My Buying Habits - Buying Under the Influence

No, I'm not bidding on eBay while drunk. Well, not anymore.  Seriously, I've never done that.  What I'd like to cover for this article is the way that outside factors can influence what I'm buying at any given time and the benefits and dangers inherent with these influences.  Surely it's something that has happened to everyone else.  I'm going to break each influence into it's own header and discuss from there.

Other Blogs

Certainly this is pretty obvious.  There have been numerous times that I've read a blog and immediately went about searching for the figure that's being reviewed.  There have been many culprits in the two years that I've been doing this blog.  One such culprit is Maz at the SourceBlog.  Reading his entries wreaks havoc on both my self esteem and my thought line when I'm thinking about my collection.  Maz's review of GT-R Maximus is what pushed me over the edge on buying him.  Every time he makes a post about some rare European or Japanese exclusive, I find myself spending hours on eBay searching for it.  I don't know how many times I've almost pulled the trigger on a purchase only to bring myself back from the brink of sanity.

Maz's fault

Heroic_Decepticon is another culprit in my brain.  Thanks to him, I have a permanent saved search on eBay for a Canadian Slag.  He is also responsible for the a figure that I recently purchased.  I hope to one day be as good as getting the finds that he gets.

Toy Archive

Flywheels is responsible for my recent purchase of Monstructor.  After reading his reviews on Dinoking, I knew that I'd probably never have him (more on that in another article), but I knew that I could get Monstructor.  I actually consulted a bit with him before I made the purchase and his encouragement gave me the nudge I needed.  And thanks to a comment he made on another blog, I made yet another purchase.


Lastly, the good folks over at Pax Cybertron deal a lot with third party figures.  I enjoy reading their reviews so much that they've started to soften my stance a bit on third party figures.  Don't get me wrong, the glacier that is my dislike of third party is still frozen, but Pax's enthusiasm has thawed it a bit.

Media

This mainly has to do with the comics, but I have managed to watch the first disc from the Japanese Headmasters series.  One day, maybe when I'm bored, bedridden, or forced, I'll watch the rest of the series.  But I'm going to have to be forced.

It all goes downhill from this shot.  TFWiki.net

First, James Roberts and his fine, fine writing have made getting Star Saber a priority for me.  While I've been aware of Star Saber for quite awhile, it wasn't until he popped up in More Than Meets The Eye that he became important to me.  It will be awhile before I get one, but I'm keeping my eye open for one.  I'm still trying to decide if it would be cheaper to get him on eBay or yahoo Japan.  Maybe with the Masterpiece version coming later next year, we can get treated to a reissue.

Takara, if you read this, reissue him!  TFWiki.net

Having watched one whole disc out of the four that make up Headmasters, I've been seriously fighting the urge to get every Headmaster that I can get my grubby little hands on at the same time.  I've been having fever dreams about getting a big box chock full of Headmaster goodness.  I have to take it slow and steady.  I just have to constantly remind myself of that.

Social Media

I'm a member of several Transformer groups on Facebook, and I also occasionally check out Twitter and Flickr.  The one thing I've noticed is that most of the people on these Facebook groups love to show off their newest additions.  Then again, so do I, hence the blog.  At any rate, seeing these posts drives the competitor in me.  You got a new Transformers Prime Vehicon?  Check out my recently acquired Pretender Classic Starscream!  Does that make me a jerk?  I don't know.  I don't engage in exchanges that way; the thoughts never leave me head.  I'm just competitive.

Flickr has influenced me in ways that don't have to do with purchases.  I like to look at the photography.  People such as brr-icy have inspired me to attempt to improve my photography.  The key word here is "attempt", because I haven't gotten the nuances down yet.  I'm getting better, but I still lack the patience needed to get my pictures looking as good as I'd like them.

The Wrap Up

Every day I wrestle with the things that I see.  Every click of a link, turn of a page, or simple conversation plants a seed in the back of my head.  Do I let that seed sprout, or do I pour salt on it, killing it forever?  This is something that I give a lot of thought to.  Being influenced isn't a bad thing, as all of the things listed above have led me down avenues I hadn't thought of before.  Collecting in a vacuum isn't very fun, or practical, so just being in the world will bring about some sort of influence.

I really wanted to throw all of this out there, because each of the things that I've mentioned will play a big part of this blog over the first few months of this blog.  As I've mention before, I pretty much stick to a schedule with this blog - reviews of my newest additions on Mondays, and then an article on Wednesday.  To maintain the review portion, I pretty much write them in advance.  Well, thanks to all of these great influences, I have the first three months' worth of reviews done for 2014.  I'll mention what influenced me to get each figure as I review it.  There may be a few figures that will interrupt the so-called "Influenced Buys", what with Masterpiece figures coming (I'm looking at you Smokescreen), but they're written.  Stay tuned to see what they are!