Collecting habits?

[soundwave]

how much of your time does collecting take and how do you prefer to acquire your collection?

[kylefromdirtnapp]

Takes too much of my time. I started on eBay, but now I trade a lot, go to stores/flea markets, buy local collections, and ya' gotta hit the Goodwill/Starvation Army stores!

[dom]

Living in the uk my only real hope is Ebay and going to bootsales on a Sunday. I would rather buy stuff in person, but the collectors fairs here don`t really have a lot of variety, just a bunch of guys selling lots of new star wars stuff.

[soundwave]

i go to bargain stores and put up flyers and i try to use ebay as a last resort but yardsales and fleamarkets are slim pickings. and ebay usually get most of my buisiness because alot of the flea market people think the toys are worth way more than they are!

[shaxper]

There are months when I really get into hunting and devote most of my free time to surfing the web. Generally, though, the time I spend on it is infrequent -- maybe two hours a night for a week or so hunting ebay and online toy sites. If there's a new figure out in stores that I really need (usually JLU) I can conceivably spend an hour each day driving to various Targets and TRUs. Usually, though, the answer is about 15 hours a month on ebay and other toy websites.

[shaxper]

soundwave said:

alot of the flea market people think the toys are worth way more than they are!

Yes, that's been a phenomenon that I've seen more of in the past four years or so. Worse yet, they feel this way about incomplete, heavily played with items.

I think most of us agree that ebay's business style sucks, but it's one of the few places to go for higher grade stuff. I try a lot of other vintage websites as well (some have been invaluable), but I keep going back to ebay for the sheer selection.

[retro]

ALWAYS HAVE YOUR EYES OPEN YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU WILL FIND AN WHERE

[cmc1214]

I'll check ebay and various sites during my free time. Ebay gets most of my business, I also have a good local comic shop that carries vintage figures, quite a few flea markets and a monthly collectors show. I'm very lucky to live where I do we have a lot of buying options here.

[waywardmonk]

When I lived in California in the 90's I would often go to garage sales, flea markets & collector shows. There were several collector shops in the area as well. I would always find a good deal and never came home empty-handed. The only time I used eBay was to sell. Since I moved to Georgia, I have had to get used to finding the majority of my new acquisitions on eBay. The flea markets here are mostly just endless booths of new dollar store junk. There are almost no collector shows or shops. I've found a decent item a few times, but it's so few and far between it's just not worth the time and effort.

[figuremod73]

I'm in Georgia to. If I find something at the fleamarket anymore i'm shocked. One time I found 3 Megos and a few MOTU figures and it was probably the best day I ever had at the flea. Most of the time its just a waste of time.

[spockoda]

May 20, 2014 11:48:43 GMT -6 figuremod73 said:

I'm in Georgia to. If I find something at the fleamarket anymore i'm shocked. One time I found 3 Megos and a few MOTU figures and it was probably the best day I ever had at the flea. Most of the time its just a waste of time.

I'm a thrift store/flea market rat and I agree that even the flea markets have dried up in terms of people selling figures. Anymore, I end up using the internet to buy at least 75% of the figures or related items I acquire. When I first started collecting, I would put that number between 20-30%. I was buying more items overall, just not as many via the internet. Figures have kind of become a niche market. Around 2000 I predicted one day you would not be able to get figures anywhere but online as far as new releases went. My prediction hasn't totally come true yet but it seems to be heading in that direction.

[figurecollector]

I probably get 90%+ of my items from Ebay and the others from people I run across on this an 3 other forums I frequent.

[dwitefry]

As a teen I was very obsessive about things, so now I worry about getting obsessed or looking like I'm obsessed with them, even though I'm not like that anymore. So I take care to not spend too much time on any one thing. During Bootsale season I spend about three hours at the actual bootsale about three out of every four weeks - other than that it's a couple of hours on eBay every fortnight or so.
Other than the time to acquire them, I'd suppose about 5-8 hours or so a week go into the hobby - cleaning and sorting out new purchases, photographing and I.D.ing them, posting on sites and reading/watching reviews plus the odd bit of research and an hour or so of me sodding about and playing (maybe two if I've got the house to myself a lot, sometimes more lol). Those Indexes I do are done in spare time and can take a while if i need to compile info and photos from lots of sources (as I often do) and sometimes I do a toy-based writing project but that's not a regular thing and I wouldn't be doing anything else so it doesn't bother my paranoia .

[homeschoolman]

I'm goin on a flea spree this weekend for my b-day. Crossville, rockwood, then sweeSauron's eyeer.Anybody from tn here? I usually find some pretty sweet goodies

[bowheadwhale]

For a year now, almost all of my new toys come from flea markets and garage sales. I don't Ebay for toys anymore.