A Collector's Take: Confessions of a multi-collector

12:00 PM on 08.14.2010   |   Call Niero

When Chris H. announced that he was going to pass on his amazing feature titled "A Collector's Take" to a fellow editor, I knew I wanted a crack at sharing my take on collecting with our readers. While considering what area of collecting I have the most expertise in, I realized that I collect in far too many areas to really consider my collection one thing or the other. It is not mostly vinyl or mostly PVC or mostly resin: it's a conglomeration of many types of figures with no definable theme or boundary.

While at first I was disheartened, I realized that a lot of our readers are probably in the same predicament. With so many awesome figures in every genre, it becomes difficult to stay in the bounds of just one category. I mean, who can resist getting maybe just one figure from Super7 or a few Nendoroids? I am sure even purists from a specific area have at least one rogue figure from another genre wandering around! So hit the jump to check out my take on multi-collecting! 

My collection started innocently enough with a single vinyl figure that caught my eye in KidRobot. It was only $60 and I had money to burn, so I thought nothing of picking him up to brighten up my room a bit. I went back a few times, picked up some blind boxes and Dunnys, but nothing huge or extravagant. Then I went to Otakon with Stephen and discovered Japanese trading figures. At $5 a pop for something with a lot nicer quality than vinyl blind boxes, it seemed criminal not to buy them. Then, Cranston Fellows Jr. was released, and he was just too adorable not to get. And this is about the time I started thinking of it as "our collection" rather than "the toys we bought." It was a turning point. Going from a person who occasionally buys figures to a full-fledged collector is a conscious decision. It is a pretty big commitment, taking up time and money that could be spent elsewhere. But for me, it was well worth it.

My story is a little different from most because I was never alone in collecting. As I have said in previous posts, I share this collection with Stephen and none of the figures are "mine" or "his" (aside from the Mugi Nendo, because dear lord, I hate her eyebrows). But even so, collecting would wind up becoming a huge part of my life. 

It has been a little over a year since we bought that first figure. To say that our collection has grown exponentially is practically an understatement. We have well over 500 figures, and most of them are pretty sizable. The shelf above is on one of our 3 detolfs, all of which are packed. As you can clearly see, it is not only a big collection but a varied one. On that single shelf we have PVC from 3 different companies, large vinyl, blind boxed vinyl, kaiju, and a resin custom. Oh, and the little pig was a gift my brother gave me. He bought it from one of those machines where the toys come in little plastic spheres and it cost all of 50 cents, but he was too adorable not to add to the shelf. As you can tell, I am not what you would call a toy snob. 

For a while I really wrestled with the thought of being a multi-collector. I was at first very involved in the vinyl scene, and many hardcore vinyl collectors do not like PVC. So I bought scaled figures sporadically, all the while thinking of myself as a "vinyl collector." With the addition of the red Rose Vampire, who is on our red and orange shelf pictured above (and yes, almost all of our detolf shelves are color-coded), we started collecting kaiju, which is also thought of as separate from vinyl even though they are made in a similar fashion. With so many different cliques in the collecting world, I was simply overwhelmed. What type of collector was I?

Right around the time that I was attempting to classify our collection, we bought this painting. Paintings are an entirely different subset of collecting, and I know people who only buy artwork in this format. It was around this time that I realized that it simply did not matter what kind of collection we have. It is a multi-collection, incorporating what we think are the best figures from all areas. At this point, we have something from almost every area aside from statues, which are out of our price range. 

Note: The above painting was sadly injured in a traveling accident, but the damage was only to the frame and we are buying a new one. Also, Leontine Greenberg is amazing. You should buy her stuff. 

If the conflict over what type of collection you have seems silly, you obviously haven't spent a lot of time on the KR boards. People there are very concerned with classifying figures! I have not only come to terms with the fact that our collection is all over the place, but I now embrace it. It is awesome seeing so many different types of figures and other forms of artwork all together, and they "fit" together surprisingly well!

Sadly, some of the PVC figures need to be displayed on their own. We have about 350 vinyl figures and 150 scaled PVC (200+ including trading figures and poesable stuff), but the PVC just takes up more space. In the detolfs, we can fit about 3-5 PVC figures per shelf, whereas you can easily fit 10-20 vinyl/resin figures. Displaying will be one of the main topics covered during my stint here at A Collector's Take, and by the time I do a post on that, I will have risers so you can, y'know, see the figures in the back! 

So there you have it, a brief glimpse into the collection and mind of a person (or people in this instance!) who buy all sorts of figures! I am going to be covering a whole bunch of awesome topics as time goes on, including the aforementioned display post and a quick rundown on budgeting for multiple kinds of figures. Maybe we'll even be able to get into some juicy topics like the nature of collecting! 

In conclusion, I would very much like to hear your opinion on collecting and what types of figures you collect! Are any of you multi-collectors or do you collect only one type of thing? Maybe you fall somewhere in the middle? Let us know!