If I ever bought an AFA'd fig, I'd totally open it. Mmmm minty fresh.
Rank 8 - Deluxe Member
Rank 6 - Dedicated Member
IMO I think it's pretty awesome to have at least one AFA figure (A boxed and sealed one, not a crappy loose graded one..preferably one with sentimental value).
I can understand why some of you guys are pretty steadfast in your belief that "toys are meant to be opened", but personally I think after so many years, older lines such as G1 and G2 fall into the "collectables" category, not "toys". I reckon this is the general consensus amongst many AFA collectors and the driving factor which underlines their expensive hobby.
I agree that treating AFA collecting as an investment is a poor idea compared to other alternatives, but I don't think putting down people that solely collect AFA is justifiable. We all collect in our own way; all of which is neither right or wrong.
I'm sure AFA hoarders out there feel that same sense of achievement and childhood nostalgia just like any other collector when they stare at their displays.
So, for what it's worth - I think at the end of the day it's up to you to decide whether or not you want to go loose or graded. If you're gona go down the graded path you need to have bottomless pockets though. Should prob keep that in mind. Ha!
Rank 1 - New or Inactive
Well saidOriginally Posted by canofwhoopass_87
Rank 8 - Deluxe Member
It's more expensive to collect G1 now, but it wasn't so expensive during the 1980s and 90s if you bought the toys from local stores. I completed Monstructor by collecting all the Monster Pretenders from Kmart using my pocket money. There's a MOSC G1 Icepick on eBay going for US$380!So like you said, you'd better be rich if you wanna collect G1 nowadays! I don't have that kind of disposable income to throw around, so I personally wouldn't start collecting G1 in this day and age. Collecting current Transformers from local stores is bloody expensive enough as it is... I'd go bankrupt if I tried to actively collect vintage toys on top of that!
But hey, for those of you who can afford it... go nuts.
I don't think anyone has been put down in this thread. Saying, "I personally wouldn't do that" isn't the same as insulting someone like, "You're a 'tard monkey for doing that!"
Yeah, I don't just stare at my displays.. the main reason why I started displaying my toys in the first place as a child was to make them more accessible to play with and also to protect them from damage if I'd just thrown them into a toy box with all my other toys (cos ya know, when you rummage through all those toys looking for the one you want to play with, toys can get scratched and damaged -- especially G1 Transformers). But I must admit that I do find the visual aesthetic pleasing too, but that's more of a secondary motivation for me to display my toys - the primary reason is for accessibility for when I wanna play with my toys.
Of course. It's you're money and your toys and you can do whatever you want with them -- keep them sealed, keep them open, play with them, kitbash them, worship them as idols etc. -- whatever makes you happy.
The Curator
The Fiddler
The Artisan
The Player
Rank 9 - Board Staff
+1
SofaMan - Occasionally Battling Evil with his Mighty Powers of Indolence
Rank 8 - Deluxe Member
@whoopass: unfortunatly i dont have bottomless pockets.....lol, wish i did
i'd love to be able to go banana's, but more thinking of just buying a couple of bits n pieces that i had owned as a kid.
gok commented on how expensive just buying current stuff is..... man, aint that the truth!
cheers for the replies everyone
janda
Do you realise you just effectively argued against the existence of museums in general there (as every single artefact in a museum was originally a commodity of some kind, even if it was just a brick)?
Now toys are a commodity, but what happens 100 years from now, 200 years from now or further on down the track? What about those kids then?
That's the question which drives collectors such as myself. I collect MISB and MIB as well as loose for one reason- to see them go to a museum and be so tied up in legal red tape that they can never be sold, so that ideally 300+ years from now, some kid can go to a museum and see some of the pieces which sparked the start of the toy cartoon phenomenon, which will no doubt still be at the core of toy marketting campaigns for children in some form or another. For me, it's about giving those generations of kids the same enjoyment I had as a kid, and still have to this day.
Rank 8 - Multi-Section Mod
I didn't. I didn't even argue against the existence of crap museums. There are two main types of things in museums. The first is objects which are supposed to be looked at, such as paintings and sculptures. Those things are fulfilling their function by being looked at. The second is historic items that once fulfilled a function. Do you really think humans spent the past fifty thousand years going... oh, we shouldn't use that axe to chop up that animal - let's keep them both locked up in glass boxes just in case someone someday decides to put them in a museum?
Rank 1 - New or Inactive
If MISB & AFA gradings float your boat then go for it I say. I "devalue" every toy I get by opening it & having fun with it.
Personally if I was really minted I would buy up many high graded AFA toys & open them up ripping the boxes open with childish glee with no regard for what I was doing. I would put it all up on youtube & relish in the comments I would receive.
Yeah I sound like a complete bastard alright but I would feel like one of those war heroes who saves the prisoners & liberates them from their caged oppression by AFA tyranny.
Not the sort of a debate you want ot get into with a double history major undergrad.
Here's the thing though. We look at apintings now as being historical works of art, but at the time, let's be honest, they had all the "posterity" value of a lithograph poster at the time when they were done generally.
Likewise, sculptures in private collections were nothing more than pretty decorations.
So who decided they had value? The answer is that people down the track did, when they became glimpses into a past society and civilisation.
The problem with your argument is that you're looking from the present forward as opposed to the future back, and your entire argument here falls apart as a result.
At the time of the Romans and Greeks, ancient writings were just seen as a way for the upper classes to be educated for example. Yet because there were no recorded complete works kept, or in the case of the razing of the library of Alexandria, willful destruction of them, we're completely in the dark about massive chunks of that period of history, with numerous secondary sources where the primary sources they were quoting simply do not exist anymore, or if they do, we have yet to find them.
The thing is that the reason why historians want those writings, is so they can find out how people lived- they care about every little line on every little piece of ceramics they find (especially with amphora) because it establishes trade routes, to quote just one example. I should poijnt out that that's the equivalent of someone 2000 years from now being interested in shipping containers.
Yet noone would think twice about preserving them today, thinking along the very lines you do. Yet that very thinking leads to the very gaps in knowledge that an historian hits because of a lack of literature or artefacts.
Why wouldn't an historian 2000 years from now be interested in what toys children played with, along with every other aspect of 20th/21st century history.
Right now, sure, these are just children's playthings, but down the track, several hundreds of years from now they'll be glimpses into a civilisation.
As someone who is an historian, whose calling it is to explore history; why wouldn't I want to extend the same courtesy to some historian, hundreds and maybe even thousands of years down the track, that most historians would love someone from hundreds if not thousands of years in the past, to extend to them.
Your entire point about "crap museums" is as flawed as you can get. What those "axes" and the like do is show how people lived back then.
If you're going to be so against the notion of archiving for posterity, then you might as well oppose the perserving of artwork and the writing of history and archiving of records and documents- after all, it all takes place for the purpose of the preservation of history.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
