Quitting/putting collecting on pause

[akajomiha]

This is meant to be a thread about the twilight of collecting. Curious to hear your thoughts and how you're dealing with it.

I've seen a lot of posts on Reddit about pausing figure collecting or quitting altogether due to the tariffs. The main throughline is "it's just not fun anymore". I feel that as well, to an extent. But it's not just the tariffs. That's why I'm making this a new thread; everything going on right now is kind of sucking the joy out of the hobby that has brought me joy for 40+ years.

It's also not just the state of my country; I'm 50 years old and have had some scary health issues. So I've been thinking about my mortality more than ever. I look at my home office and think of how much value is on my shelves and in numerous boxes. The idea of leaving everything to my wife and kids to sort through after I'm gone...it's not great.

I have sold off about 50% of my McFarlane collection, and I'm going to sell the other half as well. It feels good, to be honest. Thinking I might pare down my other lines as well, focusing on condensing my collection and buying more high-end figures from the aftermarket. Quality over quantity. The less to leave behind, the better. Of course, I'm also socking away more money from higher value figures to help offset the insane inflation we're going to see soon. I'm hoping it's a temporary necessity and things will change sooner rather than later, but I just don't know if I have time enough to wait it out.

I'm sorry for the rambling. This is the only place I feel comfortable sharing this. Please commiserate with me, fellow Articulators!

 

[Justice]

One need only venture as far as my collection thread to see that I need to pare down a bit. Truth be told when the Fwoosh was down for so long very recently I had pretty much talked myself into getting out of the hobby. But now here I am back with my enablers!

I used to get down about my collection every now and then and think that it might be nice to get rid of it all but those down times never lasted long and were few and far between. Lately however the down times are coming more often and lasting longer. I've found myself canceling a lot of preorders and not feeling the tinge of FOMO when I see other people posting pics of them.

The tariff thing is not helping and like everyone else in the country I am kind of in wait and see mode on that. A lot of my decisions will be based on what happens there.

Truth is this hobby takes up 2.5 rooms in my house and it wouldn't be bad to reclaim some of that space. Very shortly I will be transitioning to work from home and I WILL need some of it back.

I've also thought, at almost 45, that it is time to start thinning it out just so no one else has to deal with it after I am gone. I'm also dealing with some scary symptoms that I have a doctor's appointment about this week. Hopefully that turns out to be nothing but I have to consider the alternative.

Currently my mindset is that I can never quit it altogether but I've never been good with moderation so that would be something I need to work on. I'm very "all or none" but maybe I can change to stay in a hobby I love. I just know it is not economically feasible to continue the path I am on.

I had a lot of debt that I am just on the tail end of finally paying off and I've vowed to myself never to put anymore plastic on the plastic again and I've kept that promise to myself and even gotten rid of most of my credit cards so that some of the temptation is gone.

We could probably use this sobering thread here to help keep us all in check and vent a bit. Thanks for posting it!

 

[Ru1977]

I think about quitting every few months! In those times I'll take down the ones I may not want and live without them a bit before selling. And 95% of the time I do sell. Streamlining always makes me feel better.

 

[akajomiha]

Thank you both for your responses. I really appreciate it.

Currently my mindset is that I can never quit it altogether but I've never been good with moderation so that would be something I need to work on. I'm very "all or none" but maybe I can change to stay in a hobby I love. I just know it is not economically feasible to continue the path I am on.

This is pretty much where I'm at too, and I can definitely empathize with the lack of moderation.

I think about quitting every few months! In those times I'll take down the ones I may not want and live without them a bit before selling. And 95% of the time I do sell. Streamlining always makes me feel better.

It's funny, because the majority of my collection is stored in boxes. If I'm not looking at or displaying these figures, what the heck am I doing? Am I just a plastic hoarder? I need to Marie Kondo some of this stuff.

 

[Ru1977]

Right, I won't store them anymore. Display or....go away.

 

[Chooch555]

I'm long past the point of being able to display everything. I checked my spreadsheet awhile back and I'm over 10,000 toys. That number is padded a bit counting individual Minimates and Lego guys, but it's a lot. I've gotten to the point that I trade in some comic books for a loss when my boxes fill up. I might have to do something similar with toys. But I hate the idea of the work behind eBay so, so much I never really entertain it.

 

[Justice]

I'm long past the point of being able to display everything. I checked my spreadsheet awhile back and I'm over 10,000 toys. That number is padded a bit counting individual Minimates and Lego guys, but it's a lot. I've gotten to the point that trade in some comic books when my boxes fill up. I might have to do something similar with toys. But I hate the idea of the work behind eBay so, so much I never really entertain it.

Yeah the work to sell it all on eBay feels almost insurmountable.

 

[EnigmaticClarity]

Paring down and focusing more on quality and less on quantity is a universally good idea for anyone collecting anything. All collectors should go through those phases periodically.

I talked about this recently as a tangent in the old forum a bit, but I might also suggest another solution to address the core issue that made you start thinking about this--the price of things, i.e. the possibility that the price of figures will go up dramatically unless someone can talk Trump off of the ledge he's out on. In addition to paring down try to lean into learning some collectible market. There are hobbies where the market is strong enough to give you enough money to fund that hobby and others. A friend of mine collects vintage guns, i.e. ones from World War 1 and 2, and I collect high grade Marvel comics back to its origin in 1961. We both use those hobbies to fund themselves, and the amount I've made from that hobby makes my annual action figure budget look absolutely tiny, so while I'm irritated by Trump's greed with the tariffs they won't really affect me at all since I learned to play the comics market from around the age of 11.

Anyone can play any market. Some people play the stock market, some people play the betting markets, but you can also play collectible markets. Action figures are a pretty bad market to play in for profit since new releases tend to obsolete older figures. I'm sure there are ways to play it anyway if you can pick which older figures are likely to rise in value, but I've tried that for the past six years and had extremely limited success at it. I definitely know people who play the vintage toy market and are quite profitable at it, but despite the fact that I had almost every Kenner Star Wars toy as a kid that market has never appealed to me. Not sure why, really, and maybe someday it will. With modern toys it seems like you're really betting on markets that you think the toy companies will overlook, and I don't know how to predict those holes in the figure market. I suppose that same principle applies to modern comics as well, so perhaps any vintage collectible market is better than any modern collectible market. But if there's another hobby you enjoy that one may be a good candidate to help fund your action figures. My mom was into Longaberger baskets for a while, and she made a nice bit of cash on it.

Do you collect anything besides action figures?

 

[EnigmaticClarity]

Yeah the work to sell it all on eBay feels almost insurmountable.

I would suggest that any time this is true of anyone collecting anything you've taken one step across the line from collecting and over into hoarding. Not the kind of hoarding you see on that "Hoarders" show where there are people who fill their houses with empty product packaging and other junk and have no actual connection to any of it like most of us do to toys, but it's a step down a road you absolutely don't want to start going down.

Unless you're wealthy enough for the value of your collectibles to not matter the only solution here is to force yourself to sell stuff anyway. It's a pain, but that pain will give you all the more incentive to not make the same mistake again.

 

[PanchaMaestro]

Do 1 or 2 hours a week on eBay. It isn’t hard. It isn’t all or nothing. Have 20-40 things up at all times. I don’t buy things with the intent to sell but I have records, comics, toys everywhere. I don’t view it as a way to profit. These things are already a sunk cost. I view it as a way to stay sane and recoup some of what I spent. Hoard boxes and bubble wrap in your garage. Make sure your printer works. It’s easy and kinda fun even and nice to know something has a bit of a reprieve from its destiny into landfill.

 

[cmoney]

I often think that if I didn't live in a townhouse that was attached to other peoples' homes, I would not be all that sad if my house burned down and I could just start over. And then I think it'd be better if it happened ten or fifteen years ago instead, when I would've had more time to become a different person. Okay, I'm gonna stop before this gets too dark, sorry.

 

[Justice]

I would suggest that any time this is true of anyone collecting anything you've taken one step across the line from collecting and over into hoarding. Not the kind of hoarding you see on that "Hoarders" show where there are people who fill their houses with empty product packaging and other junk and have no actual connection to any of it like most of us do to toys, but it's a step down a road you absolutely don't want to start going down.

Unless you're wealthy enough for the value of your collectibles to not matter the only solution here is to force yourself to sell stuff anyway. It's a pain, but that pain will give you all the more incentive to not make the same mistake again.

Yeah I used to have an action figure Instagram account with several thousand followers and one time I started selling off some older stuff and made over $1000 in less than a week. But I had a built in audience and no seller fees.

I deleted it several years ago because it was stressing me out with the like-bot nature of Instagram but I wish now I had kept it just to sell figures on.

There's a lot of stuff I wouldn't miss at all and some stuff I couldn't bear to part with. Last time I had a sell off it got addictive selling the stuff and seeing my PayPal balance climb so I feel I just need to take the first step and start the ball rolling.

 

[Justice]

I often think that if I didn't live in a townhouse that was attached to other peoples' homes, I would not be all that sad if my house burned down and I could just start over. And then I think it'd be better if it happened ten or fifteen years ago instead, when I would've had more time to become a different person. Okay, I'm gonna stop before this gets too dark, sorry.

Man it is funny that you say that but a few weeks ago we have a level 5 tornado outbreak and at two different times tornadoes were headed straight to my house but ended up veering south of me. I kept thinking would it be so bad? That would be my way out and I'd get a bit of insurance money. Sure I would be depressed about it but eventually I'd get over it.

This is probably going to turn into a therapy thread.

 

[PanchaMaestro]

As some of you might remember I work at a record store and have for decades. The “illness” of collecting is forever a part of my life and intellectual conservations with coworkers who have similar “issues”. I’ve always said if my house burned down I was never going back to collecting anything again. Obviously I have 1000s of LPs but I knowingly keep a triplicate copy of my digital music collection at my desk at work in case this should happen. Of course id be freaking out about my dogs.

This conversation is one of the reasons I love Chris Ware’s Rusty Brown and Chaulky White comics. Devilishly smart exploration about our shared illness. Not to mention a great cartoonist. Or maybe just something else I’ve collected.

 

[Ru1977]

This is probably going to turn into a therapy thread.

It's kinda funny but not ha ha funny, but sometimes I think about if something happened to my collection. Like a fire. And it gets me to realize what my favorite collectible is, and usually leads to more paring down.

To quote Tyler Durden, the things you own end up owning you.