I am not entirely sure, is the short answer.
I've just counted the figures I currently have on display at my dad's place, in Italy (I currently live in the UK), and I have 50 in total, from movieverse, CHUG, Animated and Prime. Adding the ones visible in my flat in Norwich, I have maybe 60. Overall, probably less than 100, with almost half in boxes.
When I got back into collecting, I went a little overboard, and have been dialling it down since, selling figures, donating others, rearranging and distributing. But I haven't felt, in a long time, the real thrill of wanting a new toy in my hands.
Even during Auto Assembly, when I was fiddling with
craggy's massive
haul of robots, I enjoyed looking at them as a thing I never really wanted - I was happy enough with my one purchase of MP Ravage for the whole weekend!
In any case, I've noticed that for each shelf/theme/line, I only have what I consider to be the best representation of the character, and only for characters that somehow fit a sub-theme within that shelf. Example - Animated: initially, I wanted mostly Decepticons and Dinobots; then the Elite Guard figures appealed to me, so I thought, sure, why not. I realised that I wasn't really that big a fan after all, so I only kept three (Ultra Magnus, Voyager Optimus and Blurr). Decepticons are not the main cast, other than Shockwave, and Dinobots are still there.
Similarly for movieverse, I now have Leader Starscream, DotM Megatron and Shockwave, Guzzle, Hatchet, HA Jazz, Battle Blade Bumblebee, EM Optimus and the figure that made me come back, RotF Sideswipe.
(All of this can be seen in my
collection thread.)
The comics, however, more than any other medium, are my big love for Transformers - and they seem to be dictating what I will buy in terms of toys. Windblade - an interpreter, in some sort of exile to a different but familiar culture, under the art of Sarah Stone - check.
Potentially Combiner Wars Prowl, after all the very nice development from John Barber, and the multitude of artists, from Andrew Griffith's bulky redesign, to Nick Roche's table-flipping jerk.
Also potentially MP Star Saber, because of the religious zealot in James Roberts' vision and Alex Milne's pencils.
But other than that - really not much else. I bought MP Soundwave because of IDW's RID 21-22, MP Ravage because of the same, plus *one panel* in the MTMTE Remain in Light arc. MP G2 Sideswipe, because it's so perfectly G2 comic it pains to grin that much.
And a lot of the money now goes towards more comics, more art and more questions about what I want to do with my beastformers and PCC adorkables.
So... what about others? Why do you collect?