How/Why Did You Start Collecting?

[Loon]

I haven't found a thread like this, and I figured it would be a good way to get to know members a bit more.

So, how/why did you start collecting?

Here's my reason:
Back in 2016, I was really into Star Wars Black Series and Marvel Legends figures, so, I read "The Fwoosh" a lot. In April, they published an article about the upcoming Beasts of the Mesozoic Kickstarter and I was instantly interested. Super-articulated dinosaurs sounded awesome. The fact that they had feathers shocked me too, as I wasn't up to date on my dino knowledge at the time. Strange, as I feel I liked dinosaurs more than most kids (name one elementary schooler you know that knew who Charles R. Knight was).

I sold my entire collection of Transformers, Star Wars, and Marvel figures to fund the BOTM Kickstarter. I backed every figure (insane, I know), and was pumped. Still, they wouldn't come for a long time, and I needed something to fill the void.

I got quite a few Amazon gift cards for my high school graduation, and instantly bought a few Papo figures. I was hesitant about models at first, as I never cared for figurines and thought they were "lame". But, since I was doing this dinosaur thing "full-time" now, I figured I'd check them out. I started out with a Papo Velociraptor and a Papo Pteranodon my sister got me. After I got a few more, I released how much I liked static models. Which, had the unfortunate affect of causing me to not be as interested in the articulated dinosaurs as I once was.

As I learned more and more about the latest paleontogical thinking, I wanted more accurate models. So, the 2017 Safari figures blew me away when they came out. Those toys made me realise this was what I wanted to collect, more than anything else. So, 4 years and almost 300 figures later, here I am.

Hopefully that wasn't too long for you, and I really look forward to ready everyone's replies. Unless, of course, there was already a thread like this, then delete it.

[Shonisaurus]

My hobby and love of dinosaurs began when I was five years old, that is to say in 1976 after seeing the then "Walt Disney" movie "Fantasy" with my father in the then Imperial cinema on Madrid's Gran Vía, I liked to rage the dinosaurs that appeared "retro" many of them and then over the years I was looking for dinosaurs and prehistoric animals. My parents gave me a book about Burian's prehistoric life at that time and one day with a few cents of the old currency that circulated in Spain I bought an envelope with dinosaurs, they were poorly made miniatures but for me they were worth like gold.

Then I had to wait until 1989 when I discovered the Invicta dinosaurs at a collectibles figure site and that is how I started collecting dinosaurs, then the following year in 1990 I discovered Safari dinosaurs and bought souvenir pteranodon, euplocephalus and maiasaura with nest (the old version), and that's how I started my collection. But as I say, my love for dinosaurs comes from the earliest childhood.

[Cretaceous Crab]

The short answer for me may be: ... because I can and everyone needs a hobby! 

Sheesh, I know it sounds pretty cliche and a canned response, but the main thing is that I just love dinosaurs. I seek out and collect different figures for different reasons, I suppose. For example, the vintage stuff, such as JP/LW toys, Definitely Dinosaurs & Dino Riders, are just nostalgic. The rest are mainly for completist or scientific accuracy. I do repaint a lot of them, so thats another incentive.

[sauroid]

i started collecting seriously when i was in my early teens, using my early childhood toys as the basis of my collection. ive always loved dinosaurs/prehistoric animals as well as modern animals of all kinds. if i cant keep the real ones then might as well keep their replicas.

and btw, i also collect Kaiju/other monster figures.

[Gwangi]

I've been dinosaur obsessed for as long as I can remember. I have home movies of myself watching movies like Planet of Dinosaurs, and King Kong at the age of 4 with my dad, who was also into dinosaurs and monsters. The original Land Before Time was the first theatrical movie I ever saw. And then of course Jurassic Park came out when I was 9 years old. As a child I had an impressive collection of Tyco, Marx, Carnegie, Kenner, Invicta, and the usual AAA, Dor Mei, and Imperial stuff. As a teenager I was still into dinosaurs but my mom was pushing me to yard sale a lot of my childhood toys and so I did, thinking that's what I had to do at the time, that I had to "grow up". Big mistake. Flash forward to about 2009 and I discovered the Dinosaur Toy Blog and Forum. It exposed me not only to the wonderful modern figures that had become available but also the community of like-minded adults that existed. So I started collecting, this time as an adult with no parent to stop me. I collect vintage stuff for nostalgia and modern stuff because of my appreciation for dinosaurs as once living animals.

[Faelrin]

I recall posting something like this before, but the gist is I grew up in the 90's and early 2000's with playing with dinosaur toys and have always loved them, so even though I only started collecting them as an adult like in 2015, my childhood saw the likes of the Playmates Primal Rage toys, and Kenner and Hasbro's various Jurassic Park lines, and many other small generic dinosaurs (like a bucket that came with a volcano, rocks, and trees), and of course eventually a few figures from the Mattel Disney Dinosaur line too (missed out on the "Carnotaur" though).

While I was already collecting action figures as a late teen and adult in my early 20's (mainly from video games, such as Square-Enix's Final Fantasy VII figures, or Neca's Castlevania ones, which I lost in my parents storage a few years back, etc), I got back into prehistoric collecting with the new toys for the soon to be released Jurassic World in 2015, both out of nostalgia, and after watching some reviews of them on youtube got my interest such as from Victoria's Cantina channel, and from the DinoToyBlog here itself. Some of those first figures I got for myself was the Bashers and Biters Ankylosaurus, and brown Stegoceratops, and the Mosasaurus vehicle set, and also the chomping T. rex. I still have all of those despite them sadly collecting dust in a box in my room with nowhere else to display them now that the Mattel figures have essentially superseded them and the lack of shelf space in the time being.

With the announcement of the Beasts of the Mesozoic line in early 2016, I was well on my away to fully delving into this sort of thing, as a primary hobby (which prior to that was basically just video games and things related to them). Around that time, JPLegacy shut down, and as I was already beginning to lurk the forums here after checking out the blog's reviews, I decided to join, wanting to have a place to discuss those figures, other then on the kickstarter too. Eventually I started delving into the "new for" sections, and folks collection threads and learning about other brands of figures which I was unfamiliar with (Safari Ltd, CollectA, and Battat) and familiar with (such as Papo's minimally before, such as their Allosaurus that was on my wishlist as early as 2010).

From there my collection and collecting interest has grown and expanded beyond just those first few Hasbro Jurassic World figures. Now I'm interested in collecting genera (and of those many are from various pop culture sources I grew up with, if not from books I read, aside from those that are recently discovered such as the wonderful Borealopelta) from all across Earth's history, and the more I learn the more I desire to expand it.

I also quite heavily collect Mattel's Jurassic World line which has helped me achieve the dream of acquiring a figure from nearly every film species (and mostly accurate to them), in addition to the many others they've made so far, which I was struggling to figure out how to do back in 2016 with the minimal options (other then Kenner's mostly wonderful assortment, particularly their TLW line).

Edit: @Loon Looks like we went through something similar. With perhaps the exception of the Papo Allosaurus I knew about earlier on, I wasn't particularly interested in static figures as much unless they were on the small side like many of Schleich's older animal figures (such as a wolf I picked up many years ago at the local zoo), etc. After seeing the new for Safari Ltd 2017 thread I quickly came around on static figures with how detailed and accurate those were, and then some (especially when they might be one of the only options out there for a particular genus, like Kaiyodo's Acanthostega and Ichthyostega I finally got earlier this year).

[Pachyrhinosaurus]

I've been into animals and nature for as long as I can remember. Dinosaurs started in second grade. It was the first subject we learned about in science that year and it caught my interest right away. At one point we were given an assignment to make a shoebox diorama and so I went to A. C. Moore's to buy some dinosaurs to go in the diorama. I came out with the Wild Safari Triceratops, Utahraptor, Pteranodon, and Brachiosaurus. The diorama was arranged with the triceratops in the middle guarding a nest of eggs (which I found in the floral department) from the utahraptor as the Pteranodon flew overhead, suspended from the lid of the box I had oriented vertically along the short edge of the box for the background. The brachiosaurus never made it in because it was too large but these four figures were the basis for my collection.

[Sarapaurolophus]

I got out my old Kenner JP2 figures that I had from childhood with intention to sell them and wanted to do a little research on their rarity and worth.
That's how I somehow stumbled over the Beasts of the Mesozoic Kickstarter. I thought the idea of articulated, feathered raptors was great and shared the links with some friends. We all ended up purchasing one or two raptors when the figures were released to the non-backers.

I started following Dino Toy Blog and the forums to see what other dino figures are out there and here I am now

[Dinoguy2]

I started actually collecting when I was 8 years old. By "actually collecting" I mean making a concerted effort trying to get all of a certain type of figure, rather than just buying a whole bunch from a line I liked. My dad and I were shopping for a model train set so we were going into lots of local hobby shops (most of which closed down many years ago now). I remember one of them, which was run out of some guy's detached garage, was very cramped and cluttered full of models, trains, and other hobby stuff you might find in the 80s. In one nook he had a little display of Carnegie Collection dinosaurs. I was of course very into dinosaurs at the time, but I remember thinking there was something special about these. Their quality remind me of the little Hagen-Renaker ceramic animals I used to like looking at in gift shops, with their glossy paint and lots of shading and details. But these were better, because they were bigger and made of non-breakable plastic, so you could both admire them and play with them. I also remember that they did not have all the Carnegies available in 1989, so they must have had some collector brochures out or a photo of the whole collection. I think they were missing Tyrannosaurus and one or two of the sauropods. They definitely had Brachiosaurus, which became my new Dinosaur Holy Grail. But of course my dad wasn't letting me leave the store with a $40 impulse buy, so I left with the $2-3 Pteranodon.

I found more Carnegies at a different independent toy store nearby and I remember by 1993 I was even ordering new ones from a catalog, and using the catalog to catch up on what new models were being released. This is the main thing that in my mind separated my collecting from just regular toy buying. I would also make it a habit to go into the new World of Science store whenever we were at the mall to see if any new Carnegies had come out. I was super excited when I first saw the revised Allosaurus, although slightly disappointed when I realized it was a remake and not a new species. I thought it was supposed to be the newly discovered Afrovenator or Sinraptor at first (that would have been a CollectA-worthy turnaround time!).

When Battat's dinosaurs first came out, I learned about them from the old Dinosaura-Online site and even bought mine from Jeff Poling, who ran it. I decided that these were way better than Carnegie so in my mind I was switching to a Battat collector, but I still kept up on new Carnegie releases up through 1998. In 1999 the one local store left that carried Carnegies went out of business. I bought a couple of the Carnegies they had left and they threw in their display mountain for free. I mainly used it to display Battats and a few of the more up-to-date Carnegies until it all got packed away when I went off to college.

When Battat resurrected he Terra line, I bought my first new dinosaur figures since the 90s, so that pretty much pulled me back into it. I didn't really have the motivation at the time to catch up on the entire Carnegie back catalog that had come out since 1998 (big mistake), but I did get a few newer ones when they announced the cancellation of the line. My parents cleared all our old junk out of the basement around that same time, so I adopted most of my old collection back. When I found my old Carnegie mountain, I just had to set up the old display again in my new house, and I started gaining a new appreciation for the really old-school sculpts, which eventually led to my web site and going a little nuts tracking down missing figures and variants.

Of course, Dino Toy Blog was there pretty much the whole time - without you guys I probably never would have heard of the Terra series or the cancellation of Carnegie and gotten back into this 

[PrimevalRaptor]

For me it all started when I was like two or three years old, my mum brought some UKRD dinosaurs (that I still have to this day!) from her office home and that ignited the spark in me.
Of course I didn't collect that hard myself at first, I mostly got models and all from my family and relatives, though I did already start hunting myself on flea markets when I was in elementary school.
Things escalated a bit when I discovered online shopping lmao
Also one of my fondest memories was when one of our local toy stores who usually just had Schleich and some Bullyland suddenly had Safari Ltd models...I was so damn happy, especially cause some of them were fairly rarely produced species back in the day (and I still like the Carcharodontosaurus a lot, despite the flaws and all...it's just really unique and I remember it fondly). A shame they stopped selling them here.

[Mellow Stego]

Just like most of you I grew up loving dinosaurs. Growing up in the 80s/90s I got to experience everything from Godzilla movies on TBS, embarrassing my mom at the theater when I started crying uncontrollably while watching The Land Before Time and getting to watch Jurassic Park multiple times in the theater.
My toy collecting at the time consisted of Dino Riders, the Imperials toys and, of course, Jurassic park. That all came to an end during my high school years and lasted through college. I still loved dinos, just never thought about buying any figures.
That was until around 2016 when my wife went to a "haunted" antique store in Tucson. She brought home a fossil tooth and a Xplus Styracosaurus! The tooth we found out was a Spinosaurus tooth so I insisted we go out and find a toy to go with it. While searching for the perfect companion to the tooth I discovered the world of dinosaur figures.
And that's how it started for me.       

[Gwangi]

Just like most of you I grew up loving dinosaurs. Growing up in the 80s/90s I got to experience everything from Godzilla movies on TBS, embarrassing my mom at the theater when I started crying uncontrollably while watching The Land Before Time and getting to watch Jurassic Park multiple times in the theater.
My toy collecting at the time consisted of Dino Riders, the Imperials toys and, of course, Jurassic park. That all came to an end during my high school years and lasted through college. I still loved dinos, just never thought about buying any figures.
That was until around 2016 when my wife went to a "haunted" antique store in Tucson. She brought home a fossil tooth and a Xplus Styracosaurus! The tooth we found out was a Spinosaurus tooth so I insisted we go out and find a toy to go with it. While searching for the perfect companion to the tooth I discovered the world of dinosaur figures.
And that's how it started for me.       

Your story is so very similar to my own and so I just wanted to point out that at the age of FOUR YEARS OLD I was watching Bullsh*t or Not with my dad, so I very much appreciate your avatar. I actually have a home movie of me and my sister sitting on the floor watching the Nessie bit. Questionable parenting for sure but I think I turned out all right.

[Libraraptor]

It may well be that I have already told this story before, but hey, by me I tell it again:
There were many reasons which brought me to prehistory, there is a special reason why I came here and there are many good reasons to stay.

Firstly, I´ve been a dinosaur addict as long as I remember, in my childhood, remembering many moments of them being with me as my talismans and stronger friends. I was fascinated by the Yale mural picture which sucked me into a different world. Plus I had the occasion of becoming a specialist in at least one topic. There were kids who played soccer much better than me. Many kids were better than me in school. I have been fretful and a fidget as long as I can remember, but dinosaurs and prehistory grounded me. While reading in the books and having them overwhelme, I found peace and silence and fascination.  It was an easy step then from reading and buying the fist own books or being given them towards collecting figures. I always wanted to be taken seriously for my hobby and fascination, so the rubberish, cheap figures wouldn´t do any longer. Luckily I found serious Invicta models at a bookshop in our  longtime family resort when I was nine years or so old. Each year I would sneak to the bookshop in my vacation, buying myself one or two of the Invictas from my pocket money. Eventally after a few years I had all the unpainted ones except from the blue whale which brought me here twenty or so years later.  Finally here I had found out one must not be ashamed of being an adult dinosaur maniac without being a palaeontologist. Hence I stayed and I am still around.

[Shonisaurus]

@Libraraptor Totally agree with you. There is no shame I know people with years and children who are fond of prehistory and dinosaurs.

In our case we do not commit any crime. We do not harm anyone.

[MLMjp]

I liked dinosaurs since I was 3 years old and I was always looking for more dinosaur toys to add to my toy box so you could say I been collecting since then.

However I would say that it wasn't until my teens years when I started to collect in a more serious way, setting some standards. Then of course I began to learn about the various companies that produce dinosaur figures, learned more about scientific accuracy and discovered this forum. All these event made my collecting habits a bit more "professional".

[Roselaar]

I've been crazy about dinosaurs since age 4 (around 1990) and collected dinosaur toys as best I could on a kid's budget. Jurassic Park of course made it worse, though the craze was already there. It died down a bit in my teen years, but when I got older it resurged now that I had cash to spend on it, since 2005. At first I completed my JP collection, but when that was done I moved into every other conceivable brand of dinosaur toys and stuck with that for years.

Now, my craze is dying down a little. I just bought a house and acquired new hobbies too. So there is both less time and money for me to spend on dinosaurs. But the love will never die and I will absolutely never get rid of my collection.

[Halichoeres]

I'm loving these stories. I tried to collect animal and dinosaur figures as a kid, but I mostly couldn't afford them. I had the original JP Pteranodon, Dimetrodon, and Dilophosaurus. And I had a decent assortment of AAA animals that I would get from trips to the zoo or a dodgy "wildlife museum" west of Tucson. I don't have any of those left, lost in one of many moves no doubt. While I was in grad school, I was working at the Field Museum in Chicago, and I just happened to walk through the gift shop and glimpse some Carnegie and Papo figures. I was just amazed at how much better dinosaur toys had gotten in the intervening years, and I started my collection with an order of Papo figures. I'm a fish biologist, and I don't know very much about dinosaur anatomy in particular, but still it didn't take long for me to start preferring other, more accurate figures. As I discovered new brands, I kept adding to my wish list and my collection, and within a year of starting my collection I had over 300 figures (it's only about twice that now). I think on some level they were helpful with the stress and uncertainty of grad school. I think the fact that I was working in a museum when I started influenced the way I display them, which is as quasi-dioramas organized by scale and time period.

[Brontozaurus]

I've been toy collecting since I was a kid, but dinosaurs (outside of Transformers) took a big break until the end of high school for me. Funnily enough it was finding the Dino Toy Blog that did it; I started reading it in between doing assignments in my last school year, and I remember looking at the Carnegie Giganotosaurus wishing that it was easy to find in Australia. I joined the forum soon after and from that point on I started following new releases. Online shopping and my own source of income helped me get my hands on toys that weren't sold here.

[Ravonium]

When I was about 2 years old, my parents got me a Schleich Triceratops (the old small one) from a now-closed physical store. While that was my first dinosaur toy, I wouldn't really be into serious collecting until I was around 5-6 years old, as I developed an obsession with Liopleurodon from watching various Youtube videos about it (If anyone here has any memories of late-2000's/early 2010's Paleotube, then I think you know what kinds of videos I'm talking about ) and eventually Walking With Dinosaurs. Consequently, I got the CollectA figure of Liopleurodon, as well as their figures of Hydrotherasaurus and Tylosaurus.

Over the next few years I developed a fairly small collection of mostly Schleich-tier dinosaur figures (there were a handful of figures in it that have since held up to my standards though, such as the Safari Ltd Deinosuchus and Scutosaurus). However I suddenly lost interest in prehistoric life around 2014-15 and decided to stop collecting figures of it and to only collect extant animals (which I had been collecting equally as long).

In late 2016, while browsing CollectA's website, I decided to go onto the prehistoric section and was interested in their Pliosaurus figure. Searching for it led me to the blog; while I was initially a bit disappointed to learn of its inaccuracies, reading that review and others on the blog made me realise that I had missed out on a lot, and this was only further confirmed after watching newer paleontology Youtube videos (mainly from one specific channel I presume all of you would be able to guess).

At the start of 2017, I started browsing the forum, and registered only a few months later. While I knew about most of the companies discussed, there were also some that I didn't know about at the time (PNSO, REBOR, Colorata, Favorite and Creative Beast are the main ones I can think of). Today I'm not as active here as I was when I replied to a similar thread just over two years ago, however paleontology and dinosaur collecting are still amongst my main interests (even if the COVID-19 pandemic has effectively stopped me getting anything new since the start of the year).

[brontosauruschuck]

Well, I'd always kind of wanted to get into toys, but it's a difficult hobby to justify to myself or others. I mean, why would one collect toys as an adult? My kid brother unexpectedly died about two years ago, and it was the worst thing that's ever happened to me. I really wanted to give up on everything, but I made a deal with myself that I wasn't allowed to say fuck it all and collapse into a path of no return with hard drugs and harder prostitutes, but I could buy all the dinosaur toys I wanted.

I look at my bills some months and I think I might have actually chosen the more expensive option.