I chanced upon this article on Seibertron.com some time ago and found it interesting.  It covers money matters, where to buy toys, discusses the emotions behind buying and collecting toys, more ultimate levels like toy fairs, methods of collecting, and coming to an understanding with your family members about your toy hobby. 

These are all topics I had covered  before in some way or another on my blog.  Now you get to read them from the perspective of collecting Transformers toys!  

Do you like to read more of such articles about toy collecting?  You see, most toy collectors go online to search for information of where to buy the latest toys they want, or to view photos of other people’s toy collections. 

If you want to read more articles about how to collect toys, or how other collectors manage their massive toy collections, do let me know.  I’ll post their links here to share with you whenever I come across them! 

Happy toy collecting!

As a follow up to yesterday’s blog post on how to quit your toy hobby, here are some tips on managing your toys population and keeping you happy with your toy hobby:

Toy population control tips

Most toy collectors I know, do not collect just one toyline.  They tend to ‘jump’ from toyline to toyline due to fads and effective marketing gimmicks by the media, especially for movie toys.  Hence they end up with lots of toys over the years.  ideally, older and “out of season” fad toys should give way to “new fads”.

So it’s best to periodically cull your older toylines that you no longer like.  You’ve got to treat them something like old clothes.  They’ve served their purpose in your life and they should be passed on to others who appreciate them.  This will free up some space for new toylines into your life.  

Toy storage tips

If proper toy storage is a big issue for you and you don’t wish to cull so many toys, and that you are very sure you still want to keep on collecting toys, then you can consider investing in some creative and fun ways to display and store them.

Some toy collectors have literally customised their homes to suit their toy hobbies.  Here is an example from Singapore:

@lex Gen X 1:6 Hardcore and his Toy Haven!

You don’t have to revamp the entire interior deco of your home for your toy hobby, but just dedicate a section of it to store and display your toys aesthetically would be good enough!

Do let me know if these tips have been useful to you.  If you have more to share, feel free to add them here.  I’d love see your contributions!

Have a monthly budget for buying toys - If toy collecting is a big part of your personal life, you can set aside about 10-20% of your monthly income to indulge in this hobby.  A budget will help to keep your monthly toy expenditures in check, and not let your home be so overrun by your toy purchases that you can’t cope.  If you can, keep a record book or an Excel sheet record of your toy accounts.  I know it’s a bit tedious but trust me, it’s a good habit to cultivate when you collect toys.  It’ll come in more handy when you decide to sell off your toys in future.

For e.g. the Transformers toys, video reviews allow you to see all the transformation steps, plus you get a better and 360 degrees view of the Transformers toys in their vehicle and robot modes.  For typical action figures like Marvel Universe and G.I.Joe, the toy video reviews tend to show the various points of articulations in the action figures, plus they also demonstrate how the weapons and accessories ‘work’. 

So how do you do a search on YouTube for let’s say, Transformers Revenge of the Fallen (ROTF) Leader Optimus Prime?  You can simply type “ROTF Leader Optimus Prime” in the search box on YouTube!  Over time, it helps to narrow the search if you know the Transformers class size (Leader, Voyager, Deluxe, Scout, Legends etc.) and the Transformers toyline series (ROTF, Transformers Universe etc.).  Remember, more practice will make your online toy research perfect!

Dedicate a fixed space in your home for your toy collections.  This is very important because every object that goes into your home must have its properly allocated space to ‘dwell’ in.  Just like the cooking utensils belong in the kitchen, our clean clothes belong to our bedroom wardrobes etc, the same goes for your toy collections.  The bare minimum is to have at least a cupboard that is dedicated to your toys.

if you share your home with other people, your toys ought to be stored and displayed in your own bedroom (aka your personal space).  If you have a major say in your home or you’re the head of your household, then you can allocate your toys to a specially dedicated hobby room, or even in the living room, provided the toy display there is very presentable to guests who visit your home.  

For the ultimate “customization” of your home to integrate your toy hobby, take a look at Toy Haven! 

Avoid jumping from toyline to toyline.  This tends to happen when toy collectors “chase” the trends and collect whatever toys that are “hot” at the moment due to the related movie or cartoon releases then. 

Basically don’t buy on hype if you can help it.  You’ll tend to feel so hurt when you see the same ”ex-hot” toys go on clearance sales, and you paid much more for them just a few months ago. 

It’s feels worse when you realise that you don’t really like those toylines as you used to, after the hype has died down.  By then, you’re stuck with those toys that can be difficult to sell off because almost everyone else also gets tired of them like you have.

Focus on collecting the toylines that you really like and stick to them only.  I know this is easier said than done.  If you want to have a better organised toy hobby and a much happier time collecting and managing your toy collections, then this is golden rule number 1 to adhere to!  It will help you to minimize the inevitable common challenges of toy collecting, such as insufficient display and storage space later on.

During a sale of course!  And when are the sales?  In the US, a major sale day called Black Friday is coming soon.  It falls on the Friday after Thanksgiving Day (4th Thursday of November) each year.  On Black Friday, some US retail stores open their doors as early as midnight, and close only on midnight the following Saturday to accommodate the massive crowds that come!

In Singapore, the major sales we have are the Great Singapore Sale (around June to mid-July each year), and the year end Christmas and post Christmas sales.  In between there are the shorter period ad-hoc sales by the various departmental stores.

Here in Singapore, there are shopping malls and departmental stores that occasionally decide to open till around midnight during certain festive periods, but this practice of extended shopping hours is not fixed each year.  I’d rather have more short period sales spread out throughout the year.  Many collectible toys are released and sold in the departmental stores at different times of the year.

We may not have Black Friday here in Singapore, but we still have Christmas turning round the corner.  Our main shopping belt at Orchard Road is already lighted up with Christmas decorations.  They started earlier this year to dress up the street for the APEC meeting taking place in the coming week.  Locally, shoppers to Orchard Road get to immense themselves in the Christmas mood for a longer period!

If you have plans to buy some toys, whether for yourself or as gifts, now you can start looking out for the Christmas sale advertisements in the newspapers everyday.  The major retailers have definitely prepared some great offers for shoppers to enjoy, incuding on toys!  So start saving up to splurge during the year end sales, after which in Singapore, will be followed by the New Year and Chinese New sales early next year!

Happy toy shopping in the coming weeks and months!

Reasons for not doing so…

I guess for the majority of toy collectors out there, your answer to this question is “no”.  To keep track of your toy spendings is after all quite a tedious task to begin with.  You’ve got to have a certain amount of discipline to update the records diligently and regularly.  To people who hate dealing with numbers, even doing the simplest of accounting is mental torture to your “already exhausted from work or school” brain.

Then there is the other extreme where the reason for not having a set of toy accounts is simply to escape from, or prefer not to face inevitable and harsh “reality” that you are probably spending way too much money on your toy hobby.  You know very well in your heart that you’ve shelled out quite a sum of your monthly income on your toy purchases each month.  You’ve got the estimated total in your mind, but the true total figure will be too dreadful to deal with, LOL!

Not doing so is normal instinct…

I know and I understand how you feel, after all I’ve been there and done that.  Keeping track of your  toy purchases is one of those things in life which we know that is good for us, but not critical enough for our lives to depend on that will make us practise it.  It’s like we know that regular exercise is good for our health but we don’t feel like doing it.  Or that we should eat more vegetables and fruit to balance our diets, but meat is generally more tasty and satisfying to our palates.  Basically it’s human nature and habit that we seek instant gratification over long term benefits.

I tracked my X-Men toys collection

During my early days of toy collecting, I did keep a special note book to record all the X-Men toys that I bought.  I even awarded “medals” to the 25th (silver), 50th (gold), 75th (platinum) figures that I acquired.  This was to signify some sort of milestone in my toy collection, a similar concept to our Singapore Tourism Board awarding a prize to the 1,000,000th tourist to arrive in Singapore for that year!

I didn’t follow up for My Little Pony… 

As time went on, I got lazy and didn’t practise this good accounting habit for my collection of My Little Pony toys.  By the time I thought of starting a record book for my ponies, it was too much effort to recall all their cost prices.  Furthermore they were mostly imported, hence they had the added shipping costs.  My X-Men toys were nearly all from local sellers.  I only acquired one of them from US ebay because no local seller had that piece, despite searching here for years.

I resumed having toy accounts for 2009…

Since this year, I began to resume having a set of toy accounts for the toylines that I started collecting in 2009, such as the Transformers movie toys, and the Marvel Universe toys.  I didn’t record all my 2009 toy purchases for each toyline right from the start when I got the first piece per toyline, but only about a month after (I procrastinated).  When I did and finally read my toy accounts, the monthly figures were enough to shock the hell out of me.  That was one reason why I finally chose to give up my Marvel Universe toys collection a few months back.  I still have some MOC pieces left for sale at my toy lockers.

Is there regret?

Not really, because I haven’t completely recovered from my shock at seeing my toy accounts yet.  And that was only for 2 toylines!  I collect way many more toylines than just 2.  The rest have become impossible to track, unless I use estimated numbers on their costs.  Nevertheless, I’m still interested to know what are the latest new waves of toys for these toylines.  Seeing new stuff planned for the market still makes my hobby exciting, even though I do not plan to buy every single piece of the new toys. 

Your thoughts?…

So do you keep a set of toy accounts to track the “entries” and ”exits” of the various toys in your collections?  If you do, feel free to share on how this has influenced your toy hobby.  If you don’t, you’re also welcomed to give your thoughts and comments here.  If keeping track of your toy accounts can be made simple and super convenient, will you want to practise it?  I would love to hear your views on the above!

Many of us are very specific on which toylines we collect, based mainly on our likes and dislikes.  Hence regardless of if there is a trend or craze on those toylines, we still collect them.

Trends tend to arise more prominently especially when certain blockbuster movies are screened in the cinemas, or certain shows and cartoon series are shown on TV.  The toy companies would roll out the movie toys in the departmental stores to coincide with the release of the movies and shows to cash in on the so-called hype.  Quite often, such temporary toy craze work their magic (or hex) on both the hardcore and casual fans and collectors alike.

Many fell for the Transformers Revenge of the Fallen (ROTF) toy craze in the past few months.  I’m sure the feeling of being ‘toy possessed’ is gradually wearing off on some fans and collectors by now.  Some of us even start to wonder what happened to our minds back then.  It’s like being possessed by some kind of toy spirits.

Currently, there is smaller scale trend on G.I.Joe toys due to the screening of its live action movie (G.I.Joe Rise of the Cobra) in our local cinemas.  Certain more popular figures of its movie toyline are said to be quite hard to find in the stores here.  Apparently there is demand for them, but for how long more?  The movie is almost near the end of its screening period.

There are fans and collectors who get very upset and frustrated when they can’t seem to find the in-trend toys that they want during the craze period.  Some even go through a stage of mild panic and pour out their woes, as if their lives have been greatly disadvantaged by being denied the opportunity of being among the first to lay their hands on certain in-trend toys. 

Hey these days, toy companies like Hasbro tend to re-release all their toys in revised waves.  Hence a short supply now will be made up for later.  So what if you do manage to complete your movie toyline for now?   Do you really like these toys enough that 6-12 months later, you still feel as obsessed about them as like during the movie screening period?  For some fans and collectors, the novelty of owning certain movie toys wear off soon after the craze dies down.  If this is the case, they are more likely trend chasers than hardcore fans. 

What about you?  Do you chase the toy trend as well?  Or do you stick to your main toyline collections, regardless of whatever toy trends there are?  Feel free to share your comments here!  I’ll love to know what you think!