Was The Hobby Experience Better Then Or Now?

We are now in the sixth year of the Vintage Collection, so I thought it would be fun to reflect back on the first six years of the line, and discuss which era had the better collecting experience. In need to reiterate that this is not about the quality of the product. That would be a very short debate. The current era would be Georgia to the early neoclassic era's TCU in last year's National Championship. The purpose of this article is to discuss the overall experience. Each era has its pros and cons, and I think they can be summarized as fun versus convenience. Furthermore, there is a mutual exclusivity of those two categories. The early days were fun but not very convenient. Sadly, the current era is very convenient, but not a lot of fun when it comes to the acquisition part of the game.

There was certainly a degree of stress involved in collecting during those initial POTF2/E1 days. Every collector faced the very real possibility that they could miss an item on the primary market. You're only chance to get something for MSRP came via your local brick and mortar stores. If you didn't, you were faced the prospect of paying 5x or more on the secondary market. I vividly remember getting a pit in my stomach when reports started swirling that the POTF2 - Princess Leia Organa (as Jabba's Prisoner) was starting to show up in stores. It could best be described as performance anxiety. It was at the plate in the big game. Would I strike out or get a hit? I drove hour and a half to a remote Walmart to get one, so I would say my at bat ended in a hit by pitch. Side note: that figure ended up becoming plentiful.

Army building could be a real challenge in the early going. Ordering individual figures wasn't an option. Stores had to order case assortments of 16 figures. If you were army building Stormtroopers at two per case, you would have to wait until the store sold a good portion of the other 14 figures before more were ordered. You also had to keep a close ear to the ground. You never knew when a figure would only be available by eating boxes of Froot Loops or by setting foot in JCPenney. This was the era of true scalping, and those store exclusives proved to be a nightmare. It made it possible for individuals to corner local markets for those exclusives, and remember, local markets were essentially all that existed at the time.

The flip side is that the bobby was barrels of fun. The phrase "toy run" had real meaning then. For part of this time, I was stationed just outside Baltimore, MD. On many a Saturday morning, I would head out for four hours and my maximum travel time between stores was 15 minutes. Multiple Walmarts, Targets, Kaybees, Toys R Us stores, Kmarts, Service Merchandise stores, and regional department stores could be hit in one trip. Everyone carried Star Wars figures. It was a much more active hobby then, and toy hunting was a true pastime. There was an electricity to the hobby.

Today, the concept of a "toy run" is almost non-existent. If I want to really waste gas and time, I'll hit one Walmart and a whopping two Targets, and it's usually fruitless. To that point, I almost never engage in toy runs anymore. Looking for figures at brick and mortar is only done incidentally when some other purpose brings me into the establishment. It's become a much more passive hobby, and with that, all of the fun of the hunt is gone. Conversely, with the exception of Target exclusives, there is zero pressure or stress with collecting. That pit of the stomach feeling is long gone. For general release items, if Hasbro makes it, you're virtually guaranteed to get it. Even the hottest (general release) items take a while before they pre-sell out.

Furthermore, we live in the era of solid cases of individual figures. Army building becomes a snap. Do you want to pre-order several cases of Stormtroopers from the comfort of your Barcalounger? HERE YOU GO (Sponsored). The practicality of the hobby today is off the charts compared to those early days. So again, it's fun versus convenience. Which is better? For me, I think each era was right for the time of my life. When I was young, single, and carefree, whiling away the hours toy hunting was a blast. Now that I'm older and have more responsibilities and demands of my time, I like acquiring every single thing I want from a given assortment with only a few clicks of the mouse. Having saiid that, finding items in store thrills me to this day.

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