I’m wondering if there are any fellow collectors here on Grouvee? I’ve been a collector pretty much my whole life; mostly comics but also toys/figures and one or two other things.
Having moved to the UK means I’ve a head of stuff back home at my parents taking up space. As such I’ve been trying to go through it each time I visit, keep only the “important” items and sell/give away the rest.
My biggest dilemma at the moment is if I should keep my collection of Australian-published Phantom comics (of which I have 1026) or just keep favourite/ key issues.
I do love the thrill of collecting, but it can be tricky.
Those are really cool. I’ve toyed with the idea of collecting guides like the old Prima ones for my favourite games, but at this point I really don’t need another thing to collect
Sorta… i used to collect more. I was big into Hot Wheels / Matchbox cars for a long time but scalpers kinda ruined that. Ive played several trading card games so ive had a lot of collections of those. Now mostly its game related stuff. Ive got a decently respectable zelda collection, and a handful of Fallout stuff. I suppose i could count my slowly growing library of gaming history books as a collection as well.
MTG, probably? I don’t collect collect it, but have a fairly decent amount of them and some of the expensive/rare/old ones, I’m planning to not get rid of ever.
Other than that, stupid shit like beer bottle caps, that kind of stuff.
My comic collection is viewable online thanks to the database software I use.
As for other stuff like I’m slowly putting together a personal wiki to track it all so I don’t accidentally buy the same thing twice (which has certainly happened )
I would always collect figures growing up, usually Ninja Turtles. Now I have so many, in my old age, that there’s not enough space really to display them
For the moment, I collect these Mario figures [World of Nintendo, by Jakks Pacific]
I consider myself a collector, even though a collection is rarely the goal in and of itself… I just like certain things a lot, and I find the act of organizing, cataloging and/or displaying those things therapeutic in and of itself.
The main thing I collect are comic books. I think I’ve shared this somewhere before, but I wrote an article about how I keep them nice and sorted: Organizing Comics – Tyler Sticka
I keep a spreadsheet of my collection, and it looks like right now I have 3,260.
I get the sense when people actually browse the collection they’re a little disappointed. I have a handful of sought-after “key” issues, but a lot of my favorite series aren’t exactly burning up the back issue bins:
I have every Archie Sonic comic from the 1/4 ashcan through 200, plus spin-offs and stuff. Not the best comics, but they meant a lot to me growing up and I still enjoy flipping through them.
I’ve also collected every Usagi Yojimbo, except for reprints (meh) and the earliest Albedo appearances (way outside my price range at this point).
I’m a big Mike Allred fan, so I have just about every costumed Madman appearance and spin-off, as well as his X-Force and X-Statix runs and a bunch of other odds and ends.
Some other series I have a soft spot for are Akiko, The Maxx, Savage Dragon, TMNT, basically anything from the 80s and 90s that would have filled the dollar bins after the bubble burst (which was when I was getting into comics).
My comic collection is much the same, out of 4860 comics the only truly “valuable” issue I have is Saga #1, but then I’ve always enjoyed the “B” heroes more than the A-listers, with a few exceptions.
Interesting about your Sonic comic collection. I’ve got each one since Ian Flynn took over writing duties, including spin offs. I’m currently trying to get every variant cover as well. I’ve the pre-Ian Flynn issues collected in the Sonic Archives collections but I’m seriously thinking of getting rid of them as I want absolutely nothing to do with that absolute drongo Ken Penders.
Since movie to the UK in 2016 I switched to collected editions, save for back issues to complete runs. Recently though my wife wanted to get the single issues of the new Avatar series and I may have put in a standing order for the new Ultimate Spider-Man series. This could be dangerous
Spider-Man was my favorite mainstream superhero growing up, but I haven’t enjoyed the more recent issues I’ve dipped into, and I wasn’t a big Ultimate Spider-Man fan the first time around. (I did enjoy the “Life Story” miniseries recently, though.) But people seem to really dig it, so I’ll have to give it a try one of these days! I did preorder Ultimate X-Men because I love Peach Momoko’s interior artwork.
My partner let me splurge for Christmas when Fantagraphics had a 50% off sale, got a couple of gorgeous hardcovers of Wally Wood and Al Williamson EC sci-fi comics.
Oh, a lot of our bookshelf is devoted to Peanuts. It was the first comic I ever read, and I think it shaped a lot of my personality and sense of humor… I think reading Peanuts exposes you to the idea of failure being inevitable, but not letting it destroy you. I have the collections through 1970, and they are my security blanket.
Other odds and ends… Bone is great, we have a bunch of Peter Bagge, Charles Burns and Jim Woodring books. Oh, we have sections of our bookshelf with graphic novels from different regions, some translated and some not… I love Moebius, Lewis Trondheim, Franquin, Jordi Bernet, Miyazaki, Tezuka, Otomo…
I have a few comics signed by Dave Gibbons, which was a big deal for me but probably less so for you since you’re in the UK now! I remember walking into a shop in London and they had a pile of Secret Service #1 signed by Gibbons for cover price, and I was like “wait, there’s no upcharge?” and they were like “no, he comes in here all the time.”
I consider myself a collector, even though a collection is rarely the goal in and of itself… I just like certain things a lot, and I find the act of organizing, cataloging and/or displaying those things therapeutic in and of itself.
This is definitely how I feel. I don’t care about having a full collection, it’s just about knowing it’s there, sorting it, going through it, that’s what I like mostly about the hobby of collecting.
The ones I’ve personally tried, and as I like beers and trying different breweries and styles, it’s sort of a museum of my beer history, but one that takes way less space than, say, collecting the whole bottle. Not sure how many I have so far, probably around 500? I have half of the collection back home and the other one with me, so I will only know once I manage to put them all together.
I actually met Dave Gibbons at a con in Australia…for The Phantom which he’s only ever done a few covers for. He did do some original artworks at the con of the Phantom meeting characters from Watchmen. They were auctioned with the proceeds going to the Children’s Hospital in Sydney. I’ve photos of them all somewhere if you’d like me to send them along.
You know, I’m constantly amazed there isn’t a Grouvee-like site/ piece of software for collectors. Well, not a good one at any rate. A few promising things have sprung up over the years, but all of them vanished due to lack of money, interest or whatever else. With the collectables market being what it is, I’d have thought it’d be a very well worth thing.
The only option I can find at the moment that seems to be any kind of decent is Coleka which looks like it’s basically a one-man show. I’ve been playing around with it for about a month and spoken to the guy who runs it who seems really keen to get it to a good place, but it’s a little hard to navigate and the community it had seems to have petered out. (I also think he really should change the name, it’s a bit too close to sounding like a part of a chicken’s anatomy.)
I’d have thought a collectables DB would be a natural extension for someone like Collectorz or Libib, as they already cater for various geeky items, but neither seem interested in doing so.
It seems like there’d certainly be interest out there for this sort of thing, and I know I’d be happy to plunk down some cash for a decent database site/ software.
Video games, magic cards, pokemon cards, comics, cds, some weird movies and anime, out of circulation paper money, house plants, uranium glass, books by Clive Barker, and Chuck Palahniuk.
Ive always been a collector and like what other people said the act or organizing and displaying is therapeutic for me.
