Changing Ideas

I spend a lot of time thinking about the act of collecting.  You may not have noticed. ;)

I started collecting as an adult in 1997, and for a long time I had very specific ideas of what I wanted my collection to be.  I focused on the brushable ponies I liked (mainly ponies I'd had or wanted as a child), playsets, and accessories. That's it, that's all.

At a certain point in the early 2000s, I started to change the way I looked at my collection. This was partly due to G3 coming out - I loved the throwbacks to G1 in general look, names, and some of the styles. But there were also styles that I hadn't liked in G1 that I did like in G3.  Namely, ponies with raised symbols. It made me start to reexamine some of the G1s I'd previously dismissed.

Swirly Whirly was the first G1 with a raised symbol I added to my collection.  And suddenly I loved this set. They embody everything that I love about G1 - the pastel candy colours, the colour scheme, the accessories (and the scent is a nice plus).

After that I was away. Suddenly, there were a lot more ponies I was interested in adding to the herd. Sweetberry Ponies, Candy Cane Ponies, Magic Message, Happy Tails, Merry-Go-Round, Perfume Puffs...the list was (nearly) endless. Even the Princess Ponies got a second look (but I still hate their symbols and display them so I can't see them).

The latest change has been the addition of some Pony Friends.  I'd only had one as a child, Spunky, and even then I wasn't sure how I felt about her.  Two years ago I found one second hand and decided to keep her for a while. Then ZigZag joined her.  There will be others, but not every Friend.  I'm still curating and although I have a lot of full sets, I'm still not a completist.

This is something that I find fascinating about collecting and collectors.  We're always looking, thinking, reexamining, and making another decision about our collections (even if it sometimes feels more like instinct than active thought).

There are still individual ponies and sets that I have no interest in (Dance 'N Prance comes immediately to mind). Will that remain the case?  Who knows.  I may yet end up with a complete G1 collection someday.  But not right now.

Elf