FIGURE THIS: My Collecting Timeline
SUPER-ARTICULATE: YOUR COLLECTING TIMELINE (The original version of this piece appeared on Graphic Policy on February 7, 2020 as part of my ongoing column for that site, Super-Articulate. I'm going to use the Figure This label for when I talk about the topic here. But this is a great intro to how I got started and why I continue. Enjoy.) I was posed this question by a co-worker yesterday. He asked, “ How and when do you decide what to collect? ” He meant specifically in terms of figures, but I suppose you can apply it to anything. I had a multi-year period where I collected baseball cards due to an increased interest I had in baseball around junior high. I’ve been getting comics nearly my entire life. But figures is an interesting question, and I think I can break that down. First thing, I’m going to subtract just “generally getting toys” from the timeline. I had Fisher-Price Adventure People, for example, but I couldn’t say that I actively “collected” them. I’m only going to incl