I’m taking a break from work and blogging today.  I just did some tidying up of my toy room today and uncovered yet more miscellaneous toys among my collection.  I’ll see if I can find new owners for them in the coming week.  Most of them are loose Pokemon figures way back from Season 1 of the Pokemon series!

There are many other things in life that most of us desire (e.g. higher income, more free time, dream car, dream home, dream vacations etc.,).  So how can we use our resourcefulnss to get the other items that we also want?

If we think back, we managed to acquire many of our collectible toys because at that time, it became a ‘MUST’ for us. We were COMMITTED to do whatever it took to have them. If we had ever demonstrated determination to do whatever it took (legally, morally and ethically) to get our wanted toys, we can review what emotions (that drove us to achieve our goals), were present in our minds then.

We can apply the same emotions that we had while ‘chasing’ after our collectible toys, to put us in similar empowering states, so to achieve our other dreams in life.  The motivational emotions are the same.  Only the goals are different.  If we make our other dreams and goals in life a ‘MUST’ for us, and make our minds excited and obsessed with those goals, the chances of success to achieve them would be very high!

Learning Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) has indeed massively shifted my conscious thoughts since I first learnt it more than a year ago.  I have become more mindful of how my mind thinks.  I am quicker to identify the disempowering thoughts, and shift them into empowering thoughts almost instantly. Using NLP has now permeated to the psychology behind my toy collecting hobby.

Before I started blogging about collecting toys, I did not realise that so much emotions actually go on in my mind when I am in this hobby.  I lived almost my entire life so far on ‘autopilot’, that is, I let my subconscious mind take charge and take me through the days.  Now that I am more aware of how my conscious mind thinks, I have learnt to see things from different perspectives and to ‘let go’ at times when necessary, instead of getting myself ‘worked up’ for literally nothing.  Toy collecting has never been more fun for me now!

My blog on toy collecting started off as a guide to share tips and information with other toy collectors on how to best enjoy toy collecting as a hobby.  When I started blogging months ago, I mentioned that all collecting hobbies are basically about the emotions we attach to those collectible items that make us covet them so much, and make us go all lengths to collect them to complete our sets etc,.

There is a saying that goes like this: How we do anything is how we do everything.  If we review our toy hobby, we can learn at lot about our characters and how we manage our lives.  How we manage our toy hobby will review certain patterns in our lives.  They can be good patterns or patterns that can be improved on. For example:

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It has just been under 2 weeks since I found the latest set of G3 My Little Pony toys to hit the local stores.  I visited Orchard Road again today and found that the extended section for My Little Pony toys at one store is gone.  That extended section was there to display the newest range of ponies, including the much coveted unicorn pony Sweetie Belle, and pegasus pony Starsong, just a fortnight ago.  The pony section is now reduced to its former usual puny size, in comparism to the size of the toy department.  Only 1 Sweetie Belle was left on the rack today, together with not many other earth ponies.

I am surprised to the see the sales of Sweetie Belle and Starsong so good.  It’s either due to genuine demand by the kids here, or perhaps because of artificial demand created by toy traders grabbing the latest ponies to put up for sale on online auction sites.  This reminds me of the inflationary trend of commodity prices these days.  Gone are the days when toys were mere tools for children to play with. Some toys have now become investment products.  The only way for toy collectors to handle this trend, is to be vigilant and reach the stores early to buy the toys that we want at retail prices before they disappear.  This ‘fast shortage’ always happen to certain popular Transformers Movie toys and Justice League figures.

There is of course another way to deal with this, that is “if we can’t beat them, then join them”.  The choices are up to us if we wish to be involved in toy collecting in the first place. We cannot change what or how events (or trends) will happen, but we can control our responses to them.  The resulting outcome should turn out more in our favour, than doing nothing at all or just merely letting our instinctive emotions (e.g. giving excuses, blaming others and complaining) take over our minds and thoughts.  Remember: How we react to anything is how we generally react to everything in life.

I realise I missed out an important aspect of using Ebay - Feedback.

Leaving feedback for Ebay users that you transact with is very convenient as the links to remind and do it are clearly shown in your Ebay account whenever you are logged in.

After each transaction, the seller normally leaves the buyer a feedback first. Sellers tend to give a feedback soon after they have received the payment and have shipped out the items. Sellers will receive their feedback after the buyer physically receives the items.

Some buyers may forget to notify the seller when they receive their items, hence the seller should follow up with an email to confirm, after the estimated shipping period has passed (can be up to a month for overseas delivery by air). It is also a good idea for the seller to include a name card in the parcel or package, for the buyer’s easy reference to contact the seller back, and to create exposure.

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I have never heard of the My Little Pony theme song in other languages other than in English.  I know that many other cartoons such as JEM, have their theme songs dubbed into many international languages and I have heard most of them.  However I did not think of listening to those of My Little Pony.

This video shows a montage of “Rescue At Midnight Castle” to the Italian theme song.  This song uses a tune that is totally different from the English versions that I am so used to.  I absolutely love this Italian version as it has such a happy and catchy beat to it.  It definitely cheers me up whenever I listen to it, too bad I do not have the lyrics to the song.

Anyway, enjoy the song and video!

In this final post on using Ebay to trade toys, we look at the buyer’s role.

You start off by typing keywords to narrow your search for the items you are looking for.  Some sellers do not even know the names of the toys that they are selling, hence sometimes the actual names of the toys you want are not stated in the auction title.  Over time, you will become creative in generating likely keywords to find those ‘hidden gems’ auctions.  Such mis-named auctions are likely to be missed by many other buyers, hence your chances of winning it at a low bid are higher.

As you go through the list of auction items, you can shortlist the auctions you wish to ‘watch’ and save them using the Watchlist function provided in your Ebay account.  You can then monitor your Watchlist conveniently from 1 page, instead of bookmarking multiple links.  Ebay will remind you via email when your Watchlist auctions are ending soon or have ended. 

As a buyer, you must make it a good habit to always clarify any doubts that you have with the seller before even bidding on an auction.  If you are living in a different country from the seller, always email the seller at least 3 days before the auction end date; to confirm if the latter ships to your country, and to get a shipping quote before bidding.

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Let’s look at the role of an Ebay seller in this post.

If you are a seller, always provide a very clear and close up photo of your product to attract the buyers.  Your product description needs to be as detailed as possible.  If your product is an used item (loose collectible toy), be truthful and declare every noticeable flaw you can detect on the toy.  If you do not wish to write so much, then at least provide many different angled shots of the toy.  This attention to details is likely to fetch more and higher bids if your product is highly sought after despite the flaws.  This also cuts down the need to reply emails from buyers enquiring the detailed product condition. 

Calculate the approximate shipping costs, for local and overseas to reduce the number of such incoming enquiries too.  If you do not ship overseas, then declare this clearly on your auction page.  Last but not least, list the payment methods that you accept.  My recommendation is to have a Paypal Premier account that accepts credit card payments .  Each time you receive a payment in your Paypal Premier account, Paypal will deduct a small transaction from the incoming amount and you receive the remainder.  Do note that there will also be Ebay fees deducted from each successful Ebay sale.

Come back again to read about buying on Ebay! 

Back when I started toy collecting on the late 90’s, the Internet was still rather new, and Ebay was just starting to get popular with toy collectors.  Hence my learning curve was not that steep then and I soon got the hang of using Ebay to expand my toys collection very rapidly.

Getting an Ebay account is very easy and you could just sign up for a free account by filling up their standard online registration form.  Like all online accounts, you need to select your unique username and password, and provide a valid email address.  After your Ebay account gets approved, you are able to bid for or auction off items there. 

Every Ebay user begins with zero feedback.  You will build up and accummulate the feedback given by other Ebay users who transacted with you.  In return, you also give feedback to other Ebay users you transacted with.  Your feedback can be positive, neutral or negative and the quality of your feedback records is a reflection of your online integrity.  So always follow online trading etiquette and transact with responsibility at all times, so to maintain a pure positive feedback record on Ebay.

Come back again tomorrow to read more about using Ebay! 

Shopping online for collectible toys has always been popular with toy collectors, not just because of the convenience provided by the Internet, but also because many of such toys are not available in regular retail stores.  The most popular and most established online auction site is Ebay, which started out around the same time with the rise of the internet in the 90’s.

Many Ebay sellers back then were just clearing their old unwanted stuff from their homes.  By the 90’s, many children of the 80’s had already grown up or were in their teens, hence their old played with 80’s toys were auctioned off online.  The early buyers were also once children of the 80’s who had shared the love of such 80’s toys.  I believe that many early buyers bought those toys off Ebay for nostalgic reasons.  

Most 80’s toys (that were still in great conditions) could be bidded off Ebay for a steal and they were so widely available at that time.  The sellers also did not know that those toys could fetch quite attractive prices at times.  Many sought after 80’s toys tend to be  mixed with other toy lines in cheap lots.  The online information of collectible toys was rather limited back then and the demand for 80’s (an older) was just beginning to pick up, as people gradually warmed up to the Internet.

Come back again tomorrow to read more about using Ebay!