Reasons for collecting toys

Some people collect toys because of childhood memories of; or ongoing interests in certain cartoons, comics, books, movies and TV shows.  Other collectors have a penchant for things like specific animals (e.g. Breyer model horses), cars models (e.g. Bburago), army dolls (e.g. Action Man) etc.

You need to understand your emotions behind collecting toys.  It is about anchoring certain states or emotions to the toys because of what they mean to you.  It could be based on your childhood memories of the toys (e.g. He-Man) you had played or never got to play with, or the cartoons and movies (e.g. Care Bears, Smurf, He-Man, M.A.S.K., Transformers, Bionic Six, Thundercats, Silver Hawks etc.) that you loved as a kid.

Your decision to collect toys could also be influenced by others.  Remember: who you have become today and how you behave is largely influenced by the people you hang out with almost everyday.  Some collectors end up collecting toys because their friends are collectors, or they visited someone’s home one day and got inspired by that person’s impressive Lego castle and knights collection.

If you are still a non-toy collector and you are sure that you do not want to start collecting toys, then stay away from places that sell them, or places where you know toy collectors tend to gather (both online and physical venues).  Do not tell yourself that you are only looking and would not buy.  Chances are that you will eventually end up buying something if you keep looking at it and that will become the start of your toy collecting hobby. 

Toys are made to look very appealing to consumers and that is how they sell themselves.  Initially, they were targeted at kids and kids were constantly encouraged by the toy commercials on TV to “collect them all”.  Since kids have no or little money to purchase them, the toys have to be appealing to the accompanying parents too. 

Then later some smart toy makers realized that there is a niche market for adult consumers too.  Adults can become toy collectors too.  They tend to focus more on sculpting details, material quality, articulation level, coloring standards and even repainted variants of the same toy or character to complete their sets.  Adult collectors  usually have steady paychecks to sponsor their hobbies.  Hence new lines of toys were formed to target these adults.  One example of a toyline that target this niche group of toy collectors is the Spawn toys by McFarlane.

Some people see collectible toys as business and ’speculative’ opportunities.  They buy up the rare toys especially and sell them for profits or extra income.  This is more for people with business intuition while some collectors call them opportunists.  You would be surprised and somewhat impressed by their resourcefulness at acquiring hard-to-find (a.k.a. HTF) ‘hotcake’ toys that are in peak demand by many collectors at that time. 

It is all right to pay a fair secondary market price for the toys you really want.  The sellers have to bear the shipping risks etc., especially if they have to import those toys for you.  If you are not comfortable with importing the toys directly, then someone else can do if for you at a premium.  This is after all a business contract or agreement between the buyer and seller, and it is a win-win situation for both.  Some sellers would even ‘reserve’ for you the toys on your ‘want list’ and notify you as soon as the toys arrive.  They could become your good friends and might even become your future business partners.

I also know of couples who got to know each other and eventually got married because of their shared interests in collecting toys.

By and large, most collectors buy toys because they simply love the characters the toys represent or the physical appearance of those toys.  Some toys like those Japanese anime toys in the coin machines, are just too cute that I have witnessed parents emptying their coin purses for their kids to keep slotting into the machines so as to get the complete set!  I was like, “if only my parents were like that when I was a kid”!

Anyway, the reasons to collect toys are aplenty, what matters most is that you enjoy your hobby and that it does not affect your everyday duties.  It is very important to maintain a balance in all you do and your life will be in harmony.