Hmm, interesting and timely.
I've been selling off my old toys from childhood, which at this point would constitute 'collections'. Vintage 12" GI Joe, vintage red line hot wheels and some other lines I played with quite a bit as a kid. Do I regret it? In some respects, mostly nostaligic in nature, yes I do. I played for hours and hours with GI Joe's, they were my childhood toy love. The hot wheels are great and that they are in decent condition is miraculous - we had a gravel driveway and a hose nearby, plenty of sand and mud puddles. I am selling memories, or more realistically I'm selling the triggers for those memories. I'll probably keep a hot wheel or two just for that reason, but pretty much the rest is gone.
Unlike modern toys, these have brought in a pile of money. Enough to pay for a vintage loose SW figure collection and put nearly $2000 in the bank. How much are the triggers of a memory worth? Not nearly that much. Be gone childhood toys.
With respect to modern toys, others have pointed it out already: it's a money losing proposition. With Star Wars, like Brian my first and foremost, I try to not be in a hurry to get stuff, but fail often. It would be so much easier to buy stuff 3 months down the road for cheap, especially since I open.
I am scaling back on other stuff though, mostly because of the same reasons as others: space. I will be offloading about 75% of my McFarlane stuff in the coming weeks, keeping only what I really want to hang on to and most of that will be the loose stuff. Variants are a nice thing and kind of cool, but I only plan on keeping the uniform I prefer for each player, with a few select duplicates. On the bright side, I should generate some decent cash, mostly because these are predominantly goalies and there are lots of other freaks like me that collect goalies. I'll lose money ultimately, simply because half of what I'll sell is loose and also because so much was obtained in trade and I'll never recover customs fees or shipping costs. But looking up at 28 or so goalies right now I see 10 I want to keep, so should be roughly 18 variants out the door as well.
I've adapted pretty well to collecting in the last year or two. I always intended to get all the modern SW figs, though I admit, I never expected to own 500+ of them
It all started with an orange carded Vader and just kept going (hell, there were only 12 at one point). As soon as I got past the
value aspect of collecting, everything worked out much, much better.
Being one of those multiple line guys, like Scott, I've managed better than I could have hoped. I stayed out of LOTR until recently (sheepishly admitting I started this line early, then jumped out quickly) and still don't have what I want from it, but no hurry. Some time after the extended version comes out, I expect loose versions to be more readily and cheaply available. Simpsons was an exercise in self control - lots of super cool things (and lots of
huh? too) but I am all but done with them, Scott sending me the last two Homer figures I need (I do have the extra figures from the THOHs and a couple of extras, no thanks to Scott
). Batman has been predominantly relegated to toys for my daughter's enjoyment. Marvel Legends/SPiderman legends etc. are mine, and I've been selective from the start, but even now I'm thinking of unloading the chase pieces here too. At least those that are not unique. I may end up opening Red Skull and Goliath, simply because I have them nowhere else, but doombot, gold ironman? Why am I worrying about these, they really are not particularly relevant.
Something I see happening, whether it's Star Wars, McFarlane or otherwise is that the market is saturated. So very much to buy, all of it competing for $$$. Too many chase figures and too much of the stuff on store shelves being bought solely to resell. That's hard on collectors as a whole. Scott for example has all of his stuff loose that I've seen. Why should he struggle to get a clear Vision or chase Phoenix? They certainly aren't worth $50+ and he'll immediately kill most of the value by opening them. No, this is looking to me to be a whole lot like the card and comic scene of the late 80's/early 90's when the bottom fell out. Oh sure, new hot stuff will always come along and the market may regenerate itself, but it
feels ready for a collapse.
How's that for going tangential?
