To you keep track of your toy accounts?
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!
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No I don’t keep an account. Reason, I do have a budget every month in spending on toys.
No account for me. Tried to set budget but never know whats coming. All goes heywire when I visit CSC or Ebay.
I will have sleepless night if the toy I planned to get is sold out. LOL.
Nope, I don’t keep track of the toys I bought. Very tedious!! Just remember what I got and just don’t over spend it..
Hi LEon,
Hi Katsuden,
That’s normal
Hi Hippo,
That happens to me too, and then I regret following my toy budget too strictly for that moment. Such a dilemma…
Hi deSMOnd,
Haha, I agree it can be quite tedious. But it’s good for record purposes to know where our income goes to each month
I have multiple versions of an Excel spreadsheet that acts as my database. Are they current? Nope. I sold some stuff, bought new stuff, and donated other things.
Sometimes I like to have records of what I bought; on the other hand, I don’t budget. I buy what I can after paying bills. When I can buy ….
i used to have an excel spreadsheet (regularly updated) to keep track of my diecast car collection. i’m also planning to do the same for my tf collection, hopefully, hehe.
Hi D7ana,
Accounting’s such a pain isn’t it? And we wonder how some people can make it their career!
Hi Bany,
Accounting, no matter how simple you make to be, remains one of those things in my life where I know it’s good to do, but will tend to procrastinate when it comes to doing it. It’s not easy