Truetorial: So I Bought a House,
Now to Move All the Toys!

Who could throw this away?

Not all the packaging will go though. To the chagrin of nearly everyone helping me move, I couldn’t bring myself to part with the Super Powers boxes. Many are torn up and it is probably silly to keep them, but that Hall of Justice box is still plenty cool nearly thirty years later. Heck, I’ve got it so bad for that ol’ line that I enjoyed checking out the used sticker sheet nestled safely inside.

To be sure, this is still a move. Carting boxes up flights of stairs, loading and unloading trucks, and relocating everything you own does give one pause. Did I really need that Ephant Mon figure? Heck, do I need any Star Wars figure? Star Wars is huge, but it doesn’t appeal to me the way MOTU or Transformers does. Speaking of Transformers, do I need a collection that encompasses so many versions of Optimus Prime? Why do I have a 1983 Star Trek & Star Wars Collectible Guide (over 5000 prices!)? I don’t know the answer to any of those questions, but they do remind me that I haven’t always been as picky as I should be.

This brings me back to Rob’s article. In it, he listed the reasons he shouldn’t be collecting, reinforced by the hard questions that come up when you move. Despite my upbeat approach to the move, I did face those same questions. I have tons of stuff, but, as the reviews here can attest, I still spend over a thousand dollars a year on new toys, many of which will end up in the cellar in the garage. I mentioned that my display works as a control valve for my collection – well, not every subscribed MOTU figure makes that cut and yet I subscribe year after year.

Why? Because toys don’t make me unhappy. While I’m sure that I’ll be spending the next few weeks and months going through my garage and selling or donating plenty of what I ran across, I enjoyed my time with those figures. I got a chuckle out of Night Man. And, I enjoyed running across Ephant Mon even if I had to Google his name.

Toy collecting can be a millstone around the neck of any collector. It could be a heroin addiction as Rob suggests, but it doesn’t have to be. How you approach your collection – how you approach yourself – is really what determines how you see your collection. Rob’s article tells us a lot about Rob.

I feel bad when toy collectors view their hobby negatively. In some cases, it is because it’s become a problem for them and I wish there was away I could use IAT to help them manage it. If they’re angry all the time, I’d like to help them find the lighter side of things. That’s one of the reasons IAT is here in the first place. I enjoy my collection whether it’s on display or in one of the boxes I’ve been tearing through this weekend. When I find something I don’t enjoy or need, I’ll let it go. For me, toy collecting adds some dimension to my life, a little flare & flavor and when that starts to sour, a little change is order.

The good thing is that changes come all the time. What I collect changes. My circumstances change. I change. That’s part of the fun. Late this year, I’d finally gotten to a point where I can afford some of the nicer items I’ve wanted like Hot Toys & Masterpiece Transformers. And it turns out that simply having a few of those has changed how I feel about the lower cost toys I buy at retail. Looking ahead, I’m honestly not sure what’s in store for me in 2013. I have a house that creates more display options. I have a house that creates less purchase options. It’s going to be exciting either way.

There are some dark sides to collecting, I know. They might just be the subject of a future Truetorial or two, but I also know that toy collecting can be a positive thing. It is for me and I hope that some of that joy translates onto the pages of IAT. I hope that I impart at least some of it to you too.

NoisyDvL5

53 thoughts on “Truetorial: So I Bought a House,
Now to Move All the Toys!

  1. Lol, i moved recently too and i’m somehow happy the stuff fills a half room and that i don’t have a cellar…oh wait, i still have junk in the old studio. BUT i laughed good finding the drawyer full of cardbacks – as a graphic guy i dig alot of the art and compare it to packaging today and it also reminds me back on the purchases and time and impressions overall. Even if i don’t have most of the toys anymore the cardbacks make a nice catalogue – wish they wouldn’t be this thick. Most of my comics i forgot where i bought them but with these cardbacks – – all lines you listed sound like great graphics awaiting the eye, i’m almost intriguyed to say “ship them to me” but no way 😀

    1. I have to admit that I was tempted to still keep saving the cardbacks even though I’ve happily tossed all the cardbacks from the last ten years! I resisted though and all went to the recycling bin…

  2. wow. nice article. im nervous about my move, but its for the fact movers have to move it along with my household goods and make the journey back to the States- without me. sigh. my plastic is like fine china to me, so im very hesistant to part with my vast collection. i have no choice in shipping my collection because if i were to do it on my own dime, it would be very costly. thanks for the article.

    1. I can only imagine the trouble you have to go through to move everything around!

      I wanted to treat my stuff better during the move, but I didn’t have the time/capacity – note the unceremonious way the MOTUCs are tossed in a tub.

  3. Glad that you’re not Rob, otherwise I’d be requesting you to overanalyze awful erotic Fan Fiction… And glad that this isn’t I09 cause I hate that nest of pretentiousness cause they Castrated Bricken’s best trick to gather readers… overanalyzing awful erotic Fan Fiction… I expected his article to be negative and moderately snarky cause he’s Rob Bricken, but in a way both of you ARE right… Heck I even keep around some toys that are broken beyond repair and parts have zero customizing value cause I feel attached to them. I’ve had to part with a few things, but It’s all part of the great Circle of Life (I mean collecting)

    1. I ended up tossing a lot of half-figures, half-done customs, etc. If it wasn’t in good condition and didn’t have a ton of nostalgic value, it didn’t make it into a moving box.

  4. I love when I have to clean out the storage space, or move, or anything that gets me to go back through those toys boxed up in storage. I always pull a couple out to stick on my desk for a second hurrah. Recently I dug into the SOTA Street Fighter box and had a blast with all them … some of them broke, but whatever it was a fun line I got to take a look back out after so many years.

    Congratulations on the house!

    1. Thanks, Jon! I think my biggest find was still the G1 Transformers box, I got a huge kick out of the micromasters in particular. I haven’t seen those in ages!

  5. Great article and congrats on the new home. Both Rob’s article and this one are very much what I’ve been struggling with this past year. I moved back in March into a townehome. In moving, it gave me a much better look at my collection and made me take a second look at what I as doing. What I was collecting. Since thene I’ve been trying to make it more focused, and like you, will have much to sell in the coming months. I’m still going through things, so it has been a journey, but I hope to have this wrangled for the new year.

    1. Thanks, Jason! It’s definitely a journey and some parts of it I haven’t realized – I’ve been in the cellar for a couple weeks all told and in that time I haven’t bought anything new (beyond the subscriptions). I didn’t even realize it until my wife pointed it out while we were out shopping today. Kinda funny.

  6. First off, let me just say CONGRATULATIONS! My girlfriend and I looked for a place for over a year and only just recently moved overselves. (Thanksgiving weekend is a horrible time to move.) As such I can feel your pain.

    I’ve got a ton of stuff boxed up from my days with RingofCollectors.com and a ton more from JBL. I ebayed a metric ton of items before the migration but realized that was just a drop in the bucket. Thankfully, I own my old house and so over the holidays left a lot of stuff over there to be dealt with later. The funny part is that, after a month, I don’t really miss the stuff that hasn’t made the trip. It’s kind of a great mental cleansing if you will. So enjoy the new digs and take time to separate the collected “wheat from the chaff” and keep the things that you know you’ll regret parting with. Everything else is just “stuff”.

    1. Thanks, Leo!

      Christmas is probably up there with Thanksgiving. My wife’s a teacher, so Christmas break came in handy, but I manage a retail store – it was impossible to be away from work. We got a lot done this week, but still a ton more to do!

      And it’s definitely a great cleansing. I’ll have plenty to sell/donate in the coming months as those cellar boxes get unpacked.

  7. I had to move recently, and sadly, most of my collection had to get boxed up and moved into my parents’ basement, because I just don’t have the room. I brought with me to my tiny new apartment (not that tiny, but when you’re a toy collector, not having an entire room for your stuff makes it seem tiny) only a relative handful of figures; my SH FiguArts and MonsterArts, my DC Movie Masters, a Super Legends Green Ranger, Ninjor, Wall-E, and a couple Transformers. I just moved in a couple weeks ago, so I’m hoping I can work out a situation that would allow me to bring in a few more of my figures. I have literally hundreds of Transformers, GI Joes, Star Wars, MOTUC, DCUC, and Marvel Legends, plus a bunch of random figures. At the very least, I want to make room for some Transformers Masterpieces and the NECA TMNT figures. Some more TF Prime figures would be nice to work in here, as well. It doesn’t help that I also have several hundred DVDs and about as many books, plus several thousand comics (I need to come up with a way to unload some of these comics. Throwing them out seems like a waste, and trying to sell them on eBay seems like a huge hassle). I know I’ll probably never look at half those comics again, and moving them all up and down several flights of stairs was killer.

    1. I’m not sure how to put together to the office room at the new house. I think I might need bigger display space than my old trusted toy rack.

      And, yeah, comics & DVDs have been a pain! Just a lot of stuff to move with not much joy.

      eBay has come in handy though. I was able to get a few items up over December and brought in about $1500 already.

    2. Perhaps you could donate your comics to a local library. I bring old books and magazines down to mine all the time. They usually sell ’em cheap to raise money.

  8. I wish you happiness in your new house, and a hassle-free move!

    Moving from Ohio back to England was bad enough, but since then, my collection has probably more than tripled in size. Even unloading some of the defunct stuff hasn’t made a great impact. While I’ve had to cut back due to space issues, and don’t get the thrill out of collecting that I used to (there’s almost no “hunt” involved anymore; it’s almost always delivered to my door), I still get a bit of pleasure from the hobby.

    1. Thanks, Beedo!

      I’m having a crazy enough time moving four miles, I couldn’t imagine an overseas move!

      I’m over the “hunt” too really. It’s good I love opening the mail!

      1. Heh. It’s not so much that I’m “over” the hunt (I actually used to enjoy that bit), it’s just that the retail shopping situation here in SE Devonhire is absolutely appalling.

        We get waves of figures sometimes as much as a year behind the States, and often with the short-packed figures not even included. (Either that, or eBay-watching stockboys snaffle ’em before they reach the pegs.) That’s if we’re even allowed to have some of the items . . . I wasn’t even permitted to order Thundercats and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles online when they came out. (Didn’t much care for their Anime style when I finally saw the close-ups, anyway, but it’s the principle of the thing.)

        Anywho, Happy New Year in your Happy New House!

  9. Congratulations on your new home. I recently had to relocate due to job opportunity, and I’m currently living in a rental home. I did not look forward to boxing all my figures up and moving them. For now they’re staying in the boxes, but I don’t ever regret having them. Maybe the doubles of some figures I have in package still for some reason, but I’ll probably be ebaying those.

  10. as always, there’s a two-sides-to-every-story thing going on, and i can absolutely see the positive side in opposition to rob’s (even while being able to see rob’s point too), i enjoy going back through the boxes and seeing my old stuff. some of that has been with me a very long time (i’ve been very lucky w/ some of my vintage pieces), and it does bring up pleasant memories… which is what i have to remind my lower back of on the 4th through 7th trips into the house w/ crates that could hold jimmy hoffa. 😉

    congrats to the two of you on the new home, and i look forward to seeing some “display in progress” photos once you guys are in and established. document mofo!

  11. I’m pretty sure I have a Goat Inaction Figure somewhere, too.

    Which would be awesome, of course, if I had figures of Quantum and Woody.

    1. See, that’s the damnedest thing. I’ve never read Quantum & Woody and I don’t know if I would’ve bought figures of them.

      But I have both goats.

  12. Congrats on the new digs!

    I remember when I moved about 6 1/2 years ago, I had to box everything up, and I did in the main room, but the display shelves in the 2d bedroom of my trailer I didn’t get to and my friend boxed them up, so I have no clue what I still have and don’t. I only manged to get a few boxes out of storage before I “lost” them, which looks to be my SP Hall of Justice ($100+ on ebay less than a year before the move!), and classic Joes/G1 and G2 TF/SP/BTAS/STAS among other assorted goodies. outside of the 6″ DC and ML lines I did manage to salvage was the ST:NG Bridge set, which I should really try and put on ebay.

    and yeah, there were more than a few items I forgot I had, like a whole BOX full of Palmiotti’s “ASH” firefighter superhero! (4 reg, 2 “clear” smoke) A book I NEVER read, but I stumbled across those figs at a local flea market, along with a number of other items, but the ones I really wanted I never did find again. 🙁
    (99.99% sure a TJ lot shared on RTM was mine, but never confirmed it due to ebay changing up privacy at the time and I couldn’t track the seller closer than “St Louis”.)

    I’m hoping this coming year to get all my court and financial stuff settled, but then comes the question of staying in my current apartment (w/ basement for storage) or finding a cheaper place, which begs the question of getting some help, as it was hard enough in 2006, when I had mom, a friend, and two trucks plus a flatbed, while now I have my PT Cruiser. maybe my sister? yeah. urf.

    1. Thanks, Brainlock! And good luck on the court/financial stuff.

      I’ve ended up with a lot of random boxes from the cellar. I have to make myself go through them in 2013. I think that might be my resolution…

      1. totally. before I move, I’m definitely putting a lot of it on ebay. I can’t even afford to do that, right now, for some extra money. 🙁
        hoping the next few weeks will see some turnaround!

  13. I’m glad you’re not Rob Bricken–he became a little more tolerable with his move to i09, where he wasn’t on a full-time “I hate this, and if you like it you’re an idiot” bend that was his MO on Topless Robot.

    And holy crap, you got a lot of stuff! I sometimes wonder if I’m buying too much, but virtually everything I own could fit into ONE of your boxes.

    1. “I hate this, and if you like it you’re an idiot” might be the new IAT motto!

      I definitely have way too much! The random cellar boxes are somewhere in the teens and that’s not counting the dedicated boxes for TF, MOTU, Joes, etc. It’s going to be a big year going through everything…

  14. Beautiful write-up, ND, a fitting post to close out the year. Congratulations to you and the Mrs., I wish you all the best and can’t wait to see what’s in-store for 2013!

    1. Thanks, 3B!

      I just hope I can get the articles up and going again soon. I need to get Vault on track so fill the gap and then get back in the groove once I’m settled in. I’ve got so much stuff I want to review…

  15. Congratulations on the grand opening of Casa Noisy! I hear you on all counts here. I used to ponder the worth of collecting (and frequents sales/repurchases) of my stuff to the point where I just gave up and threw my hands in the air. Heck, it’s my only known “vice” and life is short enough as it is! I might be living in smaller quarters by this time next year but I don’t see myself eBaying my stash AGAIN unless the situation grows too dire.

    I tend to keep the packaging around too. There are boxes of cardbacks and inserts just taking up room in my closet as I write this and more to come. But I hesitate at the thought of getting rid of ’em in order to free up space. I even keep the bubbles from my Super Powers figures just because of the cost and effort it took to find those gems, so hang on to your Hall of Justice box! You won’t find sweeter packaging than those Super Powers cardbacks, or vintage Star Wars cards with their cool film shots and numbered cross-sells, or G.I. Joe backs with gorgeous artwork and uncut file cards, or MOTU with their action feature pics on the upper backs. Appreciating vintage packaging is equally sweet and satisfying an activity as the emotionally priceless plastic they once held inside.

    My advice for anyone obsessing too much about overdoing it: Think back deeply to where and why you got that one obscure, now seemingly irrelevant item and chances are that you’ll feel much better about your collection afterwards.

    1. Reasons I keep cardbacks:
      -to see who else was in the wave/what was available at that time
      -character bios/artwork

      -death threat from my aunt/sister because they’re the ones who will have to ID everything when they ebay at after my death. the cardbacks will help for the more obscure characters (aka anyone who wasn’t on SuperFriends, SpiderFriends or Avengers)

      -inherited packrat mentality. we were just explaining to my sister’s (ex)husband last week why we never throw out stuff like butter bowls (free Tupperware!) and such.

  16. Congratulations on your new home! I’m glad I’m not the only one who saves their toys packaging, too. I’ve got action figure card backs dating back nearly thirty years for various lines neatly stored in my garage (I recently came across some Rock Lords and Captain Power cards). I used to save vehicle boxes, but space issues put an end to that. And for some reason, I have a closet full of those white MOTUC mailer boxes. I’m not really sure why I keep them, though.

    1. I’ve been saving my packaging for years. I really like a lot of the designs, and plus it’s a super safe way to transport the figures when you need to move. The problems arise when you realize that 1) they take up a tone of space, more so than the hundreds of toys themselves, and 2) it’s a real pain in the ass to spend hours upon hours matching all the figur5es back up with their packaging and securing them back inside. I’m definitely rethinking my decision to hold on to all the boxes.

      1. I made a cutoff depening on the price of the toy. Anything high end or expensive, I kept the box. I figure that would give me something specifically tailored to store it in or help the resale value if I should get rid of it.

        But all the little stuff, I don’t miss those cardbacks a bit. Particularly recent stuff, it’s much less imaginative.

      2. It’s particularly tempting with imports. They’re so nicely packaged and pretty and they come with little trays to hold all your extra hands and heads and weapons, etc… Vault went through a box-purge earlier this year when he got rid of a bunch of boxes but he immediately regretted it when he sold a figure and could have gotten a better price with the box. Because of that, I don’t see another box-purge coming up any time soon. -_-

    2. Rock Lords and Captain Power? That’s awesome! I was surprised (disppointed too) to not run across anything Captain Power (but there is an outdoor storage shed at my parent’s house that surely has some long forgotten things in it…).

      I haven’t kept packaging for awhile, but I did keep all those mailers – they make great shipping containers when turned inside out.

  17. After seeing your collections stored in the attic, somehow my problems about moving to a new house this coming summer is no longer that bad. Currently in the house that I’m living in, my main collections (dcuc and ml) are the only ones on display. The rest are stored in boxes and is occupying the guest room. But I’ve already made plans to devote a room for my collections in the new house. And hopefully everything will fit in and avoid encroaching to other rooms. I’ve made a deal with myself that I will limit my toy collections onion that room, once I begin losing space, that will be the end of my toy collecting. Or I would be selling some lines to make way for newer lines. Thank you for this right up. It just made my worries about moving less worrisome. 🙂

    1. You should see Vault’s guest room! Makes my cellar look good! 😉

      Selling some older stuff that has exhausted it’s personal appeal is a great way to make room and money for new stuff. I’m hoping to do a lot of the in 2013 and pick up a few nicer, high-end items!

  18. Hey Noisy, I say you pick a box at random and without looking in it grab a figure and give a review. Even if you have done a review before, Re-Review with your current knowledge about what ever line it came from.

  19. Haha. So glad to hear I’m not the only one who still keeps random packaging. I have a condition that I like to call Collector’s OCD. It manifests in many ways (most notoriously by “forcing” me to collect an entire line just for the sake of having the whole line, not necessarily because I love everything in it), and one of them is to keep the packaging. This all started when I was much younger, back when I used to buy two Star Wars figures so that I could play with one and sell the other some day when it was worth a ton of money. As we all know, just about any Star Wars toy from the 90’s on is not worth much more than the purchase price. Over the years, my tastes have….refined a bit. I’m better at only buying things that i really like. I’ve recently gotten into 3rd party Transformers and Transformers Price figures. Even though I purely buy these toys so that I can play with them, I still have trouble throwing away their boxes. There’s no need for me to keep my TF: Prime RID Arcee packaging, but I’m still tempted with every toy I buy. And these toys just have the backing (at least I don’t keep the bubbles). The iGear Mini-Warriors have a whole box! And don’t even get me started on Macross toys or Robotech Masterpiece figures. Their packages could take up bookcases on their own!

  20. Congrats on the purchase of your new home!

    I wonder if Rob knew how much discourse his article would create. He really did stir the proverbial pot. I have actually yet to read it in its entirety, despite having read Poe and Phillip’s responses.

    The thing everyone needs to remember is that you own your stuff; your stuff does not own you. The moment that changes, you need to pause and evaluate your motivations.

  21. Congrats on the new place.
    I can see Rob’s point as well as yours, except I like your more positive spin better. Especially the point you made on how Rob views his collecting habits in a more negative light reflects how he must really feel about collecting in general. If it’s that much of a burden, and it’s not fun anymore, then it’s time to quit, and either save up your money, or spend on something you dean more useful. Simple as that. Can collecting be addicting, especially like a Heroine addiction? Hell yeah, especially depending on your preference of action figures. Bit again, if it starts to become a serious problem, then find some help and quit.

    More than likely if you’re a cherry-picker like me, unless you really feel the strong need to complete a certain collect a figure or two, then collecting’s not so bad. Of course the biggest complaint from me besides the increasing lack of quality(but that just seems to be most products anyways) is distribution. Other than that, that’s about it. Good article.

  22. Wow. I read that io9 article you linked to. I feel sorry for that guy. I really do. He gets absolutely no pleasure from having the figures. It’s all about the hunt to him. That’s sad. I absolutely love owning the figures, and playing with them (I don’t care if I’m supposed to be an adult). I’m a very tactile person, and I love being able to touch and handle things like that. And from an artistic standpoint, I love admiring the artistry that goes into making certain figures. I consider action figures “interactive art”, and while it can be overwhelming sometimes, I can’t imagine being at the point where I hate myself and am a slave to the addiction.

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