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Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - How Many Figures Do You Earn Annually?
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omiya
 Posts: 1944 Location: Adelaide, South Australia |
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My figure collection is limited to a keychain of Grunty from .hack//SIGN - but have been collecting anime and game music CD's for a while.
At least one can listen to music CD's while doing other things. |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 10362 Location: Virginia |
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I've been collecting figures since the late 1990s and quit counting after the first couple dozen. However, after a few years back when they started to go above $100 or $200 I had to get selective. I think I only bought a couple last year.
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Greed1914
 Posts: 5345 |
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My figure collecting slowed down considerably over recent years. The general cost has gone up quite a lot as is. The elimination of the de minimus exemption for imports added cost, which is still imposed despite it coming right along with a certain person's decision that everything should cost even more because he said so. It also doesn't help that the cheaper shipping options that retailers had before Covid were eliminated as precautions at the time, and never came back. When getting the thing triples the cost, it's hard to want the thing at all.
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L'Imperatore
 Posts: 1081 |
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I set an annual quota of two figures only, and I’ve already preordered Lena from 86 this year.
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Emerje
 Posts: 7548 Location: Maine |
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Yeah, this one spoke to me. I've got over 3K figures in my collection, been collecting anime figures since the 90s so I've seen a lot of things change when it comes to prices on both sides of the Pacific. I remember when $25 for Revoltech and figma felt steep because larger action figures in the USA were $15. However, I was a very avid Revoltech collector and when figma came around I jumped in on the ground floor, my first three ordered together were #001 Nagato Yuki, #003 Saber and #SP-002 Lelouch. This was back when they were being released one per month so you could splurge a bit without breaking the bank. Now, less than 20 years later you're starting at $80 for a figma or Revoltech or S.H.Figuarts. Though I will say Bandai has been the least egregious when it comes to price hikes and they do a neat thing where they price shonen main characters much lower than the rest of the characters, usually around $35 which is a very fair price. for a Figuarts Goku or Luffy.
We're seeing this with prize figures, too. They used to be $15-$20, now they're getting closer to $40 which is absolutely ridiculous. And Pop Up Parade is basically just fancy prize figures, there's nothing particularly special about their quality and the way they handle scale is infuriating. Calling them non-scale isn't a free pass to make figures from the same title all different sizes. Seriously, find a picture of the Hunter x Hunter PUPs together, the only two that really work together are Gon and Killua, the rest are all over the place in heights. Anyway, they used to be priced similar to prize figures, but now the prices have risen sharply with the "L" figures starting to get into the scale figure range, but only made the figures a little bigger and the poses a bit more dynamic. It does feel like the future is in pre-painted models, even Kadokawa is making them. But Blokees are definitely leading the way with some really amazing things at amazing prices. And they're actually fun to put together with smaller figures just being two or three bags of loose parts you snap together. I've got a ton of the Transformers ones at different sizes, love the Action Edition figures and they're magnet activated lights. I have the larger Miku and have ordered the Naruto and Kurama set because we're sorely lacking articulated Kurama figures. If anyone cares, here's my collection, it's missing non-anime figures: https://myfigurecollection.net/profile/Emerje/collection/ Emerje |
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dm
Subscriber Posts: 1714 |
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When I started collecting figures in the 90s I limited myself to computer hackers (Lain, Ed from Cowboy Bebop, Ruri Hoshino from Nadesico, Maya from Evangelion), because I knew if I didn’t, I’d fall off the deep end.
It lasted for a couple of years! Then… Yomiko Readman from R.O.D., Lilith from Yami to boushi to hon no tabibito (my excuse: librarians study information science and that’s close to informatics….) But, letting that crack in the dam led to a flood. If you do anything for thirty years it adds up. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 5292 |
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Never was into collecting figures thankfully. My wallet has cried enough from the disc side of things.
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LinkTSwordmaster
 Posts: 814 Location: PA / USA |
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That's been my stance since the very first day I ever had the misfortune to lay eyes on those cursed Coraline-eyed, copy-pasted-face'd voodoo dolls. My local game store has been thriving and purposely doesn't sell them because it largely attempts to avoid catering to outright novelty & drawing young, unattended children. I've got a BFF farther north that manages their own store and it's been interesting to note that the crowd has shifted over the last several years from the clientele that bully kids out of the Pokemon supply chain, coming in and wiping out inventory, thinking they'd "be the next Beanie Babies" (at least the bean-animals were cute and soft/huggable). And that has slid in recent years to consisting mainly of children and confused friends/grandparents that don't give a shit about the gift-reciever's hobby - not enough to learn about it, but still buy them some lookalike trinket. The entire column is filled with amazing art, painted and articulated - like 90% of all of these examples of things I'd largely be proud to have on my shelves joining Toonami-era Gundams and the like, but then somehow these cheap-looking copy-paste stubby murder-bricks with button eyes have persisted for years in the market and somehow haven't burned hellishly into faded oblivion yet, where they belong. |
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Doubleclouder
 Posts: 162 |
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I used to collect a lot of figuarts but they've really gotten really expensive and lower quality as time goes on. And a lot of things are Premium Bandai exclusive when they shouldn't be and just feel like they're doing it to justify charging more. At this point I kind of bowed out of collecting figuarts. I do miss when we could get them for like 30-40 each. I mostly just collect Transformers these days since they're the most actual toy-like figures out there. I've really been enjoying the Missing Link series and . I've heard about Blokees but honestly Transformers that don't Transform don't appeal to me at all and just seems like a return of Action Masters but I guess they're an option for people who can't afford regular Transformers figures but they just kind of come off like better-looking Funko Pops to me. I'm more interested in that G2 Menasor Takara just announced.
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yeehaw
 Posts: 884 |
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Years ago I went through a lot of trouble to get myself the limited edition release of Fate/Extra CCC that came with the game, a huge box, a CD, a small but hard-cover artbook and the Saber Bride figma.
That whole package cost less than the figma Saber Bride 2.0 On a sidenote I have check out these blokees. I had never heard of these before but the little Miku dolls look really cute! |
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Slop Slop no Mi
 Posts: 46 |
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I've only picked up a few figures; mainly the main anime girls I like such as some of the Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh girls. Don't really have much shelf space for hunks of plastic to just sit there.
I really want to get into those though. I miss when toys had die-cast metal and chrome. |
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bones2039
Posts: 107 |
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I mainly collect Transformer figures, but over the years I've decided to just stick to G1 related characters. I get that is still a large portion of Hasbro and Takara's latest output but It does help me stop myself from spending even more and conserve space. That commander class Armada Optimus figure looked really awesome but I just couldn't justify getting it without the other Armada figures so I skipped it. Lately I've been going back and forth on the new Titan Bayverse Grimlock coming out. I'm a sucker for dinobots, but I didn't really care for the Bayverse take on the characters and I already have the first Studio Series version which while not perfect still looks good on a shelf. Do I really need a bigger transforming robotic T-Rex?
I will say I've fallen into the Nendoroid trap lately. I avoided them for a long time but the KonoSuba ones got me. I've also tried a few of the Frame Arms Girls model kits which I kind of enjoy putting together as a change of pace. |
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ThatGuyInTheHoodie
Posts: 15 |
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Strange how a lot of people jumped into Transformers... me included. It's not really anime per-say but I used to import a ton of tokusatsu stuff from Japan from Super Sentai and Kamen Rider but when importing was shut down or at least severely limited due to COVID and became a lot more expensive I also switched over to Transformers. I got some Siege figures, loved it, and went all in. Shipping and import costs never really recovered after the pandemic so I kind of just stuck with Transformers which came out here and even the JP stuff were officially released here without import hassel. Before then I hadn't really bought Transformers since Animated back in the late 2000s. It doesn't help that I wasn't a big fan of the last few Sentai and Kamen Rider series in terms of both toys and shows themselves so it helped me quit them cold turkey. I still love my older stuff though and if a new series came out with a gimmick I enjoy I wouldn't mind importing but I'm not a fan of the current Rider's capsule gimmick and the new Gavin's line also seems kinda lackluster. I hope we get something as cool as Lockseeds again.
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8627 Location: Penguinopolis |
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For somebody who's been in the anime fandom for several decades, I have surprisingly few figures (I think seven). Oftentimes I find it can be difficult to find figures of the characters I like, especially for a price that won't empty my bank account.
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Gurren Rodan
 Posts: 272 |
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I'm not an anime figure collector, but I am a kaiju figure collector, so this discussion hits close to home all the same. I've got a Figma God Warrior from Hideaki Anno's short film, I've acquired most (?) of the Toho & Gamera characters from Revoltech's Scif-Fi line, and I've got a small assortment of S.H.Monsterarts and Utraman Figuarts - most of which I got secondhand through Mandarake, Mercari, etc, when a bargain could be found. That's before even mentioning the Bandai soft vinyls and the various other toy sets or "designer" figures I've picked up over the years I've been collecting. Even Blokees recently announced they'll be entering the Godzilla party.
I did have to seriously dial back at the end of last year, though; it's crazy how much almost everything continues to climb in price. I miss the mid-2010s when a Revoltech still cost $35 and Bandai vinyls were 20 a pop. Nevertheless, there's something inexplicably exciting about being able to hold a tangible, physical replica of your favorite characters in your hand. That delight has yet to fade for me, even if I have to be more careful in my selections these days. |
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