Seibertron.com Energon Pub Forums

Yeah, I know, this is the eternal debate and there's been numerous threads already about this subject. Still, I wanted to start fresh by telling what I think about this.

Allow me a little copy/pasta from another thread:

I'm sorry to say but I find this (buying expensive toys sealed and perfectly mint just to keep them sealed and sending them to AFA getting them graded and sealed again in a bullet-proof plexiglass box) completely ridiculous. Not only you are not going to enjoy these toys, you are sealing them away forever! Because you certailny wont be displaying the AFA boxes to protect them from any light. Not counting the fortune it will cost each time you are AFAing.

Hoh well, like we say, your stuff, your money.

I, too, am guilty of keeping part of my collection sealed in packaging. However, they are at 98% doubles of Transformers I already own. This way, if something happen to one of my peice, I have a spare to replace it. Also, yeah, speculation. Still, everybody keep toys sealed nowadays so a sealed toy from today will be worth way less than the good old vintage. Offers/demands.

Anyway, what I mean is please AFA to your heart's content. BUT if you have the money to buy the rare and expensive peices and paying the expensive AFAing, you do have the money to get the reisue and enjoy the toy.
That feel when you remove it from packaging. The pleasure to apply stickers. The fun to transform them back and forth, posing them, and making dioramas! These toys are meant to be played with. Dont deny yourself that, even if your double is in a different color.
For example, SDCC Bruticus is worth AFAing, but you can get the G2 color or the retail version as your double to enjoy the mold.

I have a collection of carded Transformers. The goal is a little speculation, maybe, but it's mostly to have ONE example of every kind of packagings possible. I usually buy the cheap and unpopular ones so that it's not too expensive, or if it's on sale in store. The "double rule" still stand. I enjoyed my Animated Oilslick so much that I bought it again brand new so that HE would be Animated's representative on my wall. For room reasons, I'm going to sell the other doubles of the same collection, like the other Animated, and I'm selling the few TF mint in sealed boxes that I own.

As for doubles, for me, a recolor of the same mold count. I have a pretty big Starscream collection, but the other two Thundercracker I have (one is Generations, the other is DotM) are kept sealed because I already have a classic Starscream and a DotM one.

Anyway, tl;dr, what's the point of buying a toy if you are not going to enjoy it one way or another and you'll just hide it away from sight?

As you said, it's been discussed, but what the hell, I'll bite. I'm bored.

I don't have a large collection ATM, but if I kept all the TFs I ever bought, I'd probably have around 1000. I don't like boxes, and I despise cards. I currently have about 100 TFs, and only my BotCon 2011 Stunticons and BotCon 2009 Astrotrain are in boxes, along with my MIB MP-09. I didn't even keep the box for MP-08, even though it's my favorite figure. I am of the opinion that figures are meant to be enjoyed by either playing with them (regardless of what age you are), at least transforming them once in a while, or just displaying them together on shelves and feel elation when you look at your collection. I still have the box for CR Brave Max, but only because it's a large figure and I have to have it in storage for the time being. All my smaller figures from all the lines I collected are open and on display. If the box is to be kept, it would have to look really nice and the insert must be easily removed and put back in, as well as the figure placed into the insert. This is why I hate the Bayverse leader class figure boxes. I would have liked to have kept them, but the inserts and twisties sucked, so I threw them all away. Bottom line, I keep boxes for rare figures, and boxes that are sturdy and mostly cardboard without flimsy plastic windows. Cardbacks and smaller figure boxes get torn up in my child-like enthusiasm for holding a figure for the first time. Latest victim: FoC Prime and Shockwave.

Toy Story 2 said it best.

I open just about everything. Have kept some of the larger boxes because they're handy for sticking stuff away when I don't have it out on display. Can't think of a single TF I've kept in packaging without opening, although my SFC G1 Megatron stays in the box most of the time. I've a few doubles of other figures that I have kept in box, for potential future re-sale, but I can comfortably count all of them on my fingers.

I almost never keep TF's sealed in their boxes. I do keep the boxes for storage when I'm not displaying them, though.

I buy only what I like for displaying and not "investment" or re-selling, so there's no point in keeping them sealed.

If it's something I dont already have, I'm opening it up.

All of my Masterpeices, my limited edtion figures, my Japanes figures, my G1 reisue... I open them all. Then I may buy the mold again to keep it mint, but only if it's cheap. No way I'm going to buy a second 2010 Creator Primus or even a second Masterpeice just to keep it sealed. Not at these prices.

I used to keep most of my boxes, but once agan, one get out of room. So I trashed half of them, keeping the boxes of Masterpeices and Japanese figures. Some people do buy these empty boxes so I may as well sell them off Ebay.

Eh, like someone here said before: If your intention is to get rich, collect money, not toys. I collect TF cause I actually want to play with it and display it along with others, on a shelf, out of box.

So yes, everything I own is out of box. I do keep the cards though of delxues. Not sure why, since I never plan to sell these. Oh well.

The only ones I keep MISB are HFTD Elita-1. I kinda don't feel like opening her, got her cause it was dirt cheap. And PRID Bumblebee. It was a prize from hasbro, I have no plans on taking it out.

MP Rodimus got back in his box, since his arm broke. I might just glue it back and sacrifice transformation, if I get more MPs.

I never keep them in boxes. But i have a few boxes that i have kept to make moving easier. A transformer is meant to have 2 modes. If you keep it in the box you only have half a transformer. You cant play with it, you cant transform it, you cant pose it, the boxes take up a lot more space than the actual toy inside of it. If u buy a transformer in box and its in vehicle mode then just buy a car, jet or truck that looks like it, the joints and gimmicks it was given get wasted. And if its robot mode then buy a robot.

For G1,Encore and MP ..........two words........rubber rot. 'nuff said!

Sorry double post. Phones fault

Battery leaks too! MP Convoy, UM, Megatron and Grimlock. (in my case, Grimlock (the takara version) had the wrong batteries inserted.....straight from the MISB. (You wouldn't know that if it was MISB)

I always open my TFs. But I can see some appeal of keeping them in their boxes. When I go to cons sometimes I see them in package and I'm transported to a time when I was a little kid in a toystore looking at all of them on the pegs. I have a Slash and a Skeletor re-release still in their package.

gavinfuzzy wrote:Eh, like someone here said before: If your intention is to get rich, collect money, not toys.

That would be me.

In a somewhat ironic twist, I do keep sealed GEEWUNS. These are doubles (Within GEEWUN this is EXPENSIVE). All the other G1´s are boxed, but the Japanese made their boxes so that I can open them whenever and put them back, no visual change. My Masterforce collection is fully boxed, but I can play with the toys.

Why do I do it? Obviously not for the cashola, but the toystore feel of it. Like sitting in a HUGE pile of unopened presents.

Doubledealer93 wrote:I never keep them in boxes. But i have a few boxes that i have kept to make moving easier. A transformer is meant to have 2 modes. If you keep it in the box you only have half a transformer. You cant play with it, you cant transform it, you cant pose it, the boxes take up a lot more space than the actual toy inside of it. If u buy a transformer in box and its in vehicle mode then just buy a car, jet or truck that looks like it, the joints and gimmicks it was given get wasted. And if its robot mode then buy a robot.

Hey, I never thought about this point before. So true. There's a whole industry of diecast model cars that look just fine if they stay in box. Even then, you cannot open the doors, you cannot see the engine, you cannot really see the interior, you cannot roll it...

Like I said, I have nothing against keeping a toy sealed, as long that you have it again so you can enjoy it. Still, it mean you spend twice as much and you wast twice as much space. That's why I will put all of my sealed and boxed transformers soon on Ebay. I will only keep ONE example of each carded transformers bacause that hang nicely on a wall and I can actually SEE something. Some cards even have a gimmick like the spinning disk on the first release of the Star Wars Crossovers.

For me, the summum of absurdity is to seal them in AFA plexiglass boxes. Then, your toy is gone forever. You cant even touch the packaging!

On a side note, I lost the missile of my Generations Warpath. So, I just cracked open the brand new one I had in spare. Now my Warpath is complete again. By the way, anyone interested in a loose Generations Warpath sans missile? Only 5$!

By far the dumbest toylike to collect sealed in a box.

Invest in stocks if you want riches of money.
Collect toys if you want a investment in richness of your life.

I keep the boxes which is annoying, and cardbacks/Paperwork, as they store flat and take up no room really. I agree with the rest of you that toys are to be enjoyed. I like to transform them, perhaps mod them a bit and put extra faction symbols or reprolabels on them. I like to photograph them too (I'm such a pervert ) It's got to the point that I try to buy unboxed examples wherever possible, because I agonise over throwing stuff away. The way I see it, if I never owned the box, then it wasn't my decision to throw it away. I bought Banzai-tron (the Bludgeon mould one) on eBay unboxed recently, and was really happy that I didn't have to accomodate another unnecessarily-bulky box in my loft. A lot of Hasbro boxes are unnecessarily huge, wheras the FansProject boxes tend to be more fitted and basic shapes, so stow away nicely. I have a couple of figures MOC which I saw cheap (RTS Tracks and Jazz) because I thought why not. But generally my mantra is unbox them, spend some torturous time unwrapping the twist ties, and finally enjoy them.

RodimalToyota wrote:By far the dumbest toylike to collect sealed in a box.

Invest in stocks if you want riches of money.
Collect toys if you want a investment in richness of your life.

My job requires me to move quite often. I've lived in 4 houses withing the last 5 years and Will be moving again this winter. So it's needless to say that Storage and space are extremely important to my collection. But I still want to play and display them all.

Almost all of my TF's are opened; I think i only have four MISB. I always keep Cards for Deluxes just because I believe reading the Bios adds so much to the characters as a whole, and I'd hate it if I would loose those. That being said, I get rid of most Bubble plastic as it's such a space waster. IT's the same with Leader Class boxes. THEY ARE HUGE. Those Hasbro boxes are almost always 2 to 3 times larger than they should be. But the boxes are a great way to store the figs, especially large combiners or those with lots of little parts.

I don't collect Henkai or Takara but I am always envious on the uniform size boxes they come in. I'd probably collect more MIB if I could store them easier.

redoutlander wrote:(...) they come in. I'd probably collect more MIB if I could store them easier.

At least, you enjoy your TFs. There's a whole difference between "mint in box" and "mint in SEALED box" afterall.

-Kanrabat- wrote:

redoutlander wrote:(...) they come in. I'd probably collect more MIB if I could store them easier.

At least, you enjoy your TFs. There's a whole difference between "mint in box" and "mint in SEALED box" afterall.

You use the word enjoy a lot when making your case however you seem to use it only to your own own standards. I posit to you that those who only collect MISB figures enjoy them as much as you (or I) enjoy them free of their packaging.

It's just different standards; just because you (or I) don't agree with them doesn't mean they aren't as valid.

Mkall wrote:

-Kanrabat- wrote:

redoutlander wrote:(...) they come in. I'd probably collect more MIB if I could store them easier.

At least, you enjoy your TFs. There's a whole difference between "mint in box" and "mint in SEALED box" afterall.

You use the word enjoy a lot when making your case however you seem to use it only to your own own standards. I posit to you that those who only collect MISB figures enjoy them as much as you (or I) enjoy them free of their packaging.

It's just different standards; just because you (or I) don't agree with them doesn't mean they aren't as valid.

It's something that I cannot wrap my mind around: what's so enjoyable about having something, sealed in box, that have never been touched, tucked away deep in storage?

to be fair, I enjoy being the first one to open a toy. I buy pre-owned stuff and it rarely bothers me, but there's something special about getting a brand new package and opening it. All those MISB collectors are keeping that joy for future people, so well done to them.

-Kanrabat- wrote:

Mkall wrote:

-Kanrabat- wrote:

redoutlander wrote:(...) they come in. I'd probably collect more MIB if I could store them easier.

At least, you enjoy your TFs. There's a whole difference between "mint in box" and "mint in SEALED box" afterall.

You use the word enjoy a lot when making your case however you seem to use it only to your own own standards. I posit to you that those who only collect MISB figures enjoy them as much as you (or I) enjoy them free of their packaging.

It's just different standards; just because you (or I) don't agree with them doesn't mean they aren't as valid.

It's something that I cannot wrap my mind around: what's so enjoyable about having something, sealed in box, that have never been touched, tucked away deep in storage?

Allow me to present an alternate scenario:

When I was 10ish, I had all my toys in 2 groups: Transformers and Others. On a nearly daily basis I'd have my Transformers beat the parts off of all my other toys, leading to everything being totally trashed in a relatively short period of time.

But I enjoyed them.

Now I have them on shelves, practically statues. And I still enjoy them. It's a very different sort of enjoyment than what it was twentyish years ago, but it's still enjoyment.

craggy wrote:to be fair, I enjoy being the first one to open a toy. I buy pre-owned stuff and it rarely bothers me, but there's something special about getting a brand new package and opening it. All those MISB collectors are keeping that joy for future people, so well done to them.

this^ i love that feeling. if its an old toy and its un-opened you are the first to open it since it came out in whatever year. it makes it more special.

That's something I like very much too. Especially with older toys.

Because I already have Universe King Atlas, I planned to keep my Machine Wars Starscream MISB. It was under 40$ shipped so I bought it especially for that purpose.

Still, I'm a starscream fan and that version of Starscream was a real UFO. So, after a couple of weeks of keeping him sealed, I finally decided to open it.

TOTALLY WORTH IT.

It came with a sticker sheet with the instructions completely wrong about them! So, I applied the stickers based on the photos on the box and what I thought should logically fit. Then, removing the 10 missiles from their plastic frames and putting them on him. It now stand proudly in my Starscream collection.

I'm also keeping the empty box for the art, instructions, and because that's the only Machine Wars box I have.

Just in case someone misunderstood me about what is "enjoying" a transformers dont necesserally mean to trash them (I'm guilty of it for some of my customs however). No, for me is to unpack them, apply the stichers (if any) transforming it, then put it on the shelf in a cool pose if possible. Then, from times to times, I can go back and transforming it again.

That smell when you unpack a brand new toy, that feel when you are toughing the plastics, rubbers, and die cast parts, the pleasure of flaking the paint off Beast Machine toys, that satisfaction when you sucessfully transform it. All these feels, a sealed collector will never know.