The Great Collection Curation Support Group Thread

That hits.

Maybe it's because I moved around so much and associate emotion and memory to things and places and people, and I've lost so many friends over the years because back then, only letter mail at best.

But it's like... Baroness or Tiger Stripe take me back to specific living rooms and yards and outdoors and having them now is totemic.

Even the people I have found and kept up with (found my best friend from 1-4th grade a few years ago and picked up like nothing happened), I like knowing someone was there to kind of validate the memory I have of a place and time.

That's what I look for with music and toys.
 
One thing I have sometimes done as well is throw out or sell extra parts. Like Im going to keep All the Spidey figures i have, but 90% of them stay with just their fists on. So do I need 26 pairs of wallcrawling hands in the red with webs? Or is that just taking up space? I had so many web effects I gave a bunch away. Or effects parts I won't ever use.
I ended up with like, 2 GIANT bags of parts i just didnt need (Not just Legends) for figures I was never going to get rid of. Its quite liberating.
 
Ohhh I went a different way and got these stackable latched storage bin things that I guess would be used for jewelry or some sort of craft shit... you can take out dividers as needed. I sorted everything into them. I have sections for Spidey hands, flesh colored hands, different heads... accessories. I think I have maybe 19 "layers" and it makes it so easy to find things I need for photos. Everything used to be randomly kept in many, many sandwhich bags in several tubs - meaning if I wanted a specific backup head or specific hands it was quite the search.
 
Schizm said:
So

Dedicating even one of those shelves to a monthly re-do is definitely something I'm thinking about now and being *okay* with figures being in storage for awhile. Not forever, but so they are fresh and fun once they re-emerge.
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I’m thinking on similar lines - I have all my Legends in my home office so I can display what I like, but most are behind cupboard doors in my displays. I have a big spare desk to my side though, and I’ve been planning to create a huge diorama to fill that out. I was thinking of then doing some kind of random selection - sorting a proper list of figures and then random number generation - to pull like 5 heroes and 5 villains for display each week in a big battle royale. Keeps things fresh and allows some of the oldies-but-goodies to get some fresh air.

That’s the plan anyway - in reality, I’ve been so damn busy for months that the diorama remains incomplete and the desktop is filled with a jumble of newest figures that have yet to make it onto shelves…


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Re: the Maron podcast thumbnail - what did they do to Mark's face?!
altcunningham said:
But it's like... Baroness or Tiger Stripe take me back to specific living rooms and yards and outdoors and having them now is totemic.

Even the people I have found and kept up with (found my best friend from 1-4th grade a few years ago and picked up like nothing happened), I like knowing someone was there to kind of validate the memory I have of a place and time.
Click to expand...
Can anyone else remember where they bought most of their figures? I have thousands at this point and I can remember where I got the vast majority of them, stretching over 30+ years. Selling some of them feels like selling a family photo album.
 
The Scream Man said:
One thing I have sometimes done as well is throw out or sell extra parts. Like Im going to keep All the Spidey figures i have, but 90% of them stay with just their fists on. So do I need 26 pairs of wallcrawling hands in the red with webs? Or is that just taking up space? I had so many web effects I gave a bunch away. Or effects parts I won't ever use.
I ended up with like, 2 GIANT bags of parts i just didnt need (Not just Legends) for figures I was never going to get rid of. Its quite liberating.
Click to expand...
This horrifies me! :)

But I understand and recently got to thinking: how much do just the accessories *weigh*? The answer: this box of MCU extras is 2.3lbs (not counting the 1.1lb of the box itself).

MCUStorage.jpg

This one may be my least organized but it is the most packed!

I have a matching box for Marvel Men, Marvel Women, Spider-Man, three for X-Men (and Women and Animated), MCU, bigger pieces and BAF alt parts, then one for Power Rangers, couple for SW, etc, etc. Made a huge difference.

But am I ever going to use some of these extras?
 
Schizm said:
Re: the Maron podcast thumbnail - what did they do to Mark's face?!

Can anyone else remember where they bought most of their figures? I have thousands at this point and I can remember where I got the vast majority of them, stretching over 30+ years. Selling some of them feels like selling a family photo album.
Click to expand...
That was the part I struggled with. I was selling a decade plus of hunting and buying memories. These days I buy from 3 places: EB Games, Hasbro Pulse and Walmart Exclusives. But in the early days... I'd get Legends and Classics from comic stores, small businesses downtown that I drove too far for, random message board contacts... so many places and memories. Buying cases and splitting the sets with my cousin and the time period of University days. The comparison with a photo album is apt. I think that was the hardest part.
 
Schizm said:
Re: the Maron podcast thumbnail - what did they do to Mark's face?!

Can anyone else remember where they bought most of their figures? I have thousands at this point and I can remember where I got the vast majority of them, stretching over 30+ years. Selling some of them feels like selling a family photo album.
Click to expand...
US side, TRU and KB, the odd KMart. Then Wal Mart later in life. Meijer.

As a youth, fond memories of the Oslo Post Exchange, which kept me in GI Joe and Nintendo while growing up abroad. Whenever my dad would go back stateside, he would come back with a Toys R Us haul for us.
 
altcunningham said:
US side, TRU and KB, the odd KMart. Then Wal Mart later in life. Meijer.

As a youth, fond memories of the Oslo Post Exchange, which kept me in GI Joe and Nintendo while growing up abroad. Whenever my dad would go back stateside, he would come back with a Toys R Us haul for us.
Click to expand...
Oh yeah. Usually WalMart, sometimes TRU. Really happy to find things at KayBee as they were always very cheap. That's where I found my series 1 Captain America. Later found a few at Target. More recently been getting leftovers from Ollie's.
 
Enforcer said:
Buying more now than ever?
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Sadly this is probably what's actually happening to me. I spent most of my adult life making less than 30k a year (turns out you can't make money doing comics, kids) and then in the last 4 years my income has more than doubled thanks to working at the makerspace. My last promotion a year ago and now I'm running the place. It was another 40% raise on top of the previous position which was 60% more than I ever made before that. So I've had legit middle-class income for a year now and my brain hasn't fully gotten used to it.

You'll see me on here talking about all the stuff I shouldn't get, and that's because my hobbies are so cheap, that at my new income level I could easily start picking up whole lines. Right now space is my main limiter as I'm still apartment living. Well, that and my strong desire not to become like my mom who lives in a hoarder house. So it's kind of a daily struggle to be choosey when I don't really have to be anymore. But of course, like a lot of folks, when I get stressed I run to retail therapy to cure it.

My collection is still smallish. I'm under 150 figures and I have my buying planned out for the next year basically, but I don't have enough space to display even 1/4 of it at a time and even the amount I have is feeling like it's overkill. I chip away at it by listing stuff on ebay pretty much every time I pick up something new. Trying to keep the collection the same relative size, but hopefully make it more precise over time.
renfield75 said:
Are you going through eBay? I've mentioned this before but I'm looking to unload a lot of old figures too and eBay seems too time consuming. Curious to hear what you're doing and any updates on how successful it is.
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I do ebay and it works well since I basically always list my stuff lower than the average for whatever I'm selling. I also do lot sales when I can't be bothered to do them individually or they're figures I don't think will go well solo. I almost never have to wait more than a week to sell something.
 
I'm probably buying as much as ever, but want to try to make myself be more selective.

It brings me very little joy to ever buy an update or a re-do of a previously made character. So I'm trying to limit myself to only buying one figure of that type for every 2 brand new characters that I buy, but it's hard. I've fallen into buying pinless figures to replace my pinned figures - which is happening a lot right now. Probably really not necessary.

Examples of what I've bought and what I wish that I had done instead:

Bought the full MvC wave, wish that I had bought only Gargantos
Bought 5 of the 6 recent mini-comic wave, wish I had bought only Feral and Rachel.
Bought the Fury/Punisher 2-pack, should have passed
Bought all 3 of the Maximum figures, definitely should have passed on at least Hulk
Bought almost all of the X-Men '97 figures (only skipped wave 2 Magneto and Gambit/Rogue basketball 2-pack), probably should have just bought Executioner and Goblin Queen from this line and skipped everything else.
Bought all four MTG figures and probably should have only bought Man-Wolf

I'm going to make a concentrated effort to be more selective with my purchasing in 2026 by buying a whole lot less retreads. I'm also going to try to recoup some $$$ by selling older figures that I've continued to hold onto with the goal of getting down to close to only one version of each character again like I used to do.

I usually have an ebay store, but closed it down for the final few months of 2025 for tax reasons that will mostly go away in 2026 due to legislative changes. I plan to re-open in January.
 
JakeEkiss said:
I spent most of my adult life making less than 30k a year
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Good lord. I don't know how you got by on that.
JakeEkiss said:
Well, that and my strong desire not to become like my mom who lives in a hoarder house.
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Kids of hoarders stay winning. You can't let go of that voice in your head saying, "buy that and you'll be just like her."

I'm just under 150 figures myself.
 
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