What started your collecting habit?

[Shinobi2u]

Wow, I'm coming into this reaaal late, but here goes.

Younger Days: I started to collect pens, stickers, and buttons. Yes, buttons. I had the mean habit of snatching the extra buttons that came with certain clothes. I had about 100.

Middle School: Pokemon cards and anything else related to them. It was my brother who wanted the cards and I bought all of them, but it was me who would level up in the Pokemon games. It was sad. I even knew the different kinds of Pokerap by heart.

High School: Beanie babies. As it stands now, I have over 200 or so from rough estimation. There are Beanie Buddies, Attic Treasures, Teenie Beanies, etc. I don't really like McDonalds, but I would order 2 Happy Meals about 3x each week just to ensure myself a complete collection. I, also, collected video game promotional items or marketing elements.

My hubby collected comics - Michael Turner ones - , some Legos, and many various Star Wars merchandise. He also had some anime and/or video game figures on his own.

Together, we started to amass a sexy video game collection. We have an estimated 300 total of video games comprised of mainly rare, mint, hard-to-find games. (Mainly rpgs, shooters or fighters on the PS2). I would love to begin on classic systems, but won't do it until I have a career going for me. We have various video game merchandise from normal preorders, hundreds of guides, standees, posters, or only retail and event/position items. We both used to work for video game retail and as a game journalist which allowed us access to awesome swag.

We started doing Legoes again, but stopped for the moment. Once again, I feel that this will resume once the career starts rolling.

We always thought Revy from Black Lagoon was a beautiful figure, but wasn't into buying figures at the time. Huge Mistake. It's been roughly 2 months, maybe even less, and the figures have spiraled into 40+ with at least a dozen on the way and many more to be released.

Suffice to say, we must - especially me - have an obsessive personality and pack-rat mentality meaning that any type of object we start getting into, we really get into it.

Heh, it's nice to know that I'll be seeing many familiar faces at the Obsessive Collecting meetings.

[Mr. Lobster]

We started doing Legoes again, but stopped for the moment. Once again, I feel that this will resume once the career starts rolling.

I somehow winded back into Legos too. I miss my orange transparent chainsaws and Ice Planet spaceship.

[Shinobi2u]

Getting those Legoes that you really wanted might put a dent in your wallet. I want to hunt down some pirate sets for my hubby because he never got the big ship sets that he always wanted.

[Onegai]

I wanted that Lego pirate ship too when I was younger...

[marukawa]

hihi! :3

Middle School: everything Pokemon. i even have all 4 gold-plated metal cards from burger king or was it mcD's i forget. still have a box full of cards, half of them from the first series of playing cards. all but a few from the 1st movie trading collection. pbbt... after a while i grew out of it and bought my first manga: Chobits vol. 1. eventually i came to have all 8 volumes. then i hoarded manga.

High School: hoarded more manga. bought several figures. hoarded DVDs for a while, didn't last too long.

post-high school: decided to settle with collecting doujinshi and figures. i own less than 10 doujinshi, i buy them sparingly. <___<; 14$ for a 26pg manga is not a good deal to me so i tend to stick to collecting figures more often.

[matman]

What started my collection habit?
I guess it started with things like collecting toys from Happy Meals, then it escalated from there into adulthood. Different things that fascinate me the same way as an itty-bitty matty. Bright colors and women!!

Man, I need to bust out my old AWESOME toys and bring my cousin over. Great f'ing times.

[Onegai]

It started with acquiring action figures (as one does) when I was a child. You know on the back of figure blister packs it would say something like, "Collect them all!" Well I think I subconsciously took those words to heart. XD

[Ogre AN-21]

As a kid, I used to buy, build and collect Gundam models.

As a teen, I used to play Yu-Gi-Oh! the card game very competitively. I bought and collected cards to boost my deck power as well as attended tournaments and events. So I guess my collecting habits mainly originate from there.

Then I started getting into buying and collecting PS2 games, many of which I don't finish or don't bother even trying.

Then this year, I bought my first figurine... After that I just kept buying and buying figurines till I got all the ones I really want.

After that I started purchasing anime DVDs, CDs (anime & game OSTs, J-pop/J-rock CDs), manga, different types of mecha toys in addition to figurines and PS2 games.

Now I can't stop. I have to buy everything I want lol.

Next, I will get into collecting artbooks =.=.

[Icetron]

I guess...it's probably those McDonald's Happy Meal toys, I kept trying to complete all the toys from whatever they had that was boys' toys and stuff (not the barbies/dolls). Eventually I gave up since I stopped buying Happy Meals and I got tired of trying to hunt down figures, I think my parents were too.

Now I mostly buy things but not really try to 'complete', but well it's not really possible to complete when you buy scaled PVC figures anyways (most of the time). I also buy Transformers toys, but I found it impossible to complete anything since Hasbro keeps doing repaints/remolds and stuff. >:( The closest I've gotten to 'completing' anything recently was the movie cast (1 of each character) for last year's movie and that already made me sick enough to not try that again lol. I guess that would be what got me back into caring about toys at all.

[MrDisco]

I don't think I ever responded to this thread...

I'm a natural born packrat/collector so that forms the basis to my hobby.

Anime DVDs: started in university when a buddy and I used to rent VHS (!) tapes of such classics like Ninja Scroll. That got me re-acquainted with anime after a long break from the early morning dubbed shows of the late 70s early 80s. After I got a job my friend/co-worker let me borrow his university student subbed bootlegged Marmalade Boy VHS set (something like 20+ tapes I think). I started buying anime DVDs from the DVD shop across my office. This then turned into online buying, particularly when Robotech and Marmalade Boy made it to DVD. Many limited edition boxsets later I called it quits. I'll, ahem, preview shows online and will wait for Blu-Ray releases before I start buying the shows I like. I'm sick of the poor quality releases, the double-dipping, the pack-in lotteries, etc.

Manga: Can't remember how this one exactly started. It was either Ah! My Goddess or Maison Ikkoku (or both at the same time) which got me started. My weekly trips to the comic shop resulted in a pile of books purchases, along with online orders. Now I just collect about 4 titles (AMG, Negima, Strawberry 100%, and Pastel..and Yotsuba if it ever finishes). I haven't found a series that really captures my excitement quite like AMG and MSN do.

Statues/Toys: Robotech. Full stop. Once the transforming vaklyries came out from Yamato it was all over. Thankfully for my wallet I've kicked that habit

Art books: That same friend from above showed me his collection and I was hooked. I snapped up all the artbooks that met my tastes and haven't looked back.

Doujins/RM/YT: Val+TC. It's all her fault! Can't even remember which ones was my first.

[Slaigar]

Manga: Gunslinger Girl. I watched the whole anime and loved it. At a local convention, I found the first volume of the manga. Of course, I'm totally compulsive so I decided to buy the rest of the books available (up to 3 at the time). Then over a four months, my collection grew out of control. After buying 400+ volumes of manga, I decided to just stick with DarkHorse.

Figures: It was the [Yamato] Seras Victoria and [Alter] Motoko Kusanagi got me hooked. It was last summer and I just spent a week watching Stand Alone Complex (Both 1st and 2ng Gig =D). Then I was searching GiTS stuff on eBay and saw the Motoko figure. I debated with myself for a month before dishing $90 for it. It was worth it. After that, I started looking at more figures and got hooked.

[DiStudios]

I had been watching and collecting Anime for a number of years (started with Ulysses 31, Voltron and Battleship Yamato) but at the time I had other interests which ate into Hobby money so the few bits of merchendise was limited to VHS/Dvd and the odd book. I did have a mix of random figures at the time but nothing really special. I moved on from my old hobbies at the end of last year as I started to notice more and more Anime figures being available (the opening of a London specialist Manga store help also). Since the begining of this year I decided that my hobby allocation would be spent building a collection of Anime figures exclusively the first of the figures that really caught my eye were Orchid Seed: Witchblade and Donne from Satsuriku No Jango.

[oroboru]

Collecting PVCs, or collecting in general? If we're talking in general, a few years back I started to collect Transformers again, after finding a MISB RiD Optimus Prime at a flea market. If we're talking PVC's, then it would be a 1/6 Kotobukiya Final Fantasy X Lulu I got for my birthday; one of those slightly rare and hard to find figures, even at that time.

[ADemon]

Back in the earky 80's I used to collect Comic books and Japanese Diecast robots. I have fond memories of my father driving me down to the Silver Snail and buying the huge Bandai America Godaikins. Those were good times. I even remember seeing the coveted "Tetsujin 28", but at the time, wasn't interested in it because it didn't transform. I'm still kicking myself for that.

Now I collect figures and toys with my son. He's 13 and our "subjects of interest" vary but its a hobby I love sharing with him.