What started your collecting habit?

[Firestorm ZERO]

Putting up another question up if you feel like discussing.

What started your collecting habit? Like art books, manga, figures, etc... Whatever it maybe.

I'll start.

I first started collecting h-mangas Believe it or not... due to H-Gurl in another forum.

Then at TC there were doujinshi and art books so I said might as well buy them as well

I guess it was the Tenjou Tenge Vol 9 that started my habit of collecting figures ~_~.

[Mr. Lobster]

Joining MSHP's Shirow Fan Forum got me into collecting Shirow figures. I was madly jealous of everyone's collections especially Lucas' daily posts of new additional figures and jkno's large collection of GitS figures.

[norm1ized]

I've been a pack-rat (collector) forever since I was little collecting baseball, football cards, then moved on to comics.

I started toy collecting and got completely obsessed spending alotta $$$ out of every paycheck, just spur of the moment.

Then things started getting out of hand when I bought my first statue (resin), I quickly had 4 within a few months and no money...I totaled up all the toys and statues I had bought in just a 2 year timespan and was well over $2500 that I had paid out...so I figured my obsession got out of hand & quit buying toys and statues all together. (cold turkey)

I have a very addictive personality so I have to keep myself in check allotta the time.
I've just recently been purchasing pvc figures but am not as impressed with pvc as much as resin statues....so I'm just chillin for a bit so I dont get back into OBSESSION

[Mr. Lobster]

Collectors ANON

Everyone say hi to norma1ized. Hi I'm Mr. Lobster and I too am a collecting addict. I understand how you feel becuase it's just as bad for a college student. I shutter thinking about how much I've spent. I justify buying more because I say I'll sell the rest of the stuff on eBay later, but I never get to it.

[norm1ized]

Collectors ANON

Everyone say hi to norma1ized. Hi I'm Mr. Lobster and I too am a collecting addict. I understand how you feel becuase it's just as bad for a college student. I shutter thinking about how much I've spent. I justify buying more because I say I'll sell the rest of the stuff on eBay later, but I never get to it.

Yeah I tell myself the same damn thing but for real I'm running out of room in my apt...bout to move into a house in the next few months but I just have way too much crap, its all nice crap...but crap none the less.

[Susano]

Heh, I blame my Hubby for the anime and manga... he just did not realize what he got into by showing my the first Gits movie. But the collector in me comes from being the descendant of a long line of pack-rats.

[DualSoul]

Started with manga and doujinshi, and then it ballooned from there.

[jkno]

I started collecting lots of things years ago. In 1993 I started collecting music, and from 1998-2003 when worked at a radio station having a music show, I managed to get a collection of 2500 original CD's. I also collect stamps, African and Asian wooden masks and statues, Romanian Payboy edition etc.

My 2 main focuses remain Star Wars and Ghost in the Shell (or anything Masamune Shirow). I won't talk here about Star Wars (you can see my collection in my sig), but about GITS. I started at the beginning of 2006 with a few cool figs. Then looked into other GITS or MS figures and now I have a collection.

My focus remain the figures and I prefer PVC to resin due to resin's fragility - had a bad experience a few years ago with a nice resin Buddha statue which broke and don't want to repeat it. I also got a few manga and art books.

Since I live in Eastern Europe it's hard to get original products but I do my best in obtaining them. I don't have an international credit card so there are 2 friends who help me pay for my stuff (Val knows she was payed by one of them ).

I registered on takotech forums in January this year and shortly after that I found this forum too where I found some nice collectors and friends.

[Deibi Manabu]

Everyone ready for a really loooong story?
Got your tea/coffee/beer ready?
Popcorn?

OK!


Well, it started for me when I was a kid, collecting Matchbox or Hot Wheels cars. I always wanted the very best of all that wason offer, but with our limited budget and family poorness, we couldn't afford many of them...

This obsession turned to Lego when I first saw the old monorail set for the space sets of the time. I could never afford it, as it was then AUD$120, which was $120 too much for my family! ^^ That didn't stop me from wanting lego stuff, and I was able to get six or seven smaller ones apart from the few old ones my brother once bought.

Around 1994, I first saw Akira, and then started to draw anime/manga stuff for serious ambitions (which still hold true for me). I had the chance to buy my first manga back in 1996 which was a Cantonese version of Ah! My Goddess! #12 (which I still own), and this made me want as much manga as I could find - trouble was the fact that there was none available in Australia back then, apart from the Chinese ones.

But, in 1998, I had the chance to live in Japan, which got me right into the right area for seeing/being in the anime/manga community. I wasn't able to read any due to the reasons I lived in Japan (a very long story), but I did buy the full set of Mamotte Shugogetten (volumes 1-11) and a few more of AMG. This of course cemented my love of manga (Japanese versions only), and I still buy as many as I can - as seen with the 'Sing "Yesterday" For Me' manga.

Also while in Japan, I was subjected to my first sights of figures, not that I hadn't known of them before (I had seen some mentioned in old copies of Britain's SNES mag SuperPLAY). While I couldn't buy the resins due to severe lack of funds, I was able to buy a cheap bargain bin figure of Kouran from Sakura Wars made by Bandai (which I still own).

When I returned to Australia in 2000, however, I still wasn't able to buy figures, due to funds and the fact that Australia only had the odd rare resin figure - the cheapest ever being $120.

Hey - that's not the end (though I'm sure you wish it was ). In 2004-5, I had a job, and started to buy Lego again - really old space sets I'd never got around to buying (I still own them). It wasn't any reason I actually remember, but I tried ordering the really old resin kit of Griffon's Unagi (Popotan) from HLJ, but I cancelled out. The reason escapes me, but the fact I tried for it makes me remember that the first figure I actually bought (other than that Kouran figure from 1998) was Kotobukiya's Nijihara Ink (Moetan) from the eBay seller Alan-HK (I think that's the name - he's still selling a few figures every now and then), and I've never looked back! ^^

Only because I've not fully worked it out yet, this is just an estimate - I think I have around 110 figures (not including the Kouran figure)....I think! ^^;

[Mr. Lobster]

Cool, a Lego collector! I had the semesterly lego catalog when I was little and practically drooled over the expensive figures.

Speaking of Legos, you played with them though right? I'm still trying to get one Lego set, the Lego Pizzeria that comes with pizza delivery car and small outdoors pizza building. I think that is the perfect set because I had it before.

Of course I'll rip it out of the box and build it despite it being quite rare.

[Deibi Manabu]

Yep, still played with them, even though I'm 30-ish.

I got the rarest stuff from the late 70's-early 80's, and I built them straight away, first to check the pieces were still there, and second because I like building them! ^^

I'd love to see anime characters as Lego style! ^^

[Siye]

God... I'm a packrat by nature... all my collecting started somewhere and usually diverges into different things (most of teh time several overlapping at once)

Early-Mid Grade School - Stickers -> Pens -> Coins ->Stamps
Mid-late grade school - beanie babies -> pokemon cards

Then by a miracle it stopped for a while

Mid-late high school - DOUJINSHI + Manga
Now in uni - DOUJINSHI + Shoes (nike sneakers)+ (manga lesser extent)

I collect figures and artbooks sparingly too. God... doujinshi is the killer though.. I have to be over 400 now (stopped counting at 300), but the shoes are racking up to be VERY expensive (usually 100-150 per a pair)

[shawn]

Everyone ready for a really loooong story?
Got your tea/coffee/beer ready?
Popcorn?

Tea. Check!
Coffee. Check!
Beer. Check!

...*starts reading*
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......*still reading*
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[shawn]

My collection of anime starts when I first had a glimpse of a couple of posters in a friend's house of Shirow's Steam Angel and Neuro Heaven. And after a glimpse through his artbook, Intron Depot, it confirms the start of my obsession. I was infected then after... by hook or by crook, I have started collecting Shirow's art but mainly on the more general releases. None of the GITS interest me too much... eventhough I don't mind them at all.

Galgrease came after and when the second series started, have to own it as well eventhough my wallet screams out NOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooo!! ...but it was too late then.

BUT before then when I was younger, I had a collection of Transformers mostly of Takara and some from Hasbro which I'm not too proud of because of the state they were in because naturally I play with them and...

ZOIDS! Mechanical Dinosaurs!! WOOHOO!! ...which were released in the 80s. It takes a while for me to built them then, but to be able to put batteries in them after or wind them little motors up and see them work/move/light up... it's such a satisfaction. I have a whole cupboard of those but I could only affor the smaller ones... The biggest I had would be a T-Rex. Oh, oh, and they have customized parts as well, like weapons and stuff to add on the back or sides of each different Zoids.

[skicow]

Well I've been collecting comics since about 1980, and about 1997 or so I started to see manga appearing on the comic book store shelves, Kamui, Mai, Area 88, etc. which I really liked (except for Area 88...didn't really like that much...) then I bought my first Akira brought over to North America by Epic and I was hooked for life. Was introduced to Shirow's Appleseed a few years later and fell in love with it....and that is why I'm on a mission to own everything Shirow!