$20G is nothing to snear at. Those sound like dealer numbers there. That's when you know you are either single, in a relationship with someone who shares your addiction or you are a toy or drug dealer or a pimp.
Oddly enough, I don't think I have more than $3G in my collection, but I started collecting back when these things were seemingly low in value, compared to todays demand and interest. I don't own any reissues and every time I sell something, it just keeps cutting down to my G1 figures. All of the stuff that I have is it's earliest release in the Transformers line, but I also collect a lot of other stuff that people are actually getting quite hostile to obtain from me.
I think in todays market, if I sold everything off, I might be looking at about $15,000. To give a few examples, I picked up my C9 loose complete pre-rub bluestreak for $15 and was given a pre-rub wheeljack that was still sealed in it's bubble. All of my stuff is very light wear to seemingly un-played with. I have all of the '84, '85 and '86 series, some of the '87 series and some of the '88 series.
I've gone well over 10 years in collecting now without giving these up. I don't think they will be going anywhere any time soon, but I do see myself picking up the ball and finishing up the collection soon.
I took a break for a while from collecting toys and moved on to collecting old skateboards. If you think this hobby is expensive, difficult and cutthroat, do a week or a month online looking for new old stock unskated skateboard decks, wheels and other goods. I used to be able to afford collecting them back in 1999-2002, but anymore it's become a low-brow art collector's game and not really for the skateboarder anymore. Most of the saught after ones fetch about $1,300 on the average, most being in the $600-$2,000 price range and they can range from $30 to $10,000 a piece, depending on what you have, it's condition and rarity. Some of the ones left in any condition are the only ones known left in the world and simply have never been for sale.
Some of it would compare to collecting the original art for the boxes of TF figures or the prototype figures themselves. The biggest difficulty that most skateboard collectors have isn't the amount of money that they are shelling out, the difficulty is in locating what they want which usually takes anywhere from 3-6 months to six years or more, averaging about 1-2 years, but after finding an owner of such an item who is willing to part with what they have at any price is usually the hang up.
It's actually quite dissapointing sometimes, because people become so hostile and so infatuated with these iconic chunks of wood that they will do almost anything to get their hands on them. Aside from having ties with these collectors personal memories and tastes, a lot of these decks have ties in with the lowbrow, rock and surf art crowd, some having ties with celebrities like Jason Lee and some having ties with bands, movies and other pop culture. On top of all of this, they were simply made to be totally and completely destroyed. The combination of these elements makes for the most volatile collectors market that I have ever seen in any of my experiences.
Most eBay auctions end early in sour side dealings these days. It used to happen once in a great while, but now it can almost always be expected, and with good reason. If you get an offer for something climbing above $2G, you are going to pay through the nose in paypal and ebay fees and the buyer is always interested in any form of eliminating the competition.
As of right now, skateboards have escalated in value percentage over their time in existance more than any other collectable or antique ever and it just seems to keep going in that direction to no end. I'm sure that everything has a cap, and so far the most ever paid for an old skateboard deck has been an airplane ticket and $10,000 cash, but the average just keeps soaring.
If I sold my deck collection, because of the specific ones that I have, I could pull down about $25,000 or more, which seems totally and completely obnoxious to me because like my TF stuff, I'm just not in it for the money. In the past year, people are paying twice and offering twice what most of the stuff that I have was going for a year ago. I don't have anywhere near that amount of cash wrapped up in them. I was just fortunate enough to stay a few years ahead of the rush.
I'm glad that I'm basically finished with skateboard collecting, because I simply can't afford this sh-t anymore and I'd like to get back into collecting the G1 figures that I don't have.