The Figure Collecting Journey: It’s Not About the Value; It’s About the Joy It Brings

Recently, I watched a thought-provoking YouTube video from Senpai and Kouhai. It talks about about how to approach figure collecting as a new figure collector. It touches on how you should not be discouraged when seeing a collection that is better and more valuable than your own. Sure, anime figures cost a lot of money. However, most of the collection that you’ll see on social media that emphasizes the value of their collection is not something that you should worry about. These collections were built over years, perhaps even over a decade of collecting. And you’re just starting on your journey. You may start with a humble prize figure and that’s alright. Most collectors started with a prize. It’s the common gateway figure to amassing a treasure trove of anime figures. I too started with a prize figure. But remember, the whole point of collecting anime figures is the joy it brings. You start with one figure on your journey to amassing a hundred or more.

You can see the video with the “Ted Talk” below. Towards the halfway point of the hour-long video, they start the collection tour but I recommend watching the full video as I did.

If you prefer to read, I have transcribed the video below with permission from Senpai and Kohai to post on my blog.

Transcript of the “Ted Talk” –

Now, before we begin, Kohai and I do have some very important things we want to say to kind of frame our mindset and how we want to present our collection to you all.

For starters, people aren’t speculative investors when it comes to anime figures and the price is completely relative to the collection so it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Secondly, if you’re someone who’s wanting to get into anime figures and anime figure collecting, we find that that price tag can be very discouraging to new collectors. And then lastly, if you’re already collecting it can be very detrimental to your mindset and how you look at your own collection when you attempt to compare yours to other people on social media.

So let’s break those down. Yes, you can make money selling figures but the speculative market really isn’t there. People that collect anime figures collect anime figures because they enjoy anime and they enjoy seeing their characters in 3D form. When they purchase these figures, the intrinsic value they get from that item is greater than the cost that’s why we collect in the first place. That item brings you joy and it brings you happiness. Your collection is a compilation of things that make you happy. The price is completely relative to the collection. So it doesn’t really matter if you have the best prize figure collection in the entire country, it’s easily possible that a scale figure collection is worth more money but does that somehow take away from the fact that you have the best prize figure collection in the country? No, it doesn’t whatsoever.

Amazon Japan Top Selling Anime Figures

I’ve been collecting for over nine years and Kohai’s been collecting for over five years but it’s just this year that we started to join social media groups in regard to figure collecting. And although the figure community has been very good to us so far, there are a few things we dislike about the community namely what we see on YouTube. And that’s the emphasis on money when it comes to these collections so if you’re here just to learn how much this collection costs, we’re not going to tell you. There are three kind of main reasons we feel that just focusing on the money is kind of detrimental to the hobby as a whole so we like to do our best to refrain from them.

Secondly, it can be detrimental to those who are just now collecting or wanting to collect anime figures. The last thing I want to happen is I don’t want someone to look at our collection or collection like ours and think to themselves, “Man, I really want that in my life and I hope to obtain that in the future.” But then they hear
the price tag associated with it and then they back off thinking, well there’s no way I could ever afford that so why should I begin collecting in the first place. As a community, we just lost a friend. We just lost the opportunity to gain someone who’s going to have a similar passion to us. And then they’re deprived
of that joy of collecting something. In the first place, people don’t necessarily focus on the fact that it might have taken them 14 years to collect and amass that collection. And when you break it down, the price becomes a lot more meaningless and insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

And lastly, if you’re already collecting anime figures, maybe you’ve been collecting for two to three years and you go online and you see someone who’s showing off their thirty thousand dollar figure collection, it’s absolutely heartbreaking if you then turn to your figure collection and are disappointed in what you’ve amassed. That’s not why you collected in the first place, you collected these things because it brought you joy. And focusing on the price tag of that can be detrimental to
the mindset and how you look at your own and even how you perceive moving forward in the future.

We need to remind ourselves that social media is a bunch of people trying to put their best foot forward we have a lot of people again flaunting the value of things. Here’s my $30,000 anime figure collection or here’s my $3,000 Amiami figure unboxing. But there are things that we don’t see and things that we forget.

Let’s use that thirty thousand-dollar figure collection as an example. Although they may be flaunting that price tag to you, they may not be telling you the journey it took to get to that. Maybe it took them five years to amass that collection. Now that’s 60 months. That’s $500 a month and that’s still a lot of money. $500 a month is a lot of disposable income to many of us. But let’s put some perspective in that many of you may actually have something in your life that could be that anime figure collection.

If you’re American, you probably have to have a car to get around and many Americans have a loan on a vehicle let’s say, it’s $25,000 or $28,000 that costs them $500 a month. Well, that’s your anime figure collection. So maybe you’re a person in that position but once you pay your car off, you’ll be able to amass that collection that you want. We got to keep in mind that there’s a journey. There’s a story behind how they got to certain places. When you’re looking at our collection today, please keep in mind that it took us 14 years cumulatively to collect what you see. That’s almost half of my life and that’s over half of Kohai’s life and that’s just crazy. And when you look at it in that perspective, money becomes less significant because it’s broken down over a long span of time. If you keep collecting for five years, you’re going to be blown away with how large a collection has grown or how the quality of your collection has grown. And you can be very proud of where you’ve made it.

The main reason we bring this up is this. We don’t want our collection in any way to bring down anybody. We want this to encourage new people to collect and people who are currently collecting, to continue growing their collection. If this is a hobby that you enjoy, we hope, more than anything, that you can take something out of this.

Amazon Japan Top Selling Anime Figures

Maybe this inspires you in some way to work on your collection or start a new collection. Maybe you like how we’ve lit our cases. I’ll talk to you about that and you’re welcome to copy it. Maybe you like how we have our figures layered and you want to mimic that. Maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe it looks too cluttered to you so when you build your collection you know you need more display cases to lay out your figures a little more separately. We want to be the first to encourage you to join
our hobby and to continue collecting if you’re already in it. You can do it. It just takes time.

People focus on money so often because it’s a measurement of success in our society and the sad truth is it’s just going to take some of you longer than others. Some people have more disposable income some do not. That being said, all it takes is time and I want to make sure that we keep that in mind when you look at collections like this and I hope that, as a community, we become critical of people just flaunting the value of the collections for the reasons that I stated before.

I sincerely hope that this is coming across as genuine. It’s not a humble brag. That’s not how we’re intending this to be. We’re not trying to put ourselves on some pedestal above everybody else. In fact, it’s the opposite. I’m so tired of all the facades that people have online that I hope this feels and is humbling to you all who are watching this.

We want to be encouraging. You all are a part of a community that we love and we’re excited to be a part of that. Any of the comments you leave on YouTube or if you’ve interacted with us on Reddit mean the world to us because you all are our friends. We don’t have anyone close by to share this passion with. None of our friends collect. Most all of them are still in college so they don’t yet have the funds to amass and grow a collection. So, truly it means the world to us to be a part of this and we’re excited to share this with you. And we’re going to be excited when we talk about it. So, again, I just want to make sure that the mindset that we go into this is in line with how we feel, as people on YouTube, and how we want to present our channel.

Before we move on, there’s one last thing I want to bring up and I’m only bringing this up because, sadly, it’s been used against us to belittle the commentary that we just
made. We’ve had this conversation with others. And people, for whatever reason, don’t want to hear it or they think it’s fake coming from us. And so I want to address that. Kohai and I are not rich. We both work for the state government and she’s in college. We don’t have a lot of money. Again, this took over 14 years to collect. And I want you to keep that in mind. But it can look hypocritical telling you all this when I’m standing in a room like you see here. So I want to humble myself in front of
you. Break down that facade and actually tell you a little bit about what you see here because I think it’s actually going to be surprising. And again remind everyone that what you see on social media isn’t the true story.

I don’t want to sit here, pretend like something we’re not. And I want to let you know, we are regular everyday people. This is the word coming from somebody who has worked towards what they have and wants to encourage any of you all to do this. All the electronics you see beside me are from a side hustle I have that I’ve been doing for the past six years. I build high-end custom computers for clients. Now, to ensure that this isn’t like a humble brag or anything, I’m not even going to tell you the name of my company. I’m not going to link it in the description below so none of this can get back to me and like be beneficial to that side of things in any way. And if you’re actually one of my very few followers of my super small company, respectfully, please don’t comment below the name of my company. That undermines what I’m trying to tell you all here. If you want to communicate with me about anime figures or computers, feel free to DM me through that company. I’d love to talk to you all.

So back to the computers you see here. The total price tag of all these computers is over forty thousand dollars and that is a ton of money but it’s essentially a facade and that’s why I’m bringing this up. My financial investment and what you see here over the two and a half years I’ve been building this room is only about $6,000. And many of you who like anime figures know there’s a high correlation between those that like video games. And many of you might play on PC, and if you do, you know that five to six thousand dollars is what it takes to build kind of a high-end air-cooled computer and have some nice peripherals. And for many people, over the course of two years, that’s attainable and I’m here to tell you that’s about all I could obtain in two years. It would take me that long to save up for that if I stopped collecting figures. At best, maybe I can do that within a year.

So how does all this exist behind me in this room? It’s because over these six years and with the help of a very generous business partner, I’ve worked my way up to becoming a sponsored modder so companies literally send me stuff for free in exchange for building marketing material for them to advertise their products. The computer you see beside me is the first computer I’ve ever had that was fully sponsored. Everything in here was given to me and at the time I built this last year, the MSRP was over $12,000.

I cannot afford a single computer that’s in this room. It took me $6,000 to add the rest of the stuff you see in this room and the reason it’s so show-offy is because I do use it as a studio for that company. When I do bills and take photos, I will do it in this room to help build that image of this company. Every computer you see here has sponsored parts in it. And that’s kind of the message I want to bring to you. And I hope that just breaks down that facade and not everything you see on social media is how it’s necessarily perceived. Don’t fall into the trap of always comparing yourselves or judging people prematurely.

Again, sadly, people have used this as an argument against what we’ve been trying to tell you and belittle us. It’s easy for a beautiful person to say that looks don’t matter. It’s easy for a rich person to say that money doesn’t matter. And that’s how some people perceive things when we try to encourage them to do the same. Oh it’s easy for you because you have a lot of money. No. No. We do not. There’s a story to everything here. And don’t forget that whenever you look at social media and you view things. Last computer analogy here. These machines are meant to be Halo level products. They’re meant to be the top-of-the-line inspirational things that encourage people to build as well as use the products that are in them. And just like that, again, I want to get back to the whole point of all this. I hope that viewing our collection is inspiring and is genuinely encouraging for you to proceed. We love this hobby. We, too, are going to continue collecting because it’s what we do. And then we too want to keep growing this YouTube channel and sharing that with you all. So without further ado thank you for coming to my TED talk. If you actually stuck around, for all that let’s show you this collection.

Final Thoughts

You can proceed to watch the rest of the video if you want to see the collection because the transcript stops here.

I hope this video/transcript was able to provide you with a fresh perspective on the figure-collecting hobby! Don’t be fazed if you see any collections that advertise a high price tag! The figure-collecting hobby is a journey and not a one-time giant investment. A collection does not need to be massive for you to be proud of it! Heck, over the years, you yourself can amass a collection that other people will be envious of. Still! Remember that what matters is that you enjoy the journey and can be proud of the result!

Also, I’d like to thank Senpai and Kohai for allowing me to repurpose their content on my blog. You both rock!