved and the floodgates opened into SW/GIJ/TF/LEGO/MCFARLANE type stuff. I've had a spreadsheet all along so I know what I have it's just trying to find it is the hard part. I finally stopped buying Star Wars at the beginning of the year so thats a start.

Star Wars was like an addiction for me but TF/GIJ is more of a passion. I grew up on those 2 lines.

 

My wife and I made a deal: if I sell a TF, it has to be a very good reason, as in we need to money, and not because I'm bored with the figure. She also told me if i ever sell ANY Soundwave figures, she'll kick my butt.  

I almost always buy 2 of a figure, so I can keep one MISB/MOSC, and in case someday, when I ahve children, they might want TFs, i'll have a ton waiting for them.

 

Same here, I love Star Wars, but TF and GI Joe is my childhood. Hard to put a price on that. Great stuff there, you could start a museum. I figure this is what would have happened back in the 1980's if those of us who grew up then had the access to cash that we have now. I would have purchased multiples of every TF toy I could get my hands on.

 

Visions of that show Hoarders. Sorry.  

 

for me at least if im buying out of boredom. ive passed at least 3 scourges and a few rodimus primes the last few days and passed on all of them because i already have them.
also army building is another sign depending on your tastes and budget. if you want 40scourges and 20 wreckgars for your display go for it but if its because others are doing it you may have a problem.

 

For me space is an issue, so I buy the ones I really do want. But sometimes I can impluse buy and that kinda bothers my mother a bit, but I'm trying really hard not to go overboard with my money.

 

And this is why I can only dedicate myself to collecting one thing.

 

See for me, this part is key.

In other words, I think the line's gotta be drawn when we keep buying figures for the sake of doing so, rather than because we actually want something a lot. For example, if I look at my collection, there's rarely anything that I'd want to return or otherwise exchange for what I paid for, meaning that I see that as a decent buy & not a waste. If anything, the only transformer that even comes close is my BIS Rodimus that came in the 2pack with Cylonus, and even that's something that I'd like to hold onto.

Like, this isn't to say that being willing to part with something means that it was a bad buy, (especially when money is tight & new things come along), but that simple counts aren't the best way to go about it.

Well, and of course if collection starts turning into a hoarding obsession/if it's draining all of your money/etc, but even those limits will be different for different people.

 

Good points. Right now I look at my collection and I have two figs I recently got that I could do without. One was bought on clearance so it wasn't a complete loss and the other was pure impulse that even at the time I bought it I knew what I was doing.

These two figs just don't fit into my "collection" no matter how fun they are to play with so now I'm thinking about selling them. Again, it's a space issue.