Do we have responsibilities as adult collectors?

[Dawfydd]

Luckily for me, MattG found one of the FO Troopers and sold it to me via the forums purely for his cost - now that was an awesome thing to do

Indeed, which is why i had perhaps an ill conceived idea of the rebelscum forum bringing in some waves i don't really know how many we'd have to collectively buy to get a good price on them but there are advantages, and disadvantages to this.
One advantage is less of the members here needing stock from stores.

Of course i also think more groups of collectors kids, and fans can also provide a lot of help as more children who might like these toys have access to the internet being able to share locations and save some for those who are having trouble finding them could build into a really good thing.


But i just have a lot of random idea's, there is fault laying at hasbro's feet for not providing more of popular figures and allowing people to rake in lots of money selling these for such a mark up.

[farmboynz]

Quite a few times I have found myself helping an adult trying to buy for a kid, though. It's nice to be able to apply my nerdy internet research and familiarity with the hobby to help educate their purchase when sometimes there are confusing choices to be made, fully aware that I will be 'that nerdy toy guy' when they tell the story later. In situations like that, and with store clerks as well, I always try to be a good ambassador for our people, but I'm not embarrassed to be an adult toy collector. I own it and often try to make some humour out of it.

I love the Collecting Code you posted, Matt. I hadn't read those maxims before but they resonate with me and rhyme with my own approach.

have taken some of your quote out to save space so not a full quote, but agree with you Rev Strone, I have been the nerdy guy, don't know how many presents I have help parents, aunty's buy and not even star wars ones, collecting is about fun,
I am not embarrassed every one at work knows my desk as it is covered in star wars mighty mugs and starts some great conversations, even get people sending me to links for star wars stuff to buy
but agree with the code, I buy what I want, don't buy looking for a profit, only buy extra when I know someone else is looking for it

[Quinn81]

interesting read, good topic.

I guess as an adult with my son (3 years old) I buy a lot for him stemming from my interest. I do save my money up like I did for force Friday and went into stores buying in bulk and some double ups for me. From an outsiders view it would have probably looked like I was a scalper or hoarder but its got to the point now that I feel if I don't stock up for future Christmas's and Birthday's he will miss out. For example I picked up a lot of the retro carded figures when they were available as I knew Hasbro were unreliable and could go back to 5 points of articulation at any time.

Any figure that looks cool is always going to be worth something some day eg. Darth Revan, if your only collecting for the joy of it would you sell your Darth Revan that you bought for $20.00 to a fellow collector for $20.00 as their kid really wanted it for Christmas?

Charters such as Revan, Darth Malgus, Starkiller, Shae Vizla etc. They have to be aimed at adult collectors my question is why do they decide to only make a few?

I guess its easy for me to say but my responsibilities as a collector is for my son but.... that's how I get my fix now even though I cringe when he opens the pack to play with, I want to scream out NOOOOO. Before him yes I was collecting to make a profit but then realised I was buying what I liked and had never any intention to sell as I thought I would never be able to get that piece back again.

[Dawfydd]

Charters such as Revan, Darth Malgus, Starkiller, Shae Vizla etc. They have to be aimed at adult collectors my question is why do they decide to only make a few?

This is what i have a problem with, entertainment exclusive mandalorians and the sith lords that draw so much money to aquire now, could be easily re-released for double the price and still massively undercut the scalpers.

But hasbro for some reason keep doing it, or knowingly ignore the practice it smells really bad, my theory is that hasbro peeps hoard some of these figures and re-sell them for some easy cash on ebay.. but it seems kind of silly.

royal guards, republic trooper from the last vintage waves i was hoping they'd get re-issued as malgus starkiller and shae were (and shan) but for some reason they weren't so the prices only went up even more.

Hasbro are just stupid.

[Darth Cadmus]

I still think Hasbro is largely ignorant to adult collectors as a whole. I think it was only last Botcon when Hasbro finally admitted that Adult Collectors were something like 30 percent of the purchasing audience.

Adult collectors are kinda like PC gamers. You may want to please them, and they're loud when they're upset, but often times they're collectively such a small audience when compared with the broader child/console buyers, so you'd rather focus on that majority.

[Dawfydd]

Perhaps we are a small number of buyers in the whole but.. if hasbro were remotely smart they could take a couple of steps.

Make a website/forum if they don't wish to employ people to monitor it, hand pick fans to do it for free.. there will be plenty.
make suggestions and release ahead of time wave lists, so they can get feedback suggestions and a rough percentage of adult buyers who would buy said product.
They could also consider acting on some of those suggestions by offering them to people through their website with decent shipping in mind, a better way to make some of the more obscure characters adults might want but children don't.

All of this, and feedback/suggestions from fans and hasbro would be so helpful for everyone, making the forum easy to access even children collectors could have their piece.

Maybe then we'd see less of the 8 different battlepacks with the same 2-3 characters in them (clone wars.. obiwan/anakin/ahsoka) when there were other interesting characters who got completely missed.