ABANDONING THE ADDICTION

My last acquisition. Or so I hope.

I thought it would be harder. To stop buying collectible figures. But once the decision was taken it was extremely easy for me to give up. I still have circa $150 in reward points on Sideshow that I intend to spent most probably in the She-Ra they’ll launch. Maybe it was easier than I thought because there hasn’t been any new statue that really grabbed my attention. This certainly helped me a lot. It also helped the fact that I don’t have any more free space to display new statues appropriately. I’ve put “Blackstar” from Bowie on the CD player because this was the album I used to listen when writing for this blog when it was the most important aspect of my life and I used to publish several posts a week. Always to receive heavy criticism from you, fellow collectors. I think the prices rise have come to a halt nowadays, at least at Sideshow side of things, stabilizing around the $500 for the average figures. This is a good thing. But the money I spent last year in figures almost broke me (another reason that pushed me to stop). I realize that, besides the lack of free space, collecting such expensive pieces was above and beyond my financial reality. I’m Brazilian and Economy is not going all too well around here. But even if it was going all fine it would still be unbearable to me to spend so much money on said figures. Want it or not $500 is not small money and can make a huge difference in one’s budget. Let alone if you spend this amount every two months average. Sometimes spending over 1k in one month. I confess I was a bit out of control in the past two years. And realize that collecting is like an addiction and decided that I needed to stop for the reasons aforementioned and because no addiction is good. Am I satisfied with my collection? Of course not. That are several pieces I would like to have and many will come that will get me drooling over them but one needs to know when to draw a line of what is sane and what is sheer insanity. I was insane about figures didn’t measuring the consequences of my urge to have the next cool piece that appeared. I am addicted to other things, heavy stuff, and had to put myself together, utilize a great deal of self-criticism, self-control, discipline and will to stop them. That was not easy at all. By comparison, to quit collecting figures was a piece of cake. Even though I love my collection, I still get myself thinking in the thousands of dollars I’ve spent on the pieces with astonishment. And what boggles me the most is what people will do with this figures when I’m no longer here? Of course my family will not want to keep them nor know the value of said statues or how fragile and delicate they are. So, I don’t know which end they’ll have but most certainly will not be a good one. And if I happen to move to another country, which is a great possibility, how will I take them with me? And where will I display them if I get to live with my brother in the US? There isn’t space to display them in his house and of course will be impossible for me to bring them all with me on a plane. So the statues can become quite a burden to me and my family. I never took all of this in consideration when I bought them. Have you?  In order to solve this I will be obliged to sell them for a price way below the market average since I will have to compensate the shipping costs from Brazil to US lowering the price to make them an attractive sale. But this is the future and problems that concern only to me, it is not the general scenario of the collectors.

Another thing that turned me off collecting is that from now on every statue will be computer generated and not hand sculpted, given scarce exceptions. Even though this means more detailed and fast produced pieces it also steals a great deal of the magic these statues have to me. Even though is the same artist doing his thing on Z Brush, I believe pieces created by hand to have a more artistic and limited flavor. Maybe I’m being a bit conservative here but that’s because I started collecting quite a while ago in mid 90’s. I will not blind myself to the benefits of technology and denial that there’s still artistry in modelling statues digitally but to me it steals part of the “soul” of the statues. The sum of all these factors made me abandon the addiction all the more easily. It was a blast to participate of such a vibrant and passionate community even though my posts were more bashed than praised. That’s not a definitive goodbye, since I’ll still follow the community and the market because I still love statues. But it will be like an alcoholic entering a bar and asking a Coke. I may or may not write a new article here and there but that is not an exciting piece of info to you as I’m aware. Excuse me for my broken English. As I said time and time again, I’m a self-taught English speaker so I don’t know even the basic formal rules. Sorry for that. And happy collecting to you all. :)