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I was wondering about this the other day, as I notice how much I must have spent in the past couple of years accumulating figures for my collection: where did I get the money?


I keep reading posts such as 'bills will have to wait', 'selling stuff to pay bills', 'my wallet is crying' and so on. And we all know that collecting is an EXPENSIVE hobby.
Especially with the Third Party uprising, and behemoths such as the combiners or Cyclops.

But where do you get the funds for your collection?
Do you budget, do you have a job (part-time or full time), do you use student finance, loans, parents and family presents, make sacrifices on other stuff.. what's your way?

I don't want to get nosy or too much into details, just curious to find out just how far we can go to get that one figure (and then another, and another after that..), money-wise!

I'm sharing the rent/bills with my girlfriend, I try to be cheap wherever possible, I'm very selective about my purchases, I try to look for good deals (sales, loose figures, etc), and I save up for the expensive items or ask for them for Christmas. I also sell off old TFs I no longer want and it helps soften the blow. Lately I've had to eliminate almost all import purchases and haven't bought a 3rd Party TF since the FP Insecticons.

I am very choosy about what goes in my collection. I have one third party item. I stick to Hasbro stuff, almost entirely.
Luckily for me, I have a good job and don't have any problems paying my bills.

I have a full time job and live at home. So my bills, at the moment, come down to commuting fee's. Every now and then I buy food (or snatch restaurant bills from my folks) and when I need to go to the doctor or send my car to the doctor, I pay for those, but, generally speaking, we're both doing pretty OK *knocks on wood*

I only own one 3rd party product (iGear Kup Heads) which was a birthday gift and I rarely buy Takara. Their price tags, more so the 3rd party figures, turn me off.

There's a part of me that's rather frugal. So toys over $50 bug the heck out of me (as in, I may drool but I can't actually bring myself to buy it 99% of the time). Even then, if the $50 toy doesn't fully grab my attention I pass. I'm much more comfortable spending $10-30 on a single figure. Generally speaking once I spend about $60 on toys for a month my frugal side begins to feel battered and abused. So I back off... if I don't I drive myself nuts and feel guilty when I buy things I don't need.

Because of all that nonsense I haven't had to sell anything to buy more. I know once i move out I'm going to have to buckle down and place strict limits on how much I can spend, but for now I'm enjoying what liberties, however small, I have.

I have a full time job, I live on my own, and I have a mortgage.

So these days it's a case of tight budgeting. There's maybe one week a month where I don't have any bills to pay (other than general living expenses) so I will look around to see if there's any deals on vintage figures.

Otherwise, i'm mostly waiting until big sales are on to pick up figures. Whatever I do though, I always hunt around for the best deal unless it's a figure I absoloutely must have (e.g. Year of the Dragon Ultimate Optimus Prime) in which case ... the electricity bill can wait a week.

After 15 yrs in the Navy I do alright. Bills are all under control and I also have other hobbies I pursue. During ROTF and DOTM it got a little crazy money wise. My collecting only covers Generations/classics/universe and the Movie lines. Now that the movie line is all but dead it's not as hard.

I only collect the cyberverse prime stuff instead of everything, which is a huge cash saver. But back when ROTF/HFTD/DOTM came out I did do little things here and there to save some cash.

Drove to work a little slower which made the gas last a little more.
Got food from the store instead of eating out so much.
Drank more water instead of so much soda as I was surprised how much even one per day can rack up in a month.

I work from home and make decent money. Low rent and low car payment means more $$ for figures, yay!

I've been collecting seriously since Beast Machine/RiD came out back when I lived at home so I have a lot. I rarely feel that burning need to have anything anymore so I focus on Classics (which I was lucky enough to start with at the beginning) and I've avoided the DOTM for the most part and Prime entirely which is saving me a ton of money. I'm unemployed right now so what I sell goes towards bills. Right now, most of the stuff I want is just to make other stuff out of or 3rd party. I'm hopefully getting a job tomorrow so I can get myself out of this little hole I'm in. I have an apartment with my girlfriend (who somehow manages to spend almost exactly what she little brings in) and no credit cards or anything like that so it won't take me too long to get back on my feet and into collecting again. It's weird, I'm 32 and the person I owe the most money to is my mom and I'm doing some work for her by assembling her new place to cook food cabinets.

Please buy my awesome Transformers so I don't have to move back in with my mother.