A couple of years ago, I saw a post on the Transformers Subreddit from someone who was completely burnt out on buying toys. Their collection was MASSIVE, with floor-to-ceiling shelves FILLED with Transformers. Easily, tens of thousands of dollars went into this collection over the previous several years. But now, they were just… done. And didn’t know what to do about it. Below was my response to them:
=======================================================================
As someone that’s had to sell off older toys of all kinds several times throughout my life, here’s my recommendation:
Go through each one and ask yourself why you bought it. If you don’t really care about it, sell it off. It’s better to have a collection of 5 figures you love than 500 that you don’t care about.
I ended up selling off or donating over 100 Marvel Legends, GI Joe Classified, and old WWE figures before I moved, and I honestly don’t miss a single one of them.
That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy my time with those figures. I had fun collecting them and posing them on the shelf. But at a certain point, I realized I had stopped buying things I actually wanted, and had just gotten in the habit of collecting because that’s “what I did.”
At the end of the entire process, I feel a lot better about my collection. It’s also opened me up to exploring other lines that I wasn’t collecting before, and just getting one or two figures that really spoke to me rather than the full collection. Now it’s about getting toys that I actually want, rather than trying to fill out some imaginary quota.
You said that nothing on the shelves currently is speaking to you. That’s okay. You are not under any obligation to buy anything that you don’t want. Maybe something will come along in a year that you’re really excited for! Maybe not! And either is okay. This doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing hobby. It’s okay to have SOME of the Avengers but not all of the Avengers, y’know?
Nobody else can tell you how you feel about something that you bought and paid for. Nobody else can tell you what your collection should or should not look like. Do what’s best for you and your mental well-being.
