7 most common mistakes in toy collecting

1) Lack of goals and targets.  You start off not knowing or defining the toy line and sets you want to collect.  This lack of direction is the beginning that is bound to give you problems in your hobby and life. 

2) Lack of planning.  Because you had no goals and targets to begin with, you did not have a plan on what to collect, how to keep track of inventory and when to ‘exit’.  You end up over-buying and over-expanding your collections in too short a time.

3) Lack of storage space.  This is self-explanatory.  I had previously posted about this topic.  Failure to plan for proper storage leads to your home and room becoming over-cluttered with toys everywhere.  Eventually the situation frustrates you and the people who live with you.

4) Failure to budget or set aside a ‘play’ fund for your toys.  This is rather straightforward too.  Basically over-spending on acquiring and expanding your collections so rapidly that you even get yourself into credit card debt.  It’s worse when you become consistently behind in payments.

5) Can’t manage emotions.  If you have a budget or special funds set up to control and manage the inflow of toys into your collection each month, it can help you to make more firm decisions each time you are tempted to buy new toys.  Most people cannot can’t handle addiction when they are in the midst of one.  The devil in our minds tends to tempt us to give in to immediate desires while the angel has insufficient arguments to convince us otherwise. 

6) Peer pressure.  How you end up in toy collecting largely has to do with the people you tend to hang out with online and offline.  There is also this desire to sort of keep up with the ‘Jones’.  Whenever other collectors brag about their ‘Nirvana’ toys, you get envious and are tempted to get your own ‘Nirvana’ toys too.  It then becomes a never-ending vicious cycle.

7) Jump from toy line to toy line.  Many collectors are guilty of this at some point in their hobby.  This is a result of a lack of focus.  Some collectors end up ‘chasing’ the ‘hot popular toys’ because everyone is doing the same.  It is the most ‘in-trend’ toy to collect at that moment.  Others jump in on the ‘hot’ toys bandwagon hoping to specu-vest, which also happens a lot in the property market.  It becomes terrible when you are left ‘high and dry’ when the toy market cools off soon after you ‘entered’.

There you have it, the 7 most common mistakes in toy collecting.  Actually, if you observe carefully, these 7 mistakes happen throughout everything we do in life as well, whether it is in business, career or projects etc. 

So is there anyway to get yourself out of the above once you have made them? 

Yes, and the one solution is to stop all buying with immediate effect, and take time to organise your collection. 

You can get out of your predicament by downsizing your collection.  Identify the toys you want to keep and fire sale the excess toys (Desperate times call for desperate measures).  This is the fastest way out.  Unless your toys are still in hot demand and are very liquid at high prices, then you can still get back some profit from them.  If not, slash their prices to clear them quickly and just move on in your life. 

Treat this as a lesson learnt.  Remember, lessons are only important when we learn from them.  Be firm and cut emotional ties and thoughts of loss.  If you persist in waiting for a good price, then be prepared to wait a while to clear all your excess toys at your preferred higher prices.  In the meantime, you’ve got to stop further inflow of more toys, if not you’ll be back at square one. 

I know that this article won’t really sink into the heads of the Rapid Growth collectors.  If you are at this stage now, just make a note to read this article when you are ready for it.  Don’t worry you are not alone, I’d committed all the above 7 mistakes during my hobby, so now I’ve got to do room re-organising every week.