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 I ruined my childhood-a cautionary paragraph

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Bababooeyfett
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PostSubject: I ruined my childhood-a cautionary paragraph   I ruined my childhood-a cautionary paragraph I_icon_minitimeMon May 14, 2018 10:56 pm

When The Force Awakens came out, it was the first time I really felt that I became connected to my childhood, in which, everything important to me as a kid was Star Wars. I got my star wars collection out of storage and displayed it for the first time in "a long time (ago)." After the Force Awakens hype died down, I felt that I needed more nostalgia. I already had my collection. So what did I choose to do? I chose to go after the rare variants to keep those nostalgic feelings flowing. I found it exciting for sometime. But now I am at a point where my feelings of nostalgia and excitement have turned to obsession, anxiety and sometimes buyer's remorse. For example, and all too often now, I will have a rare figure, having already spent a fortune on it; but then I may come across the same rare figure in better condition. Now my rare figure suddenly becomes not good enough. I now feel the need to have a better example of that figure. I am at the point where I can look at my rare figures and only see the flaws in them now and not their rarity or my luck that I have such rare figures. Instead I feel the need to replace them. I have lost sight of the purpose of having this collection in the first place, which was to connect to my childhood. I have now replaced it with adult anxieties, the same thing I was able to escape from with the enjoyment of my initial collection being displayed for the first time since my childhood. Now when I look at my collection, it evokes this;...The figure is too flawed. What would AFA grade this as? Do I have the correct matching accessory? Is this authentic? Am I displaying them correctly so not to get too much dust, too much sunlight, too much humidity? Are my figures going to degrade?...?...?...? :I am stupid: doh Sad I have ruined my childhood, ...well not actually. Wink
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trappedtexan
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PostSubject: Re: I ruined my childhood-a cautionary paragraph   I ruined my childhood-a cautionary paragraph I_icon_minitimeTue May 15, 2018 1:57 am

Sometimes the collecting mentality takes over and it becomes more about having the best, or most, or biggest, or whatever. I pretty much had/have everything from star wars I ever want. There are a few pieces that if they fell in my lap I wouldn't pass but I don't actively seek them out. And if i am being honest it was the same reason I sold off the two glasslite vlix figures I had. I couldn't get true enjoyment out of them seeing them sit on my shelf like I do my own childhood wicket figure. So my rule is any large dollar investment figure is no longer a Grail to me. I just don't get the satisfaction out of them.

On the same note, I also collect many other lines and my top favorite right now is marvel legends. I jumped head first into them collecting the movie figures but now have reached a point where I am looking at these things on my shelf and wondering why I decided to get some of them. So my rule on that line is now restricted to just favorite characters instead of trying to get every figure the MCU has out. So now my shelf has many figures that I feel no connection to so am thinking I will box those up and just go with what makes me happiest. The collector mentality drove me to getting pieces i dont even like.

Anyway, the point being i can completely understand where your coming from. I have so many toy lines I collect that the "get them all" mentality will drive me crazy one day.

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Bryan

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Bababooeyfett
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PostSubject: Re: I ruined my childhood-a cautionary paragraph   I ruined my childhood-a cautionary paragraph I_icon_minitimeTue May 15, 2018 9:10 am

Thanks for the post. I'm glad someone else understands. I'll take out of your post, that I need some rules for myself. I need to set boundaries on my collection, to turn it from just a collection and back to a connection to my childhood again. I don't know what my rules or boundaries will be, but I will need to figure it out soon.
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trappedtexan
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PostSubject: Re: I ruined my childhood-a cautionary paragraph   I ruined my childhood-a cautionary paragraph I_icon_minitimeTue May 15, 2018 5:11 pm

Yeah. More or less, rules or guidelines or basic principles or whatever you want to call them is what helped me and though on occasion I still get that "need to buy this whole legends wave" type of feeling I am always able to talk myself out of it by stepping back and remembering what my rules are.

My collecting has become a lot more fun for me since it became more about what I want personally rather than what is a "complete collection/set". Of course with some lines there is a finite amount but with lines that are ongoing like legends it would literally never end until they cease making them, and for me that is to large of a goal line to try to hit.

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Bryan

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TauntaunScout
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PostSubject: Re: I ruined my childhood-a cautionary paragraph   I ruined my childhood-a cautionary paragraph I_icon_minitimeThu May 24, 2018 5:56 pm

Tune in, turn on, drop out. Reject the collecting rat-race.

Find a project that allows you to engage with your hobby according to your own self-stated goal of nostalgia. Wanna hunt rare weird things? Try hunting down unopened toys with price tags from the store you remember buying them at. That'll slow your pacing down to a glacial crawl. I know from experience.

You can also make up your own stuff that engages with your collection without collecting per se. I'm mostly a Micro Collection guy and I can never compete with the kinds of cash people spend on wax production items, original molds, unproduced prototypes, and the like. So I'm building the Women's Day Space Station at 1/3 scale for Micro figs to inhabit. It's a lot more engaging than just trawling eBay all the time.

Stay as far away from ACA grading as you can. It's an arbitrary score set by someone else that you have no control over. Today's 80 can be tomorrow's 70 or tomorrow's 90. Remember that this is art collecting and step back from interpreting this subset of art (toys) according to it's own very young rules and develop an artistic eye to do your own evaluations. In fact I'll throw this out there to the world, not singling you out: stop interpreting Star Wars in general according to it's own rules. Place it in the greater context of film history, and specifically American film history, and a lot of enjoyment can re-emerge.

Understand that no one has ever had an original idea. This includes me, and you. This means that when YOU want to collect because of TFA, everyone and their 7 cousins do to. Star Wars is hot and competitive right now and if you find that distasteful, go collect carded Willow figures before a sequel comes out and spurs everyone onto that bandwagon.
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PostSubject: Re: I ruined my childhood-a cautionary paragraph   I ruined my childhood-a cautionary paragraph I_icon_minitime

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