On Retirement

There’s a really good blog post over on TFSource that takes an in-depth look at giving up toy collecting from several different perspectives. The article struck home with me, being a former collector myself, so I thought I’d share my story here.

Like most people who grew up with the brand, I had a pretty nice pile of shapechanging robots as a kid, but largely gave up toys as a teenager. In college, I got into Beast Wars and wanted to pick up a toy or two to commemorate favorite characters. When Beast Machines came around, I was in full-blown collector mode, buying damn near every Transformer I could get my hands on. I also dabbled in the collectible market, buying toys from McFarlane, Moore, and others… Basically, whatever looked cool to me. Hell, I still remember selling back a couple of my old college textbooks so I could grab RiD Prime and Magnus.

Eventually, as work and dating and other interests consumed more of my life, I bought toys less and less. I realized that I’d lost the passion for collecting that I once had. It didn’t help that the supporting fiction in the ’00s was almost uniformly abysmal.

I still pick up the occasional tiny robot. I still keep up with some of the fiction, too. (The Boss Lady has recently shown me how good the IDW comics have been. Wow!) Overall, I don’t miss collecting. I don’t miss driving all over the place and lurking in Wal-Marts and Targets at 2 AM, hoping to find that one rare robot I need to complete a set. I definitely don’t miss the expense.

Do I regret it? Not for a second. And neither should you.