The above photo of a previous toy sale at Takashimaya Square was taken in 2009.  There will be another one coming next month!

Event Name: Toy Universe

Dates: 8 Jun 2011 (Wed) to 26 Jun 2011 (Sun)

Venue: Takashimaya Square, Ngee Ann City B2

No one knows what toys will appear there for sale for this upcoming toys sale.  Perhaps there might be massive discounts on past movie toys like Iron Man 2 figures, Transformers Movie 2 - Revenge of the Fallen (ROTF) toys, and other toys that popular with both kids and collectors. It’s really up to anybody’s guess.

So make a note on your calendars to head there next month to check it out. Happy toys hunting!

Every year just after Chinese New Year (CNY), the departmental stores and retail shops here will have lots of sales at massive discounts to lure in the shoppers!  It’s also a fantastic time for toy collectors to trawl through the toy aisles in search of their wanted toys, that could be selling at clearance prices! 

For me, I’ll hold back and go a few days later to curb my impulse spending on more toys.  Hopefully most of the popular choice toys would have been sold out when I get there, and hence I get to save some money, LOL! 

If you have some free time and are not visiting people during this weekend, why not pop by the stores and squeeze in with the bargain hunting crowds?  Who knows, you might just uncover some hidden toy treasure troves in your toy shopping trip!

Happy toys hunting!

HFTD Deluxe Battle Blade Bumblebee figure at SGD 16.90 in dept stores now!

(Usual price: SGD 27.90)

Some notable departmental stores that having sales (at least 20% store wide discounts) during this Deepavali long weekend (from 4 Nov to 7 Nov 2010) are OG, Metro and Takashimaya!  These stores have already marked down most of their Transformers movie toys to clearance prices, while Toy ‘R’ Us (TRU) has started its year end Star Card members’ sale for the school holidays and Christmas.  The TRU sale for their Star Card members will last from Nov to Dec 2010.  So hurry now to your nearest departmental stores now to grab the toys that you’ve eyeing, while the good condition stocks last!  Happy toys shopping!

Know the fair market prices when buying toys at resale - There will be times when a toy collector buys certain toys from the resale market.  This is usually the case for older toys that are no longer available at the mass retail stores.  Sometimes it also happens for new toys that are sold out.  Other than the flea market where lots of old toys tend to appear every now and then, the more common toy resale market platforms are online like on Ebay and in toy forums. 

If you have to buy your toys from the resale market, do some online research (e.g. using Ebay’s completed auctions list) on past and present selling prices of your targeted toys before you purchase.  Of course the prices also vary according to the toy conditions.  This can minimize the chances of overpaying for some toy when other sellers are selling it for much lower prices.  Hence some level of patience in your toy hunts usually pays off well for you!  Happy toys shopping! 

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’!