Yeah, this is a big problem for me. I love this hobby and I'm not flying off the hook saying "Thats it I'm quitting" like so many seem to say, I'll never quit it, I have too much of a passion for it, but I have recently scaled back mostly due to tactics like the "chase" holograms", and not realizing it, but I've spent hardly anything on the trading cards in probably 4-5 years due to all the "chases" they have gone too, now figs...I see myself scaling back now on them if this is instituted. I'll "divert" my $ into things like the higher end busts and sabers for a while.
I may take some $ aside and instead of spending it on the mdse. for a little while, sit back and see where this all pans out, and instead spend some $ remodling, and making some display cases (stuff like that) for all the thousands of items I've already spent my hard earned $ on over the years.
Cases and tactics like that just kills hobbies. Just look at the sports card industry. Talk about making a quick buck while sacrificing the hobby itself.
In sports cards kids open cards to get the special chase card, and pretty much throw away all the other cards. I hope that doesn't happen with figs, where we end up with hundreds of worhtless figs that we've spent years collecting.
Look at 30 year old sets of fottball cards where you may have one Joe Montana rookie card that feetches some $ and every single other card in that set is worth .25. It's rediculous.
Could you see entire sets of figs rotting and not worth $1...I can. We, as a collective have to suck it up, and say no at some point otherwise we'll try to make $1 in a day and sacrifice the long term benefits that this hobby has a chance of giving us.
I want people to walk in and see my collection and say "Wow, this is really neat it must have taken a long time and now must really be worth something" NOT "Hmmm, nice, but too bad it's all worht diddly squat!"
We'll see what happens. I'll pass on the chases, they'll be a fortune, sit back relax, have a cup of coffee, and wait for it to all go away.
Look at figs like Sacul where they went for $200 after CII, now they don;t sell on ebay for $30, Theatere Luke $150 when he hit, now he sits there not selling for $25. Waiting pays off more and more in the long run as this hobby rolls along.
