I have been wanting to post this question and get your guys/gals opinon for awhile now.

 

I have friends who collect Transformers and other toys and leave them in the box more for the idea that one day they are gonna be rich by selling them off for tons of cash.

 

I try and tell them that anything you buy now will not be worth much more and most of the time it will be worth less due to the fact that almost EVERYONE is collecting them and keeping them MIB.

 

If you think about it, the only reson older toys are worth anything is that back in the 80's kids opened and played with them and it was before anybody really "collected" toys except a chosen few, and the reson they are worth money now is they are very very hard to find opened or in a box.

 

Lets say you buy a Energon Megatron today and keep him MIB...in let's say 15 years from now there are going to be thousands upon thousands also still MIB and it wont be but maybey worth a few bucks more (or less if nobody likes that robot).

 

The only ones i feel will continue to go up are Con exclusives and very hard to find ones only available as store short run exclusives.

 

Sorry for the ramble..but i know of a guy who spends pretty much his whole paycheck on toys and thinks one day he will be rich.

I think having a wife n kids or a house is better in the long run than sitting in a small apartment lined with toys dreaming some dream about fortune around the corner.

 

 

 

So what do you guys think of the whole keeping it MIB idea.

Please pardon me if I sound harsh. :) But yeah, I'm bitter.

 

Me as a kid. "I'm gonna collect baseball cards. I'm gonna be stinkin rich!"

 

A few years later. "OK the baseball card pension fund didn't pan out. I'm gonna collect comics. I'm gonna be stinkin rich!"

 

Yet a few more sobering years later. "I'm gonna collect Transformers and keep 'em minty fresh- Ah screw it!"

 

Fine, it didn't happen exactly like that and I realized all that early on so it didn't ruin my enjoyment of my hobbies. :)

 

There's nothin wrong with keeping them mint in box. Just don't expect to retire from it. Invest. Play the stocks. Start a business. There's better ways of managing money. Lord knows if toys were the ticket to financial security we'd all be hearing it on the news.

Like WRX, I've collected many things over the past 15 years, and they all follow the same market trend. At first nobody knows about the collectible, and the prices are reasonable. As more people think it's "cool", the prices rise. Eventually, everyone loses interest for whatever reason, and the prices plummet back to the original market value.

 

Anyone who thinks that toys are good investments has not been collecting for very long. Veteran collectors will remember old lines that were "super-collectible" and "great investments" when they were first released, but are now essentially worthless, like Playmates Star Trek and POTF2 Star Wars. Of course, this is because toys (or any other collectible for that matter) have no real value. They are only worth what someone else is willing to pay for them.

 

Not only do toys make poor investments because the market is extremely volatile and guaranteed to crash, but also because you have to maintain your toy inventory, which can be very cumbersome for large collections.

 

So, yes, your friend is unfortunately very naive. But he'll catch on eventually.

 

-Nathan

Between drkknight001 and myself, we have over 8,000 comics. we don't collect these at all for the money, they are for our enjoyment. Sue us, we like the stories and art. However, urban myth or not, we have heard tales of poor souls who spent 20,000 dollars on comics as an investment for their child's college fund. However, when college for this child came along, they couldn't even get back the 20K they had spent. The market just wasn't willing to pay the price the people wanted for these things.

 

I feel it's the same thing with TFs. why buy them if you aren't buying them for the shear joy of playing with them. It's like Laura in 'The Glass Menagerie', relegated to live on a shelf the rest of her life just like her glass animal collection. These are toys, they are MEANT to be played with.

I collect for the toys, not for the money. If you do it the other way around, you are just a plain fool. :tdown

Keeping them mint in box is ok, but I prefer displaying them on shelves.

The thought briefly passed through my head when I got back into TFs during Beast Wars, but I quickly realized that I was collecting agian to play with and display these figures not to make a buck.

The only way to make a living selling Transformers is to either be a direct seller for Hasbro or purchase large lots off of ebay and resell them. I use part resellers to complete some collections but even then I don't see how they can make a living just doing that. (Any resellers here?) My only NRFB are the ones I have more than one of.

whoa siren i remember that book, read that in high school

 

i have some stuff i hope will go up in value but nothin MISB, save 20th prime [dont need him opened as my takara one is out and a armada prime as i already got the plx form of him]

 

comics i buy to read, they may go up in value but they may not give you your fortune, they are still a good read though

I tried to keep my RID Optimus in the box (the toy that got me collecting again) that lasted, oh, about 3 seconds...

I feel it's the same thing with TFs. why buy them if you aren't buying them for the shear joy of playing with them.

I feel the same way.....I never get how anyone can enjoy their transformers 'MISB' :redface