It is apparently a golden age for Transformers collectors. Takara Tomy and Hasbro are feeding the Masterpiece hunger with cartoon accurate characters that fans have wanted forever, and 3rd Party companies are trying to fill the gaps and expand on the direction the collector community wants their collecting to move towards with varying results. The meat and veg products from Hasbro and Takara, things like cartoon-based lines and Classics/Generations have popular comic series tie-ins and have produced some of the best moulds of the series recently, with exciting stuff on the horizon. Choice is at an all time high, but so are the pitfalls that can detract from the collecting experience. Pitfalls | Source Blog <- CLICK TO READ All the best Maz
not a bad read, I remember back a few years ago, keeping up with every 3rd party and classics release. Took a step back afterwards, and figured out that i'd rather have what i initially set out to have, a complete G1 collection. 3rd party got axed in favor of that and the new MPs, which I'm pretty selective in buying. At first with my blog I wanted to do a post a day, and it got to the point like you say of being more of an obligation than fun, so that got slowed to a more easy pace of one or two a week lol. Competition gets boring fast, especially with vintage pieces. there's always someone with deeper pockets than you. You don't want to drive yourself into debt from it.
Great article as always. Very thoughtful. I dumped all my old TFs this past summer and finally jumped on the MP bandwagon. Haven't looked back. Zero regrets. My criteria are official MPs of on-screen G1 characters only. That's all I'm interested and all I've wanted since I was five. No third parties and no unnecessary repaints or anything outside of G1. Things only got better and more manageable from a financial perspective when I caught on to preordering from Asian dealers. As far as hobbies go, I've never been happier than I am now.
Just a near perfect article Maz. It astonishes me how well you can capture what a fandom goes through on a daily basis. You are an asset to this community. This Pitfalls article definitely hit home with me as well. We've all gone through at least one of the situations you've written. I use to feel like I needed to get everything ... glad I got rid of that mentality and continue to fine tune my collecting habits.
Agreed! Maz, keeping-up with the Joneses is one that resinates with a lot of us. In this hobby, the line of "fun" and "competition" can blur very easily. At this point, I'm trying to stay in my lane and back-out of the 3rd party stuff. Although it is nice, I want to stay true to my original goal. MP, BW, and G1.
Great article and it makes me glad i am focusing on G1 as soon asi get caught up on a couple of bills.
I really enjoy your articles Maz, you're a fantastic writer. I'm particularly looking forward to when Bumblebee and Wheeljack have been released, to see you line them up next to Prime and the other 'bots and once again write 'imagine how cool this will look next year'.
That article was an excellent read Maz. As said by others I can certainly understand the pressure of the keeping up with the Joneses pitfall. In my intial years of re-collecting I felt the need to get every figure for whaterver line I collected. I started re-collecting during Robots In Disguise in 2001 (Car Robots in Japan). Needless to say after RID, The Unicron Trilogy Lines, The 1st movie, Masterpeice, Alternators, Reissues, Classics, Machine Wars, BW Transmetals and some Generation 2 it got too expensive and I wasnt able to keep up. And I couldnt pay off my debt as I should have either. Fast forward to today, one divorce and one remarriage later and I have a much better apprecaition for moderation in my collecting. I had to dump everything in my collection except for Classics and G1 reissues due to my ex-wife being out of work then divorcing me. But again, I've learned that the pressure to keep up with other collectors just isnt worth it and isnt sustainable. As you mentioned in your article there is always another collector with deeper pockets. So now I just enjoy having a very robust Classics collection that has the figures I want to have with a sprinkle of 3rd party fillers (Hercules) and Unicron trilogy fillers (Energon Galvatron and Energon Scorponok) and my G1 reissues. Adding to my classics collection is quite affordable so that works out quite nice for me. But I do wish I had a little bit more disposable income to get back some of my G1 reissues I sold like Astrotrain, Blitzwing, Omega Supreme, Star Convoy, TM Kup, TM Hot Rod for starters. But at least wanting those figures gives me something to aspire to.
Definitely identify with much of this. I've gone through some "keeping up with others" and some completionism. Unsustainable and I satisfying. I've found that even after narrowing my focus there is too much out there and I'll likely have to continue to scale back. MP, BW, and Optimus are proving expensive. Of course, I dipped my toe in the toyark forum and not HT, Lego, and some random other figs have filled the void. Will have to scale back there too.
I have to make a copy of this article on my mobile, to remind me of the huge mistakes I've made before in collecting TF. Another superb article Maz, and there are lots of lessons to be learned from it.
Awesome article. Definitely hits close to home. I had to leave (resist) collecting for a long time before I could focus and truly appreciate/enjoy it. It think it helps I collect characters as opposed to lines or molds. For me it's always about what I saw on the screen and now what I see on the page. It really is a great time to be a collector.
A good article, I enjoyed reading it, thank you for writing and posting it. It makes me very glad I have collecting rules for my TF purchases, and have (mostly) stuck to them, and I find I do enjoy each considered purchase a lot more because of this.
Good read. I already knew it but this confirms I am not a collector but instead somebody who buys the things that interest him most. In my case I go for complex figures that utilise modern engineering concepts to create fantastic transformers - usually masterpiece But I can be seen dipping into other lines if a figure is particularly well engineered. I certainly don't follow any particular line or theme or anything. I imagine that road leads to madness and bankruptcy lol
Great piece as always Maz. Collecting is a lot of fun, but you are right - it can be overwhelming with all the new releases and one can easily get caught up in trying to keep up with every new release. I think that one needs to remember why they are collecting, ie. for the love, for an investment, for other reasons, and stick with that. I am not a completist, I don't have the space or resources to collect every single piece of multiple lines, but I do have a lot of fun collecting what I like. I think the challenge is to collect things not because they are popular and other people like them, but to collect things that you like. Discerning between the two can often be difficult.
That obligation pitfall was the one that got me in the end. Up to 2009 I got everything. Once ROTF came out and I found it disapointing at the time.... I just gave up. Looking back over my buying habbits, after truely enjoying TF Animated; I realized how much I bought just because. I never really enjoyed Energon of Cybertron... didn't have as much fun with Classics as everyone else seemed to.... and even though I loved collecting during the '07 movie line after words I didn't like them all that much. I was looking forward to collecting Prime... but that was such a mess that it killed any interest I had in collecting any main or sublines. Sold off Energon/Cybertron/Movie/Classics/loose Beast Wars...... and now only collect Masterpiece and Re-issues. I'm also proud to say I didn't buy a single DOTM figure. It's a little boring as a collector now.... but at least I'm getting enjoyment out of what little I do get. It also allows me to spend a crazy amount of money to get a repaint that only has one thing I really want, MP Ratbat..... or $350 on a re-issue FortMax. Things have changed alot though, and now it's pretty easy to avoid temptation. Mainline stuff is impossible to buy in stores. At the momment I only wanted a couple of figures... Beast Wars Rhinox and Waspinator. I spent a little over $70 to get them on the secondary market. For what is $40 worth of figures. At nearly double the cost, and the annoyance of first trying to find them in stores, giveing up and finally resorting to internet prices, is no way to have fun collecting. Doing that for a everything would be impossible for me unless I truely loved the line. I do miss the days of buying everything. It was fun, even when it wasn't all that much fun if only for the hunt. But, I am much happier collector these day with limits.
Thank you so much for all of the incredibly kind words. I truly expected this article to tank and be torn to shreds. I wrote about this week's article on my own blog: "When writing it I really thought I was doing myself a disservice with the quality. It came out fast, I used a lot of recycled and frankly irrelevant pictures - or at least that's how it felt. Basically, not one of my proudest moment as a TF article writer. I do wonder how many of those pitfalls I can display trophies for! Some of the TF forums out there are quite hostile and unforgiving, but I usually get a great reception and supportive, constructive comments at TFW2005 so I have only promoted it there and among my friends on Facebook and Twitter. Proper cowardly stuff!" After the comments here I felt better about promoting it across the Internet, so thank you all. I can't tell you how surprised I am, and thrilled, that it's been met with a good reception All the best Maz
Another good piece. I think the completion portion is the one that get's me. I know I look at my classics and say, I am 26 figures away from completing my goal. But that does have me buying figures I don't like. On the other hand, the completionist mind set also got me a whole bunch of figures I thought I wouldn't like that I ended up loving. What I have to say is, G1 messes me up. I am such a completionist on MP, Classics and actual G1 figures from anything G1 cartoon that it's twisted. With the movie toys and other toys I am able to pick and chose what to get. But G1, man, it's crack. And crack I don't know how to stop. Good news, G1 toy crack is almost complete for me. I have all the US show releases I want/need. But when I think of the MPs and Classics I still need, I get dizzy and my wallet cries. Sometimes the things that come out most easily and quickly are the ones that resonate with people the most.
Maz, you spoke truth in that article. And I'm not talking "factual number crunching" truth. I'm talking "you have lived it and I've heard other people live it" sort of truth. Sure not everyeone will be able to relate to the article. But that is mainly because there are too many different individuals in the world. Its just not possible for everyone to agree with you. But what is so awesome about the article is that you hit enough common pitfalls that there are more people likely to be able to identify with your article than people who dont identify with your article. It resonates bro! At least in the collecting community. Some people it resonates with very strongly and for others it might resonate with only briefly. Enjoy the fruits of your labor with this well written article. While most of us all apprecaite the truth in your article it can hurt for some people. But that's not something you need to worry about.
