Quitting/putting collecting on pause

TheRealSmallville said:
Happens to me all the time. I'll think something is an easy sell until I start to really look at it, and suddenly I remember why I bought it. It's a vicious cycle.
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You gotta listen to the first instinct of Easy Sell.

You also have to just pull the ripcord. It gets easier and easier. I actually get addicted to the selling and cleaning the way I might want to couldashouldawoulda impulse buy a figure.

Once you start listening you'll also hear the voices that tell you, sincerely, Nah, I like this, keep it.

I just made a few grand this week (and yes, most of it is profit if not breaking even) off figures and LEGO and while some of it is going back into other toys, I'm also reassessing and justifying even more cuts just because it feels good to have a sense of order and logic in my displays.

Obviously we all have our own goals, but it's very apparent to me. I don't even want anything binned. Why do I have it if it's not immediately on hand to play and delight?
 
Alt said:
You gotta listen to the first instinct of Easy Sell.

You also have to just pull the ripcord. It gets easier and easier. I actually get addicted to the selling and cleaning the way I might want to couldashouldawoulda impulse buy a figure.

Once you start listening you'll also hear the voices that tell you, sincerely, Nah, I like this, keep it.

I just made a few grand this week (and yes, most of it is profit if not breaking even) off figures and LEGO and while some of it is going back into other toys, I'm also reassessing and justifying even more cuts just because it feels good to have a sense of order and logic in my displays.

Obviously we all have our own goals, but it's very apparent to me. I don't even want anything binned. Why do I have it if it's not immediately on hand to play and delight?
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Yeah...the last several months I've actually been turning into this kind of a collector. My basement is full of totes and bins and for what, exactly? Just so I can say that I own it?

The idea the last several years has always been "ok, you don't have room to display everything, so rotate your display!" And that sounds great on paper, until you work so damn much that the last thing you really want to do when you get home is organize / clean / pose things like toys. So nothing gets rotated. Then, you think, "well I just need larger shelves! More display space!" And then, the same thing happens...to put up the new shelving, you have to rearrange things. To rearrange things, you have to make a mess elsewhere. You work a lot, and who wants to rearrange things? lol And it's an endless cycle.

I started selling at a local toy show a few years back, and my stock has been almost exclusively my own collection. Treated it as more or less a big garage sale. I make about a grand each weekend when it's on, and it does feel good. Not only to move things along that are just taking up space in the basement, but when you see someone who is genuinely happy with it in a way I never was it feels good to make that happen.

My main issue has been that everything is totes is something I would really, really like to keep but I've been switching over the mindset of "only keep the things that you're going to display." It makes some cuts a bit difficult, but necessary in the end.
 
Alt said:
Obviously we all have our own goals, but it's very apparent to me. I don't even want anything binned. Why do I have it if it's not immediately on hand to play and delight?
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Sincerely this is where I'd like to be sooner rather than later. I'm due for some more selling this weekend and I think I'm going to pull the trigger on a bunch of SHIELD troopers I bought thinking I'd use them in some large display as army-builders vs some villain or another. I think that ship has sailed.
 
TheRealSmallville said:
The idea the last several years has always been "ok, you don't have room to display everything, so rotate your display!" And that sounds great on paper, until you work so damn much that the last thing you really want to do when you get home is organize / clean / pose things like toys. So nothing gets rotated. Then, you think, "well I just need larger shelves! More display space!" And then, the same thing happens...to put up the new shelving, you have to rearrange things. To rearrange things, you have to make a mess elsewhere. You work a lot, and who wants to rearrange things? lol And it's an endless cycle.
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I'm having a version of this with a lot of my hobbies right now. I'm making enough money to fund all the things I like to do (because in a relative sense, ttrpgs, comics, and figures are cheap at the rate I collect them), but I don't have nearly enough time to enjoy them. The exhaustion is real.
 
JakeEkiss said:
Sincerely this is where I'd like to be sooner rather than later. I'm due for some more selling this weekend and I think I'm going to pull the trigger on a bunch of SHIELD troopers I bought thinking I'd use them in some large display as army-builders vs some villain or another. I think that ship has sailed.
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Yeah, army building is the devil's work.

D Amazing was the one who hyped me up for? Really cool Battle Royale shots and displays. The reality is I don't really care about toy photography. I think it's a cool art form. But I just don't do it as much. And it's still a lot of setup and tear down, to take it back to Smallville's work and tired points.

So all right, so let's just have a cool display of Cap and a Widow beating up a bunch of Hydra. First off, that's a big footprint. It's always bigger than you think. Second, you really got to know your posing and your silhouettes and your angles because what looks cool from one side can look terrible everywhere else. And then who are you even doing that for. Are you trying to show off for your friends. Is it for you? Are you creating a favorite panel or something? What are you really going to get out of it besides having to dust something and readjust your footprint?

I went through this with SHIELD. HYDRA. Cobra. Stormtroopers. In the end it always sounds cool but it's not something that makes me happy. Especially when someone dominoes over in the formation, or you're posing a cool battle scene and then something topples over and undoes it all.

It's not for me, Jen.
 
Alt said:
I went through this with SHIELD. HYDRA. Cobra. Stormtroopers. In the end it always sounds cool but it's not something that makes me happy. Especially when someone dominoes over in the formation, or you're posing a cool battle scene and then something topples over and undoes it all.
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I still want a second Stormtrooper. I don't need one. I don't. But having a baddy flanked by them just feels correct. I did get rid of my HYDRA ladies already (only had them because they came with the SHIELD ladies). I might keep my 2 guardsmen, as I feel like they're a slightly more versatile army since they can work as Iron Man baddies as well as supervillain jailers.

I'm probably going to look long and hard at my extended X-men folks soon too. I like Callisto, but I don't know that I need to keep her. There's others I'm sure I can live without too.
 
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I think two is fair for flanking Vader. Or posing Luke cutting em down.

I had 20 at one point, counting variants, and while I loved a parade deck shelf, it eventually just had to go for more interesting things (to me) like mechs or bunny girls.

I still want to finish SCAR Squadron, but I also tell myself they had a window and they took too long (years?!). So sucks to be Hasbro trying to get my money.

I did get the urge to pick up some basic Stormtroopers from EB when I got my Kyle, and a friend told me "Why do they even need to be fighting anybody?" Mileage varies but it was a good point. I just need Kyle and Mara on my desk and I'm happy. Why do they need to be cutting someone down?
 
Alt said:
I think two is fair for flanking Vader. Or posing Luke cutting em down.

I had 20 at one point, counting variants, and while I loved a parade deck shelf, it eventually just had to go for more interesting things (to me) like mechs or bunny girls.

I still want to finish SCAR Squadron, but I also tell myself they had a window and they took too long (years?!). So sucks to be Hasbro trying to get my money.

I did get the urge to pick up some basic Stormtroopers from EB when I got my Kyle, and a friend told me "Why do they even need to be fighting anybody?" Mileage varies but it was a good point. I just need Kyle and Mara on my desk and I'm happy. Why do they need to be cutting someone down?
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I've done very good resisting Scar Squadron, even though I think they look cool. I don't have a connection to them in the comics, and I'd have to hunt for most of them on the secondary market now and I don't want to.

For basic stormtroopers, it really is having them to flank a bad guy. Just feels right. I can live with one Dark Trooper for Kyle to fight.

The most army builders I have, or have ever had, are sentinels, and that's all in service to the X-Men display I'm sloooowly working on. Maybe I'll finish it one day and regret it, but not anytime soon. Even so, all of my sentinels of every size and style is still only 13 figures total (we can quibble over the large format sentinels counting as more than one, of course).

In my wildest dreams of success I think of having a real house and an art room where I'd set up one or two massive displays for fun, but I have to be real. I've got the best paying job of my life as of 2024 and I'm still apartment living. If I left this job it's likely my pay would go down by 1/3 or more, and because I'm working at a university in a budget crisis, I might not even have this gig in 5 years.

On days where I'm feeling especially depressed I feel like selling it all and reducing my footprint to the clothes on my back, my bed, stuff I need for my cat and a computer. But then that's just poor mental health talking. I don't actually want to live like a first-world monk. I just want to rearrange my life so I can enjoy more of it.
 
Stormtroopers are a big weakness for me. And if it helps at all, there are only two SCAR guys so far, and they probably aren't too hard to find yet. The other two are pulse exclusives though.
 
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Ru1977 said:
And with depression... I'm at a point now where if I want to sell some stuff, cool, or do a big purge.. feels healthy, but when my mind goes to "get rid of all of it!" I have to stop myself and really dwell on what's going on because it's a real indication I am spiraling.
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That's why we are here for you.
 
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