Refer to my blog post last year on details about the annual OG Sale and its member’s card.  It’s the same every year. 

After having been in warehouse sales where the discounts may be great but the 1 hour long queuing to pay for purchases are not that fantastic, I suggest shoppers to be satisfied with even a 20% discount on the things you wish to buy, and have a more hassle free queue time. 

With that, it’s time to troop down to this departmental stores to find the stuff you’ve been wanting to buy all along.  Happy shopping! 

See the original OG sale advertisement on their website.

Know the hidden costs of toy collecting - Do realise that in the midst of this hobby, you do inevitably somehow end up incurring more costs like: shipping costs to import them, plus getting special display cabinets, storage boxes, zipper bags of all sizes, cleaning and customizing materials, and even self-storage rental fees etc. to keep and maintain your toys.  Hence the costs of toy collecting do not just end at the point of purchasing the respective toys!

Keep proper toy inventory records of not only the cost of each toy purchase, but also where exactly you have stored them.  This makes retrieving and pricing them for resale more convenient, should you choose to clear them away one day.  In a way, it also facilitates an exit strategy for your toy hobby should you decide to call it quits one day!

Our local news scene was recently hit by an unexpected and unprecedented island wide breakdown of NETS and credit card network.  This undoubtedly caused great inconvenience to countless customers of that bank involved when people realised that they could not withdraw cash at the ATMs, log on to their online bank accounts, and use their credit cards etc., during those harrowing 7 hours of breakdown.

For me, I was one of those who were affected as I wanted to buy something at a supermarket on that morning.  Fortunately I had enough cash with me then.  That was when I first became aware that such a thing happened that day, before hearing the media report it on tv or radio. 

The upside is that the inconvenience period happened from 3am to around 10am on the same day, whereby many retailers were not opened for business yet.  The repercussions could had been far worse.  Anyway to cut a long story short, the network was restored by noon on that day.  The bank had apologised and would report the findings of their investigations soon.

The above incident led me to think - If I were at a departmental store or at a toy shop where I wanted to buy some toys but I could not use my NETS or credit cards to pay for them, that would have been such a terrible downer for me!  It would especially be so if I had wanted to get those toys for the longest time and that they were on sale or rather hard to come by for me.  I don’t know how else I would react, other than being very sorely disappointed.

How about you?  If you were put in that inconvenient position when you have some very coveted toys to buy, what would your reaction be?  Give up buying the toys, or ask the store to reserve for you till the network is restored or till you come back with the cash etc.,?  Do share your comments here! 

Recently there was an article which I read with interest.  It was about the growing local trends of more and more people renting secure and air-conditioned self storage space for reasonable sums per month, to store their excess possessions that could not fit into their homes.

The original use for such space rental facilities was mainly for people to store their furniture etc., while their homes were being renovated, and while they stayed at smaller and temporary premises elsewhere.  Gradually when people started home based businesses and needed more space to store their goods and equipment, this storage solution worked well with them too. 

Then over the years as hobbies that involve collecting physical items became more widespread, people even rented space to house and store their precious collectible items!  This is also compounded by the lack of land in Singapore to build bigger average homes for all of us. 

It has indeed become a growing trend, though I first heard of this kind of external storage method for collectibles more than 10 years.  Back then a toy collector that I knew was already using a similar concept storage service, but the ‘warehouse’ back then wasn’t as sophisticated as the ones we have today.

Although I don’t use the above kind of self storage service for my toys collection, I do however treat my rental toy lockers at Toy Outpost as a kind of external storage facility for my toys that I don’t mind selling away.  In a way it’s better than keeping them at home where they are not seen and do nothing useful for me.

While the self storage may seem to be the solution for collectors in general, it ultimately does not address the root causes of such phenomena.  And that is, people are basically buying too many things for them to store at home.  Perhaps it’s true that our homes in Singapore are getting smaller, so some people feel that it’s out of their control.  Like it or not, land scarcity in Singapore is here to stay.  We can’t further expand our territories by a lot more.

However, our minds and how we manage our shopaholic emotions are flexible and not as rigid as physical space.  Hence, there is a pressing need for hardcore toy collectors to be focused in their toy collecting hobbies, instead of collecting nearly every fad toyline that comes along every year, collecting every toy in a toyline so as to “complete the sets”.  

We need to be aware of that modern media is throwing all kinds marketing tactics at us everyday, to entice us to part with our hard earned income more readily and buy things that we may and may not really need.  Be especially aware of “addiction” products and services, such as collectible toys and gaming.  “Addiction” businesses thrive on our addiction to what they offer. 

Older generations tend to save up much more than the younger ones do because there were much lesser entertainment and addiction distractions in the old days.  Today many people like to visit shopping malls when they are bored.  There is even a term called “shopping therapy” to relieve stress!

So the next time you decide to make your next purchase of anything, do be more aware of what factors are  influencing you to spend, and to consider very carefully whether you really need to.  We need take charge of our spending habits as early in our lives as possible.  Using self storage may seem like a solution, but if our uncontrolled spending and collecting habits persist, we’ll just end up renting more space to ’solve’ a space constraint problem that isn’t really getting solved.

But we don’t have to totally give up our toys collecting hobby.  Collecting in moderation and culling periodically will help to keep our toys population in check and manageable for us to enjoy the hobby.  I hope that you find this article useful.  Happy toys collecting!

A toy ‘drought’ is when the toylines you collect hadn’t had new toys that you are interested to buy, or the toy company hadn’t release anything new for a period of time.  Hence, you’ve got nothing to buy and become bored, which breaks your routine of exciting toy hunting.  Here is a list article that is built up from another similar article I wrote last year:

1) Firstly, you can take a break from rushing to the stores to buy your toys and spend quality time with your loved ones perhaps.  Or other aspects of your life that you had severely neglected while you indulged too deeply in your toy chasing hobby, like unfinished tasks and projects you had always wanted to do but didn’t have the time to do so.

2) Save up your monthly toy budget and keep it aside for better toys to come in the future.  There will surely be something fancy to drift into your ‘want ‘net’ sooner or later!  Always save up enough toy funds to splurge during a sale!

3) Or you can re-allocate some unused monthly toy funds to other enjoyments in life, like a nice hearty meal, a short weekend trip (to sight see or perhaps to buy more toys) with someone special.

4) Play with your toys, re-arrange your toy displays, clean your toys if they are covered in dust, or pull out your toys from storage to check on them and see how they are faring.  It feels good to admire your prized possessions every now and then, and look back on your past “achievements”!

5) Photograph your favourite toys and post their photos online to share with other toy collectors.  You can also start shortlisting the potential toy candidates to grace your top 10 favorite toys of 2010 list by the end of the year, like many local toy collectors do since 2008!

Bonus: Not a favorite with most people but very important - record and maintain your toy accounts to keep track of your monthly toy expenditures.  This can help you to “stay on the budget path” and not “stray out of budget”!

Do feel free to share more suggestions on other things to do during a toy ‘drought’!

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!

The remaining Marvel Universe figures are on sale in my Toy Lockers at Toy Outpost.  Currently there is a 20% discount for them there, while stocks last and till further notice at my blog!

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.

Getting an insurance coverage for your toy collections.  I think hardly any toy collectors in Singapore do this.  However for some overseas toy collectors who live in disaster prone areas which are prone to floods, hurricanes, bush fires etc, this is something to seriously consider.  Sometimes it’s covered under the home insurance, but it’s better to confirm the extent of the value coverage, especially if the value of your toy collections is quite substantial!