@GAUGE - ive seen several people say this, and they eventually come back to collecting. i get the struggle, and ive cut back too. but unfortunately i keep coming to the site and occasionally find something i like. its hard to change your interests, you may just cut back to buys for stuff you really, really want.

 

I always try to buy at the lowest possible price and not go for the quick expensive purchase. I think if I were willing to sort it out and take the time I would probably get back 75-125% of what I originally paid.

I know the pieces I really overpaid on though. I keep an excel spreadsheet of ALL my TF purchases since 2012.

 

THIS  .

 

This quickly turned into a political discussion. Please do not post anything politically related. This is the only warning.

 

I collected all sorts of stuff: movie, Classics, Unicron Trilogy, Animated, Alternators, Revoltech, Masterpiece, G1, and TFP. This was from 2007-2009. I then decided to shift my focus to Classics and Masterpiece. Keep in mind that during that time, I was also customizing so I was purchasing a lot of junkers, weapons, etc.

In late 2013/early 2014, I shifted that focus exclusively to official/unofficial Masterpiece and started limiting myself to 1 toy per character.

Now, I'm limiting myself to animation-only characters with a very small exception given to Diaclone MP/3P cars. Maybe I'll move on from Diaclone. If that's the case, then a G1 animation-only cast will comprise my collection. That'll be the final phase before I sell my collection.

 

I didn't get into this as an investment... It's not junk to me either, though, so it's not a cut and dry situation where getting whatever I can is better than nothing. It just doesn't mean as much to me as it once did so if I COULD get back anywhere close to what I put in, I'd rather have the money and space at this point. But I'd still rather have it than an empty room and pennies on the dollar.

 

This sucks but many western countries have seen wages fall in real-terms over the years since the big financial crash and successive shooting-ourselves-in-the-foot political decisions. Cover your bills/food/etc for you and any dependencies and see what's left. If it's not much, save it, after that do what makes you happy.

I've found that I can't limit my collection habits based on budget but I can limit it based on space. I have one large shelf unit and that's as far as I allow my collection to spread. This keeps me focused on the collection I really want where I can ignore things like repaints, non-G1 figures and 3rd party figures that don't seem to look good enough. As soon as I start to run out of room I start to examine what I really want and what makes me happy. It's not a solution that'll work for everyone but it keeps my collection under control and because I'm focused on quality rather than quantity I have a display that has room to breathe.

Good luck dude whatever you decide.

 

Sometimes it's best to just quit, cold turkey style. If there's someone that's trying to prevent alcohol from ruining their life again, accepting one single social drink could lead the way towards a relapse. Smoking, MMOs, anything.

 

Yeah, this isn't like donating a used couch or anything like that. It's definitely not junk. My mention of investment was more proactive than reactive since I was expecting someone to turn around and say "Hold on a minute. You shouldn't look at toys as an investment."

That argument is a strange one since I feel we're all investing funds into this hobby. Our end games may vary as some invest in the hopes that a mint/sealed item's value will increase substantially over time, others want to capitalize on an item's demand/popularity at the present time, and there are those that are investing money into a hobby in exchange for their own personal enjoyment.

It's still money that you're parting with, money that's being tied up in a recurring expense. I think I've always felt that way about it.

 

This is a more extreme version of what I went through, but damn if the plot-line isn't familiar. There really are diminishing returns when you start accumulating a large number of pieces in a short time span. So much money spent, and no time to actually focus on or appreciate what you bought before a new toy grabs your attention. As a person who gets most of my enjoyment from a figure when it's in-hand, rather than its presence on my shelf, at some point mass-collecting just stops being worth it.

I ended up purging my collection to focus on MPs of G1 S1-S3 characters, plus the occasional figure to round out my Lost Light/MTMTE crew. I'm using preorders and POLs to dole them out to myself at one per month. Already have the first half of 2018 scheduled:

• January - MP Sunstreaker
• February - F/T Apache
• March - DX9 Gabriel
• April - MMC Drift
• May - F/T Sovereign (reissue)
• June - F/T Rogue

A steady number of figures, with time to enjoy each one, and a diminished impact on the budget. Works for me!

 

I’m done! Then I saw FansHobby Super Ginrai

 

The packaging and shipping is a huge undertaking. Luckily I got all my boxes, packaging materials, and tape for free. I made friends with all local department stores going in asking for their discarded boxes. For the most part I used old plastic department store bags for packing material. It works pretty well because it's light weight and conforms to whatever your stuffing it around. I just let all my coworkers know that I needed their old bags and the they loaded me down. I may borrowed the offices tape......

As far as the loss goes, I feel like I probably broke even really. There are things that I lost my ass on, but a lot of stuff that I made out like a bandit on. I think I sold at about the right time on a lot of stuff, especially CHUG. I ended up recovering between 50-60K. And, yes that is a correct number, but keep in mind that years worth of collecting and worked hard on selling that stuff.

 

Yup. I always say , ok , I’m done . Then Takara or FT’s release a sneak peak of an upcoming figure . Then I say , ok , maybe just one more .

 

this is pretty much my strategy, aside from buying on the secondary market.... but its working less over roughly the last year: ive been waiting to buy sovereign, eligos, FT bugs, and grassor and not a one has come down in price, and two are currently unavailable at all. for sovereign im actually going to have to pay a slight markup on the re-release. i lucked out on grassor and bought one from a board member but point is, seems like overproduction is happening less lately. there are more and more sellouts that result in crazy ebay prices - case in point, im about to sell my mmc commotus on ebay for twice what i paid.

 

The combiners start the end for me. Unfortunately there are many combiners so I may have a similar thread before I get them all.

 

A huge problem is people refusing to pay shipping. I'm encountering this more and more in my sales.

 

It's mostly just a mental/perception block, so price the figure upward accordingly to cover average cost of shipping and make it "free" shipping.  

 

$125 + $5 S&H = Boo!

$130 (Free S&H) = Yay!

 

@GAUGE -

I’m sorry to hear that man. Sell *some* stuff you think you wouldn’t lose sleep over, and wait for sales/discounts/eBay for everything else. Try to cut down on the official stuff that is getting uglier and uglier and more and more expensive.

Because ugly + more hollow areas = increased price for some reason. TT logic.

@edgecrusher -

Thinking of selling some IF stuff? Got a IF Prowl you could part with?  

 

And the beauty of including shipping costs in a buy it now auction is that you don't need to worry about combined shipping and can even make a few bucks off shipping if someone buys multiples.