When did you start collecting Transformers?

[TheDirtyDigger]

Yeah I could be wrong (but I'm not) when saying Transformers were released here in 1985. I remember it well. I woke up early and recorded it on the first Saturday morning it was on The Early Bird Show with Darryl Cotton, Anne-Marie and Marty Monster.
Also as soon as the toys were released I went and got Seaspray.
It was 1985 they were released down here in Mexico.

[Bartrim]

Around 2006 when I first started collecting toys. But I started getting the G1 cartoons on DVD as soon as they came out.

[Paulbot]

I definitely had Transformers in 1985 (although I have a feeling the first might have been Christmas 1984 I have no proof) and from the first ones there was no other toyline I was interested in spending my money on.

I accumulated about 400 over the next 20 years, but I would say I only really became a toy collector last year when I brought about 25 movie toys over one weekend and started buying TFs online (and in doing so increased by collection by 50% in one year).

Before that I tended to think of myself more as primarily a TF comic collector and that collection started building in 1986.

[Saintly]

1987, had to stop collecting in 1988...

back at it again in 1990-1992, then stop and concentrate on other stuff TDD mentioned about

started back at ToyCon 2005 then stopped a couple of months this year. And recently back again in August!

[STL]

I can't claim to have "started" as early as some of the others but 1990 was about the first time I received one for a birthday and I stopped in 1995-ish cos I "grew" out of them and became just too "cool" for TFs.

I resumed in 2005 when I started to earn a lot more dough than the average student. It really started off as a thiing that I bought just b.c I had too much money and not too much to do with it. I'd been reading the comics so that had kept my interest levels and nostalgia going. In those early days, I was all about G1. These days, since Classics 1.0, I collect anything that takes my fancy these days.

[gamblor916]

My first bot was Constructicon Hook back in I think 1984. Collected more bots up to maybe 1987, then moved on to other things. Resumed collecting when the Binaltechs and Masterpieces came out a few years back.

[Robzy]

I never realised until a few years ago that I've been collecting TFs since they started.

I had HEAPS of them when I was yong... I started in 1984/85 (whenever we agree that they came to Oz ) with Bluestreak. I would've been about 5 or 6 at the time. But over the years (during my teens) I would pick up G1 figures from markets or garage sales... then in 2002 I "discovered" ebay! Or rather, I became "addicted" to it. And I started to get in to the new wave of TFs at the same time!

[Gutsman Heavy]

Had heaps as a kid, but started to collect in a proper nerd fashion when 20th MP Prime first came out here. I was on holiday at the gold coast and took my lil' bro into TRU and saw HIM it was an "OMFG cool!" moment, I bought one when I came back to SA, then some Alts, then started getting TFC reissues, and its kind of snowballed from there.

[GoktimusPrime]

gamblor916: The Constructicons came out in 1985. My first TF was Brawn in late 1984.

I've always been a "nerd" collector even back when it started. As a kid, almost all of my toys were put into toyboxes (i.e.: empty fruit boxes my parents would use for me to store my toys) and I would rummage through various toys from Gobots, Masters of the Universe, MASK, Matchbox etc. to access which toys I wanted. But Transformers and Lego were the sole exceptions to this. With Lego it was a matter of practicality - it would've been a royal pain in the butt to find tiny individual Lego bricks if they were mixed up in a big apple box full of toys. So they were kept in a special Lego "suitcase." Transformers on the other hand I actually displayed on top of some small drawers next to my bed. When I had too many TFs to continue displaying on top of those drawers.

In 1985 I made my first collection list on our family's Commodore 64 - printed on a dot-matrix printer! I used some simple word processing program with columns for faction, name, function and motto. I never bothered with sub-groups or actual numbering.

By the late 1980s I had taken my Transformers out of their box and started displaying them on bookshelves. And I continued to do so until G1 ended in 1993 - by 1994 I'd become a less passionate collector of TFs (although I still did collect a few figures here and there and I continued to read my Marvel TF comics and watch G1 eps and TFTM on VHS religiously - that's when I started really immersing myself in TF lore like Primus, Transformers theology etc.; wrote some fan-fics and fan-essays etc. I also got into animé (in 1993 my handle was "Gokuu") and developed an interest in Japan. Alas my TF toys were boxed from 1994-96. The only time I've ever kept my TFs in box (other than for moving of course).

I was attending university in Japan and when Beast Wars came out there I became a rabid TF toy collector again.

After I moving back to Australia and I started attending small private gatherings with other AusTrans members... I suppose you could call them meets... and yeah, everything's basically grown from that.

[gamblor916]

gamblor916: The Constructicons came out in 1985. My first TF was Brawn in late 1984.

Well it was 20 years ago give or take