This post will not be what you expected upon reading the subject title. 
This is about our collecting habits. Part 1, in particular, is about mine. AS will work on Part 2 when he has time (I suspect that this will be after he’s done with his summer classes after the end of this month).
AS has always been interested in figures. I, on the other hand, was charmed by things that remained flat.
In the early part of 1999, I became intrigued by the world of anime collectibles. In particular, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon trading cards. I’m not sure how I became enamored with them, but I do remember thinking how reasonably priced they were, ranging from 50 cents to a few dollars. In March 1999, I finally decided to buy some. While I don’t have pictures and I don’t recall the exact numbers, I can tell you they were the jumbo cards from Banpresto. Obviously, I no longer have these particular cards.
(Image taken from DM Sailor Moon Cards)
My Sailor Moon trading card collection was fairly large, although not as large as other people’s, but I spared no expense purchasing what I needed. I started off trying to collect everything and as a result, I had hundreds and hundreds of cards equating to many binders worth. Eventually I came to my senses and decided to only collect certain sets and only keep cards of characters or images that I liked from other sets I didn’t collect. Sounds reasonable enough, right?
Unfortunately, because Sailor Moon cards were getting harder to acquire, I started collecting cards from series that were current, like Cardcaptor Sakura, Di Gi Charat and Sister Princess. Sailor Moon was difficult to collect, in that complete boxes weren’t available because the series had finished airing in Japan and merchandise wasn’t readily available, forcing one to buy individual cards or trade for what was needed. But with current series, I could buy boxes and boxes of cards and then sell the extras or trade for cards to use as trade fodder or to complete extra sets to sell. At $60 a box and a college student working part time, you can see how this can be a money hole.
Because these cards were so readily available, I felt that my philosophy that I had adopted with Sailor Moon cards, to only collect the characters that I liked, didn’t apply. However, once I was surrounded by thousands upon thousands of cards and a budding interest in shitajiki, I decided to only keep the cards I liked and sell off everything else. I fell back occasionally, Sister Princess cards was what pulled me back in, because the artwork appealed to me a great deal. Luckily, something made me just stop, and whatever it was, I’m grateful. I have people that I’m still friends with from my card trading days 10+ years ago, so it wasn’t such a bad thing, but seeing as how I still have thousands of cards in hand, maybe not. xD
That budding interest in shitajiki (pencil boards) yielded a collection of more than 200. While this collection reached its peak, I developed an interested in anime cels. Oh dear. I still have at least half of my shitajiki collection, 30 or so that I am keeping for sure. The number fluctuates once in awhile because there are some boards I feel I can part with and the next time I look at it, I put it back in my binders. ^^;
Anime cels are one collection that I will still say I’m active in. Sort of. I’ve avoided shopping and cel forums for years now and sometimes I think about it and I regret all the Tomoyo cels I could be missing out on. ^^; I started off the same way in both pencil boards and cels, collecting everything I could get my hands on and then refocusing. With shitajiki, I went with the artwork. With cels, I focused initially on characters of series I liked, and then decided to solely collect Tomoyo cels. I think I can attribute being okay with not actively collecting partly to the fact that I’m pretty content with my collection. Oh sure, there are still many scenes I would adore owning, but I think I have a decent, high quality collection.
In the all of this, I also collected Japanese manga and artbooks. The former I regret so much now. It cost a lot to get them shipped here and I can’t even get rid of it. I don’t think I’m even recovering the cost of shipping. The latter I started getting into when I realized how much trading card art could be found in artbooks. This may have helped lead to my decline in my interest in trading cards and pencil boards. Artbooks, however, are also expensive to ship over. I’ve also realized how much they lose their value, unfortunately and fortunately. For example, recently when we were in Japan, I was able to acquire Koge Donbo’s Chocola 2000 at less than retail, but I didn’t even know it existed until I saw it! However, I paid $$$ for the first Sister Princess artbook after shipping, because it was hard cover and the company wouldn’t allow shipping to be combined because I pre-ordered it. I think shipping turned out to be 1.5 times the cost of the artbook itself! And now the artbook can be found in second-hand stores selling less than retail. It can be quite upsetting to see.
I do still collect artbooks, although I’m more discriminatory now. Some artists are on auto-buy, such as Tanemura Arina. As much as I love CLAMP, I don’t have them on auto-buy, simply because there’s so much CLAMP related artbooks I’d like to get that I don’t know where to start. ^^; I also started buying translated manga, but I fell behind. Manga isn’t as repeatable as a novel for me. If I feel like settling down with a book, I’d rather pick up Harry Potter or a Jane Austen title, than manga.
Let’s not get started on DVDs. My out of date DVD Aficionado account tells me I own over 500 DVDs, half of which are anime-related. xD
While these were my primary collections, I also liked picking up interesting things that looked neat or cute (this would explain all the UFO catcher plushies I had). ^^; Just a ton of miscellaneous things that were all over the place. I never did get into figure collecting. I had some gashapon and a few of the UFO catcher figures of Tomoyo, but in general, I found figures to be too expensive for what they were (this coming from the girl that pays hundreds for a single piece of acetate xD). It wasn’t until I met AS and got caught up in his enthusiasm for figures that I wound up with a few myself and became addicted to nendos. I still don’t really consider myself a figure collector though. I leave that up to AS. ^^;
Wow that is quite a history of collecting you got there! I mainly collected on dvds on mecha related stuff, gunpla and of course nendoroids haha. Sometimes I do regret getting to many things but heh, when you are in the midst of things you just keep buying lol!
chubbybots´s last [type] ..SD Gyan Updates 4
My problem is more collecting too many things at the same time. xD
I own LOTS of figures, but I REALLY REALLY love a good art book. I think my 3 Cardcaptor Sakura art books are some of my favorite possessions. As for cards I collected some Sailor Moon cards, theyy were English. But if I remember right one set was froim a game, and the other was scenes from the series. Just seeing that card image you posted made me smile. Maybe I’ll post about my cards sometime. Even after all these years the art of sailor Moon still makes me so happy. I would do almost anything to get the manga re-released in a format that does its art justice.
lovelyduckie´s last [type] ..Dark Saber Maid Alter
I *think* I have all the CCS artbooks. :3 Which 3 do you have, the manga art or the anime art?
IIRC, there were 3 types of Sailor Moon NA cards. Cardzillions that you got in machines at Toys R Us, the Dart cards, which are more common, and the Sailor Moon CCG. You probably have cards from the latter two. I really wish they would re-release the manga, too! I couldn’t afford such luxuries when they did it the first time. I was hoping when they re-released them in Japan for the 10th anniversary, there would be an English release, but no such luck. Maybe for the 20th Anniversary. :3
lol Similarly, I got into collecting merchandise until financial problems get in the way or the items become too inaccessible.
…I regret not buying the CCS boxset when it was still common to find. Now i only have a handful of CCS DVDs. T~T
Mikoto´s last [type] ..Fullmetal Alchemist manga 108 – Ending
I was lucky to get the CCS box sets. I learned not to wait earlier because of my previous experience. I didn’t buy the Sailor Moon S and SuperS season box sets when they were available at a retail price so I decided to try get them singly. It took awhile and a lot of money, I might as well just have paid the inflated prices for the box sets. :/
That’s quite a collecting habit. I’ve never really been that much of a hardcore collector because of the money and energy it takes to really get into collecting.
I think artbooks are really worth collecting though. However, collecting translated manga is a much harder thing for me.
Yi´s last [type] ..July- Obon- and Summer Horror
I never realized I was the collector type until I started. xD I do love artbooks, but they’re lower priority for me because other things are more important.
xD Are you and AS celebrating the 4th of July or something? Been a week since either of you guys posted. :3 Well anyways, have fun! ^^
Mikoto´s last [type] ..Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakamatachi 01
Sorry, we’ve both been busy. ^^;
For myself, I prefer toys, figurines, gunpla and other 3D stuff. Maybe It is my childhood dream to be surrounded by mechas (sounds a bit wrong, oh well). So now I’m really surrounded by them and the usual problem for toy collector haunt me, “where should keep them?”
Btw I have no immunity to Chibified mecha like SD Gundams, both 2D (games, anime) and 3D (figurines, gunpla). Nendoroid once in a while… I guess this safe me from spending too much on those 1/6 figurines
B-Mecha´s last [type] ..Blogger Outing – Mascot Parade and Heeren
My dream is to surrounded by nendos eventually. xD
It’s been 10+ years since I started collecting Sailor Moon cards too, but I’m still going at it. I visited that store you mentioned in another post at Nakano Broadway and added some more cards to my collection ^.^
Nopy´s last [type] ..Japan Trip- Highlights
That’s pretty awesome. I know some other collectors that are still going at it. I just lost interest. Honestly, half the cards I got only to complete my collection and I didn’t really care for the artwork on it.
I own the 3 manga CCS ones fromTokyopop. I’ve never really been too fond of anime art books, so I just don’t think to get them. BUT if it’s CCS I’d probably still want it.
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Hi! I came across this blog post on a random search for SM card talk. SM and CCS were the two biggest anime card sets I collected too. Took ages to find the right numbers I needed.
Your love for Tomoyo reminds me of a long-ago trader I came across years ago. Are you the one who owned that Tomoyo domain name?
That’s sound like a wild ride, i too spend a ton of money.
When I think about it, it is kinda sad though but I will probably never let go of them.
baka0001´s last [type] ..Liking the Mass Effect franchise