There's a fine line between being a colector and a hoarder. I don't consider myself a hoarder, but I do need your help with scaling down my personal collection. I have a variety of interests that include:

- Transformers (from G1 to current)
- Masters of the Universe (Original, 200X, Classics)
- TMNT
- Star Wars (3.75 inch and 6 inch)
- DCUC
- Marvel Legends (6 inch)
- Movie figures
- Star Trek (My smallest collection)

And a few others. Most of my stuff is what you'd find on store shelves. Some are imports like the TF Masterpiece. I am not giving up the G! or MP TF's at all. I am willing to downsize my CHUG to some extent. MOTU Classics aren't going anywhere for the man characters at least.. Argh, Basically, I end up spinning my wheels! I know I NEED to purge my collection to keep things orderly and contained in 1 room. I just can't figre out how to do it. Sounds stupid, I know. But I go through my things and find reasons to keep them all. I have a hard time parting with toys! I know I shouldn't be like this.

I need help with thinking things through. How do I decide? WHat methods do you recommend? How do you rationalize with what stays and what goes? How do approach this with the right mindset? How can I be confident that what I am selling off I won't regret parting with? I'm all ears. I have a table reserved at a local toy sale gathering, and I want to fill that table as much as I can to sell and make room at home.

 

How many of the MOTU 200X figures do you have? Maybe unload those, and keep the orginals and classics...

 

Honestly, the answer to your questions is "what do you feel like keeping?". Like, you can try and rationalize it to yourself any other way you want, but at the end of the day, if you hold on to stuff you don't really want, you'll might feel bad about it eventually, and if you get rid of stuff you really want to keep, you might end up regretting it.

If you want to try and reason your way through things, though, ask yourself why you're doing stuff. Is it to have more space? Is it to get a little more money in your pocket? Is it because you find you have a lot of stuff you don't really want anymore? What's the main driver? That'll show you where to progress next, in terms of figuring out which pieces/groups of pieces take up the most space, or which you can get the most money for, or which you flat out don't like anymore. At the end of the day, you have to be willing to part with the pieces you identify (and probably, it should pieces that will actually sell, unless you're willing to give them away).

You can't really be sure that you'll never regret getting rid of stuff, but the more willing you are to part with it now, the less likely I'd say you'll regret not having it later.

 

I would consider having a friend or a family member is not into the stuff nearby. That would help you purge a lot of it.

If you ask fellow collectors, like here, I doubt you would get real help.

I mean we all suffer the same addiction to plastic crack.

 

I had similar problems. So I chose to stick to the higher end stuff that lends well to my other hobby- toy photography. So now I stick to MP scale G1 Transformers and Star Wars 6 inch and 6 inch Marvel stuff. Everything else is sold or being sold or boxed up for future sale.
My collection is neater now. Better organized and the shelves are more presentable. And the stuff sold has let me buy a few more pieces for the 3 lines.
I think 3 is the magic number

But I still kept all my NECA predators and tmnt. And my spawn collection.
And all my Batmans and MOTU.
And my Whole Darth Vader and Yoda and R2 collection. I couldn't let them go.
All my Marvel Universe figures are staying too. Same with the Thundercats.
And no way I can sell the GIJoes either.

All I really sold is the Bayformers

 

My reasons are to make more room, clean up my collection, get some money back, and basically be organized and contained.

A lot of recent stuff takes up considerable space. Six inch figures take up far more space than 3.75 inch ones. But today's 3.75 inch figures are now mostly for kids with 5 points of articulation. The 6 inch lines are where it's at now. Transformers by far take up the bulk of my collection space. And they are the hardest to thin out for me.

I like the Bayformers. Not all of them, but mainly the 2007 and some of the ROTF figures. I like your idea of 3 lines, but that's a tough number to stay at for me. This is also why I get myself into trouble. There are so many interesting lines these days. I did stop collection the current TMNT stuff. I never did buy all that many TMNT figures to begin with. And MOTU Classics is most done for me with exception to the Filmation figures. After that, I'm finished.

 

So with the 3 lines I mentioned- That's what I display. Maybe you could try a trial run of just displaying what you think you could live with keeping and box up what you consider getting rid of. And see how it feels. If you decide it's ok, it's already boxed up and easier to let go. If not, it will feel like the best xmas ever opening it all back up

 

That's really good advice. I'd try that and maybe just forget about the figures you've box up for a while instead of selling them.

Also just got to say that from what you describe I don't see your collection as out of control. Maybe space wise but that can be remedied by putting some in storage as Plastic Therapy suggested for a while to see if you can live without them.

 

I went through that phase. My room for a collection is a small enclosed back porch on my apartment. At one time, I had a massive collection with all of BW, BM, RID, Armada, Energon, Cybertron, Classics, etc.... I was a completist who tracked down almost everything from the 'modern era.' Then, when I had an alright job and few bills, I bought a huge G1 collection of all the US + Japanese Citybots, all the US + Japanese Combiners (complete g1 liokaiser being my fav), the five dinobots, 84/85 bots+cons, etc...

When you run out of space - you begin prioritizing really quickly what goes into bins and what stays on shelves.

Having a 'crisis' and needing to pay a large bill quickly helps too ($4000 on a freak car accident during the brief window where collision insurance isn't active on a new car/the car hasn't had photos taken by the agent). Sold all the G1 and Japanese stuff for a lot less than they were worth to fix that car. Those were the toys with value. So I had major thinning of the herd.

With lots of space again, the question became whether to bring old toys up or leave space for new purchases. Looking at my collection, thinking about what I value/enjoy the most, I settled on using my space for a 'classics collection' of new homage figures and 'placeholders' from my older bins (toys from RID/A/E/C resembling a classic character). That room is full again thanks to years of homage lines and the third party boom. The older toys were taken out of the bins and sold for extra $$$ - helping to buy some 3P combiners, like Feral Rex, Giant, Intimidator, MakeToys Computron, etc...

Now-a-days, there's repeat homages to the same characters. I pick whichever is better and buy/sell accordingly. I buy characters I don't have. I try to pick 1-3 characters in each non-classics mainline to be part of the collection to feed the need to be a completist in a more moderate way (Tidal Wave, Overload, Knockout, Barricade, Blackout, TFP Bulkhead, etc...new impactful characters).

I suppose the best, shortest answer, is to do some soul searching. What could you live without? What catches your attention the most? Then sell the other shit and buy a few major collectible pieces for the line you decide to keep. Sell 20 to buy 1. Reduce scale. Increase personal enjoyment by using that loss to fund an anticipated acquisition.

 

Unload all the newer stuff and just stick with the vintage toys.

 

I've done some downsizing in my own collection as well. There were still plenty of lines I was interested in, but I decided to get rid of the "duplicates" - intsead of collecting Hasbro Star Wars 3.75" & 6", then the Figuarts Star Wars, I went with just the Figuarts line and got rid of the rest. Same with Transformers - instead of collecting Classics/Prime/CW/TR/whatever plus Masterpiece, I stuck with the Masterpiece and purged the CHUG collection. See if there's any way you could apply that logic to your collection.

 

Selling off lesser value pieces to acquire higher quality figs is a great way to refine a collection as stated above. I see a lot of people doing that in the IG community. It adds sophistication to a collectors maturing shelves

It's the ."Less is more" mentality.

 

Lots to go on here. Thanks. I truly appreciate the advice and posts.

I've been thinking that as well.

 

Make a top-20 list of everything you collect that takes up significant space and keep the top 10. If I did that, it would look something like:

1. Green Lantern
2. Ultraman (and related Kaiju)
3. Godzilla
4. Masterpiece Transformers
5. 80's DC Super Powers Collection
6. DC Universe Classics Assortments
7. Spiderman Marvel Legends
8. X-men Marvel Legends
9. Avengers Marvel Legends
10. Misc. Famous Covers dolls

I've run out space in my man cave and had to put things into boxes and move them into my storage unit. This encompassed Star Wars, Star Trek, DC Direct Figures (DCC) and a TON of random one-shot figures and SDCC exclusives. For things that I don't really care about, I will sell them off eventually.

 

Is all your stuff on display, or do you keep stuff in boxes? Anything in a box that you don't even look at on a regular basis might be ripe for a purge.

 

I changed up my collecting habits not too long.. I decided to jump in on 1/6 figures.. I wanted more quality than quantity. So, no I collect hot toys figures, masterpiece figures, some figuarts things, mafex.. But that's about it. I'll pick up some main line figures here and there if I feel like it.

Otherwise, I want to display really great things rather than some cheaper looking marvel legend, or RID figure.

Don't get me wrong, I'll still pick up a couple here and there.. But not as much as I used to.

And I've never once sold anything I've bought. Anything I no longer want gets donated to people I or my family knows with kids who would like them.

 

When i found out my wife was pregnant i purged everything that wasnt transformers related and even downsized that collection as well. My marvel legends was getting the best of me.

 

It doesn't help either of us but the best advice is never to collect so much in the first place.

Because here's what happens:

You end up with a thousand TransFormers and then half a dozen figures from twenty other lines. People say "you like TFs most, focus on that, dump the rest!" so that's where you start. Pretty soon it's "but I only have five of A, and 4 of B, 6 of C..." and it doesn't seem like it would matter. So you go back to the TFs and people say "keep era X, dump the rest!" because that'll knock out some numbers too. And then you find nobody will touch a complete set of Energon, let alone for a price approaching retail. Selling individually basically invites cherry picking, leaving you with a greatly diminished collection that reclaimed little money or space, and two to three years of shipping the rest off one at a time and for free. Was an empty shelf worth going through that? And say you give away most of your stuff and have an empty house and $100 to show for it, what will you do, fill it up and go through that all over again?

I'd sooner give this stuff to a cousin with kids if I was that desperate for space or organization. All you have to do is come to terms with the fact that it'll all be destroyed. That's like ripping off a band-aid, really unpleasant for a few minutes and then you eventually forget about it. If you can handle real people dying and never coming back, a box of toys should be a piece of cake.

 

Why not just box up a bunch of it and save it for ten years from now when some of it may be worth something? Or to give it to someone like your kids

 

Keep it all!

Sorry, that's what I do...