by Sal Rodriguez
Shelves: Full / Promises: Empty I’ve never kept any collecting ‘promise’. I said I’d never get into NECA 18” figures. I have over twenty five now. I said I’d never get into 3 ¾” figures. I’ve got over two hundred now. I said I’d only buy one version of a character and not get into variants. I’ve got over one hundred Hulk, Spider-Man, Flash, and Iron Man figures combined. I said I’d never get into the Star Wars line. “It’s an abyss”, I said. I drove to Walgreens at midnight to get the white Prototype Boba Fett and Darth Vader from the 6” Black Series. I said I’m not buying any more Hasbro Marvel Legends. “Their quality sucks”, I said. But the ‘Build-A-Figure’ beckons me. No more promises. We all know what promises are meant for…
I’d be hard-pressed to call it an addiction. Some people classify addictions as diseases. Cancer is a disease. Why would anyone put collecting into the same category as cancer? There’s no ribbons, no fundraisers, no pledge drives, no celebrity spokesperson. No one’s dying here! Collecting is not an addiction, nor a disease. It’s a hobby. A hobby that can turn maddening, yes. But still a hobby. My friend Dennis collects stamps – old, rare, expensive. No one calls stamp collecting an addiction!
I suppose some people have a severe case of the madness. These people who wait outside of Toys R Us and Target, getting there as soon as they open the doors…these guys…they’re nuts! They’re the addicts, right! These people who walk into stores with a razor blade and steal ‘Build-A-Figure’ pieces right off the shelf. The people who return packages to Wal-Mart with a different figure inside - they’re the crazy ones! The people who buy the entire store’s inventory for whatever reason – to scalp, to hoard. “Four to keep MOC, four to open.” What about “army building’? Twenty of the same exact figure! Nuts, right?
I’m no psychotherapist. Guess I can’t speak for anyone else. As for my own collecting, I like to believe I’m mature and reasonable. I once let a kid have a figure in the aisle. It was a figure I’d been wanting. There it was, in the store, in my hand. I saw a kid looking at me, and looking at the figure, then looking at me again, then looking back at the figure. I asked him, “You want it?” His eyes lit up. “Yes,” he answered. I gave it to him and he ran over to his mother. Yes, I did that. So how addicted can I be, right? A meth addict is not giving away the remains of his stash to some stranger with nothing gained in return!
“You can be a hunter without being a collector, but you can’t be a collector without being a hunter.” That’s what I realized as I visited the home of a friend, whose husband is a hunter. Various animal heads line their walls. They’ve even got a full bear and a full lion! He’s a hunter and a collector. Me too. I hunt and collect action figures. No blood. No politics. Every one of his dead animals has a story behind it. My figures do too. For most of my collection I can tell you how I got each one and what hassles or inconveniences I went through to get it. I’ll tell you which is the first figure I got from each line – why, where, and how.
I’m not going to tell you there’s a maker or a series that I wouldn’t collect, because I said I wasn’t going to get into Funko and they got me! I’m also not going to tell you my limit for how much I would pay for an action figure, because it used to be $30, then it was $50, then $80, then $100, then…well, you get the point. A maddening hobby, yes, but far from an addiction. And as 2014 draws to a close, and I think of collecting in the New Year, looking at my bank account…I’ve decided that I’ll only collect NECA, Mezco, Diamond/Marvel Select, Art Asylum, SOTA, Jakks Pacific, and DC Collectibles. But I’m not making any promises.
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