Quote Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime View Post
Quote Originally Posted by heroic_decepticon
I have decided to collect Transformers again.

Well maybe not ‘again’ unless we consider Transformers given to a kid as toys which he smashed into one another, used for fights and Transformed more than a dozen times a day ‘collecting’. This was, I decided, to more serious, more precious, or so I wanted myself to believe.
I still enjoy using my Transformers for fights... I guess this doesn't make me a collector then? <cheek> The only reason I ever started putting my Transformers on shelves wasn't for display but for easy access for playing and also to reduce damage to the Transformer toys (because the alternative was to chuck them in the toy box in which case I would have to rummage to get the toys I wanted). By time I was in year 7 I started arranging them for display in a more aesthetically pleasing sense - but the primary reason has always been for play access.
It's a good point you brought up. It is a point I thought about at the time of writing that article.

I do not mean that a person who plays with their toys is not a collector. A collector can surely play with his/her toys.

What I mean is that I do not consider the toys that were given to me when I was young "collecting". Thinking back, they were just toys. Toys that were given to me. I did not "collect" them, I simply had them.

A kid may have a "collection" of toys, but that does not mean that the kid is collecting or a collector. A person is not a collector simply by having a "collection" of something in his/her possession. To be collecting, a person must consciously turn his/her mind to the act of collecting and be conciously seeking more and/or having particular milestones or objectives for the collection.

This might be something you have turned your mind to at a young age, but I certainly did not.

In short, collecting is a conscious decision and should be something more than just "sitting" on an assortment of figures that were given to the person.