Interesting subject matter Edd & something I have found myself considering more & more over the last couple of years, I've been at this a while now & when I first got into collecting again I did the buy anything & everything thing we most have & had a right jumble of stuff which did not feel right, when I dropped on my 1st ever baggies totally by accident in a mission to try to find the last few figures for my loose run I found that something that really felt right to me & I offloaded pretty much everything else bar my run of loose figures.
Now at the time it was great as it was an area of the hobby not many seemed to care about & baggies & even multi packs were cheap & plentiful, that coupled with the fact I was delving into an area of collecting there were still many many things to be learned & discovered really drove my collecting bug onward, through the years I've learned a lot & had a lot of fun in the finding out & documenting everything as I go, it really has been a joy & I have had a lot of fun with it & made some good collecting friends through the process, everything felt right.
Sadly in the last few years the prices have skyrocketed even that of what were once cheap & plentiful items that most had little to no interest in at the time & all the fakes coupled with the expense & scarcity of items has been making me reevaluate what I am doing with my focus, I have always been on a pretty tight budget but have invested some large chunks on long term payment plans when those special items have come up that I know I will likely never see again or at least not within my budget, I've been very lucky in terms of getting things at the right time & at the right price, but over the last 2 years this has done quite the turnabout & nothing seems to be available without doing some serious saving & I find myself questioning my collection, don't get me wrong I still love it & the family are never short of anything as anything I spend on my collecting is not cash intended for bills & such, but the collecting has turned very much to a slow trickle at best & TBH I am happy about it with prices the way they are now.
I still buy the odd price if infrequently but have also started to collect a few other modern bits which have been on clearance in discount stores, never thought I would see the day of me buying modern, but TBF the new 3.75" figures are dam good & seem to marry well with the vintage, I'm only on imperials & droids, but they have been making me just as happy & quashing the bug to add as much as a 2k multi pack would & that feels really good & lets face it, thats what it's about.
So that in tern thats made me think long & hard about the bigger ticket items I have sat there & if I should think about it being time to let some of it go & free up funds which could be wiser spent, kids will soon be at the point of leaving home & needing things like deposits & a car etc etc so & getting away with the other half more before my health issues limit what we can do even more.
In real terms I have thought about it & told myself not too be daft as I love the stuff & had so much fun over the years collecting it, but it may well be I should keep thinking about what I am doing & when enough is enough, oh the conundrum of collecting these days eh guys :lol: