>>11020267I guess trying to make up for lost time. I was kind of "robbed" of childhood. Bad home environment, constantly moving, poor, etc.... I had a few toys, but not very many, and would always lose a few or pieces of them every time we moved.
Through teenage years and most of early adulthood, I was insecure as all hell and moved away from toys, trying to be competitive and "adult-like", much to my disappointment and misery. As I matured, I stopped caring about what people who would hate me think, started making peace with myself, moved on and grew out of old mindsets, and let myself do things I wanted no matter how childish they seemed.
Even then I don't even see myself as a "collector." I'm not chasing high-dollar or rare things just because they're high-dollar or rare, or have potential good resale value a few years from now. That's all irrelevant to me; all that matters is if something is cool and fun, regardless of how common or expensive it is. When my father passed at a very young age, all his star wars stuff was passed down to me, which got me into it from a very early age; my mother got me into transformers. I've liked them ever since in a general way, even if there are shows/movies/other media in them I dislike, and still enjoy toys in the setting. I especially liked lego SW as a kid even though I only had 4 sets of them, but it's a shame that now it seems marketed mostly towards resellers and nostalgia, with a bunch of boring black box 18+ display sets and not many interesting and truly creative playsets anymore.