It's time to move forward

It's time to move forward with the Geek Cave.  Supply chains aren't improving and we're still waiting on some new furniture for the Cave and the new display space, but we're tired of the state of things.  I need some space made to display some new pieces.

So happy to have these two - now I need display space to appreciate them!

I also need some space to display some old pieces.  The Cave has been left to itself for months now, but it's time to get back to organizing and making sure the display works.  Right now, I can tell you it's just a mess.

Needs work

However, over the next week we'll be packing up the MOTU and POP collections for temporary storage.  The following week, I've taken a much needed week off of work and I plan to spend a fair amount of time dealing with the toy explosion.  I already know I won't get everything I want done (I never do on a vacation), but I hope to at least clear room to walk!

For the Honour of Grayskull!  Let's get going!

So watch this space.  In a couple of weeks I hope to show you some before and after pictures of the progress that's made.  Here's hoping you can tell the difference between the two pictures.

Elf

Planning Ahead

We’re making plans for the autumn and the return to organizing the collections.  Roomy has very kindly offered (again) to pack up her figures until we can find a display cabinet of the right size and type for her new display space.  Through the summer I refused this offer, because I was busy in the garden and packing up the figures meant an inevitable jumbling up of accessories and bits and pieces to be sorted out later.  However, the last time she offered I suggested I’d take her up on the offer if we’re still searching for a cabinet when the weather turns.

Having the MOTU packed up will allow more freedom of movement in the Cave (always a struggle) and also make it easier to keep reorganizing my collection.  Naturally, if we go this route, I’ve promised to help Roomy with matching up her accessories to the right figures when the time comes (I do love a good accessory organization party).

As far as making plans, last February I slightly expanded the G1 display space so all the ponies had a little more breathing room between them.  This made sense as the G1 collection will certainly be the area with the most expansion happening in the future (read: biggest wishlist).  G2 follows up with the 2^nd biggest wishlist, but since that list was small to start out with, they don’t get all that much geographical space.  For both G1 and G2, there is one more playset each that I’d like to add to the collection. So I’m keeping that space in mind without actually leaving a blank area, because who knows when these will make it into the Cave.

G3 and G4 are the easiest to deal with now since they’re essentially complete collections from my point of view, meaning that there are so few other pieces that I want to pick up I can confidently identify the amount of display space needed to house them. Now that G4 is officially over, I’ll probably spend some time tweaking their display to take up the least amount of space possible while still looking good.  I’m still very fond of the Canterlot portion of the display, but there’s room for improvement elsewhere.  I will also look at expanding the G3 display slightly, as the ponies look crowded to me right now and I’m not enjoying that.  There won’t be huge changes there, however.

There's also the question of displaying merchandise.  This can be tricky because of the various sizes and shapes that merch takes and I've not yet found a display style that I like for my merch.  I think it makes sense to group like with like, so I'll probably display all my party supplies together, then stationary and stickers, then other bits and pieces.  I'll probably also divide them by generation, partially because  I think the vintage art looks so much better than the more modern pieces, and I want to give both the chance to shine.

Stay tuned.

Elf

Series Speculation

I bought a thing

Actually six things.

I wonder if collectors all have a particular kryptonite?  One of mine is that I can’t pass up a special series.

This is slightly odd, as with the main bulk of my collection, the brushables, I’m not a completionist at all.  Which is not to say that I don’t have complete sets (I have several) but in instances where I decide that I only want 5 of the 6 ponies offered, I have no problem with passing up the 6^th pony and considering that set complete for me.

Sorry, Tassles

It gets different when we get into special sets.  Suddenly it’s like I’m chasing Pokemon and no, I don’t want just one, I want to catch them all!  Slap an anniversary sticker on it, or make a convenient collection of all the main characters, and I am on that like a sweet tooth on discounted high end ice cream (this also applies to me). 

Funnily enough, with the original 6 Basic Fun ponies, I had intended to only get Snuzzle and Cotton Candy.  My cousin happened to get me the other four ponies for Christmas that year.  Clearly the universe intended me to have all six.  At least I managed to keep the Rainbow ponies down to only my three favourites (Windy, Moonstone, and Skydancer).

There is an element of sense in this.  The set still has to appeal to me.  I won't pick up a special set just for the sake of having it.  There is still an aspect of curation here, even if it's slightly overshadowed by a bit of mania.

I don't see a change in my mentality happening here any time soon, and that's not a problem until I run out of space. As that hasn't hapened yet (I'm surprised too), I'm not overly concerned.  It gives me another fun aspect of the collection to ponder and go on about.

Elf

The Next Generatiion

We’re in an interesting moment in our collectors’ home here. Roomy’s MOTU fandom is on an uptick, with the recent She-Ra reboot, the new He-Man continuation, and all the associated toys (note to Mattel: needs more POP).

On the other hand, I look at the new G5 toys and I just…no. I think the animation looks great, I’m looking forward to watching the movie, and if kids like the toys that’s fantastic, but the toys are doing nothing for me.  It’s the heads. Those faces (eyebrows?!?) make me think of them as people in horse costumes, and I’ve never been the biggest fan of the times when MLP veered more toward doll than pony.

Still my favourite generation

This is not a bad thing.  On the one hand, I don’t have to figure out how to fit another Generation into the Geek Cave (yet).  On the other, it’s not such a bad thing for only one of us to have a major influx of new toys at a time, especially when our display spaces are being adjusted and can’t actually display new items yet. The family room is starting to look a bit like the backroom of a toy store, with all the unopened figures in there, but it’s a temporary state.  Who’d have thought that finding an appropriately-sized cabinet for the space would turn out to be so difficult? If only Grayskull fit on a Billy bookcase.

In the autumn we'll get back to organizing things.  There's months of winter to spend with our collections coming up.  Something to look forward to.

Elf

The Summer Without Ponies

I am still here. I did not intend to take a blogging break but somehow weeks kept going by and every Friday I would think “I haven’t written a blog for the weekend.”  And then continue not to do so.

Part of the problem is, things with the collection have not been moving much these last few months. Let’s recap, shall we? Geek Cave – still a mess. New shelving for MOTU – still looking. Camera – still broken. Also, as an avid gardener and a person who hates winter, a lot of my free time has been spent outside in the garden.  Plants wait for no one.

All of this makes it hard to get motivated to talk about the collection, or customs, but I could at least post a shelfie on Instagram occasionally.

None of this should be taken as an indication that I’m losing interest in my collection.  Far from it (there have been purchases this summer, but they’re not here yet). It’s ok to take a “break” from time to time, however.  When the weather sadly gets cooler and the garden goes to bed, I’ll be ready to turn my attention back to finding the floor in the Geek Cave.  In the meantime…

Elf

Housekeeping

 Traditionally at this time of year I’d be in the thick of con prep.  That’s not happening again this year, and if you think I’m using the time to do some other things with my collection, you’d be mistaken.

We’re in an interesting flux state with our collections just now.  The plan is still on to move Marie’s MOTU/POP collection down to the TV room in the basement (geeky name pending), leaving me in sole possession of the Geek Cave.  However, we still need display cabinets before this can happen.  While some of these will be the collector’s friend, the Billy Bookshelf, we haven’t found a large cabinet to house Greyskull yet.

Naturally, the lack of cabinets means that things aren’t moving much in the Cave…except where they’re not supposed to be.

There appears to have been a struggle.

Well, the Velcro strips holding the shelves on the wall seemed like a good idea. Actually, I suspect these might have continued to work if we hadn’t just had several weeks of extreme weather fluxes.  Going from heat and humidity to cold and dry rapidly and continually may have just been too much for the adhesive.  Never mind, I have a poster that can go on that wall.

Cleaning up the tiny ponies was a bit of pain though.  Naturally, some of them fell behind the shelves.  They also bounce well, and made some good distance.  I haven’t actually checked to see if I’ve got everyone yet, and probably won’t until I figure out what to do with these little cube shelves now.  Time to get creative.

Speaking of which, you’ll have noticed that it’s been ages since I posted any custom ponies.  There’s two reasons for this.  First, I haven’t been doing a lot of art since the pandemic started.  I’ve been too lazy and tired some days, and I’ve been spending quite a lot of time working in the garden as well (a different kind of art).  Second, the photos I have of finished customs are currently trapped on my memory card because my camera has broken down, specifically, the little door to access the memory card and batteries is broken and preventing the camera from realizing that it has either.  Since we’ve been in lockdown for the past several months, I’ve not been able to take it into a store to get looked at.  All in good time.

So that’s what’s been happening (or not) here in the last little while.

Elf

Time to reflect

 You know I’m big on curating a collection.  It’s half the fun, in my opinion.  For the most part, I do this on the front end, meaning that if I’m not very sure that I want to add a piece to my collection, I simply don’t buy that piece.  This doesn’t mean that I never look at the existing collection through a critical lens though.

One time I do this is when a part of the collection ends.  G4 slid slowly into G4.5 but Hasbro recently announced the start of G5, effectively ending the G4 toy line.  It’s a perfect time to go over the G4 portion of my collection and see if there’s anything I’ve changed my mind about keeping.  This includes the many (many) unopened packages I still haven’t gotten around to adding to the display yet.  

I did the same thing at the end of G3, sitting down and going over the whole generation one pony at a time to see if there were any I no longer wanted.  I try very much to focus on each individual pony when I do this.  With G3 I looked at individual ponies, but I was also influenced by the number of figures I had and the space I had to display them.  The display was crowded and I felt that I probably didn’t need as many ponies as I had.  This resulted in my selling off quite a few ponies that I later added back into the collection when I found the pony second hand.  It turned out that I actually quite strongly liked that individual pony, and, as collectors do, I found the room I needed to display everyone.

I’ve also done it after adding ponies unexpectedly to the collection.  Sometimes when buying second hand you end up with something that wasn’t on your want list, but also isn’t already in your collection.  The temptation can certainly be to keep the new piece because it’s new (to you), and better to do that than sell it on immediately and regret it later.  However, I’ll go back and look at that pony again several months or a year later and think about whether or not I actually want her.  More often than not, the answer is yes, but there have been times when I’ve felt instead that I’m keeping that particular figure only because it conveniently landed in my hands, not because I actually wanted it.

I find curating the vintage section of the collection easiest, possibly because I'm never in a situation where I'm standing in a store having to make a quick decision on whether or not I want a specific pony (thrifting is different than retail in this regard - thrifting requires you to know the market and make quick decisions based on perceived value while retail is just about whether you want it now).  With the current line, there's always a chance that you'll never see that particular item on the shelves again, so you need to decide if you're buying it or not (a collector also often develops a 6th sense about whether or not a current item might be hard to find later).  With the vintage ponies it can be a bit easier.  Most figures are relatively easy to come by, so you've got a relatively good chance of finding another one later on.  Collectors will learn which figures are hard to find or rare and be prepared to buy when they're ready to add that piece to the collection.

I've said before that I think curating is important in the life of a collector.  This is part of how I curate but there's no right way of doing it.  Every collector has to make their own choices about how to curate their collection.  I just hope it's enjoyable.

Elf