See, I have to disagree with you here. Anyone who's seen my toy room knows I'm a serious collector. I'm a huge fan of action figures of all sorts and varieties.

Keeping them MOC I can understand (don't agree, but understand). Not even displaying a fraction of your collection is what I can't wrap my head around.

It's like buying a comic book, not reading it, slabbing it to preserve it, and then not even putting it on a wall or shelf to enjoy the cover.

I do understand the thrill of the hunt, though. I enjoy that quite a bit myself.

This. All of it.

I wish I could say more, but Shellhead said it all. I agree and feel the same .

None of my toys are displayed. IMO, displaying (like cream for your coffee) is optional.

Really?

Huh. Do you lack space?

I guess I need to compartmentalize my collectors better: MOCers, openers, and now, storers.

Not really. But displaying them has never really been an itch I had to scratch. Perhaps it will happen one day, I will put up a small display. But I'm just as happy with them inside boxes

I have to add, though, that I love seeing other collectors' display cabinets. I enjoy that immensely - seeing the variations in display style. I even take photos of them whenever I get the chance. Maybe one day, I'll build a web site that has nothing in it but other people's toy collections

Sorry but anyone who buys something, and then puts it a way never to be seen again is a Hoarder/Storer/Acumulator call it what you will, I collect to display, so that makes me a Displayer.

We are both collector, but neither one is the right way to collect or for that fact the wrong way, however I still don't see the need to Hoard Toys, but then again the Hoarders don't see the need to Display either.

So as Shell put it "Different Strokes for Different Folks".

The Point I do really strongly disagree with is that Cephus has said in more or less these words "your not a "True" collector unless you Hoard Toys", that is a crock of S**t - I see people's collections and I am amazed at how much they have on display and know these are collectors who have gone out their way to get the figures to display - and I know also these are True Collectors, me personally I never will be in that Class of Collector basically I don't have that kind of cash to throw on toys.

Agreed, those people are not collectors, those people are dealers.

The problem is, words need to have meanings for a reason, without them, we can never really define terms. So what is a collector? If anyone can simply declare themselves a collector without having to meet a minimum criteria, the word is useless. So what is a collector? As my wife pointed out to me, a wine collector who opens their collection and drinks it isn't a collector, but a consumer. I went to the grocery store last night, that doesn't make me a food collector. A kid gets toys and plays with them, does that make him a collector? What are the defining characteristics that separate a consumer, like that kid, from a collector?

Unfortunately, these are questions that a lot of people don't want to answer because they might find themselves, or put others, on the wrong side of the consumer/collector line.

There is no right or wrong side of a collector line. A collection... for myself has always been anything more than five of the same type. If you have more than five comic books you have a collection. Quite a small collection mind you but one none the less. Children play card games like Pokemon, Yugi-Oh and even Magic but they also collect the cards, place them in binders and take care of them. Peopel who collect board games still play their board games.

Cephus, you strike me as a man who needs to have labels for everything. Nothing wrong with that but this is something you really can't quite text book label. It's something personal to each person. You can open up an Over Street Comic Book guide and find hundreds of pages on how to collect and archieve your collection. But not once does overstreet define what a comic book collector is.

However, you ask a very good question. "What is a Collector?" But this sounds like a question that simply can't have one right answer. How can it? Sure there can be criteria but I think everyone here, even the people who horde and don't find any enjoyment in their collecting. I collect many things; toys, comics even art. I sell stuff at conventions and fleamarkets, I open most of my stuff and display it and even play with it from time to time. I let my kid play with some of it.

If anything we're nothing more than Toy Enthusiast if you want to be really technical.

This is certainly more preferable than "hoarder"

Van your right and I like that, yup from now on I am a Toy Enthusiast.

You Hoarder's can keep the title of Collector, it's so yesterday, lol.

I think that the only technology that could eliminate the action figure is functional, economical holographic technology. We will always want 3D representations of our favorite characters and until we can download them to a holoemitter that lets us pose them any way we want, someone will have to make actual figures.

CCC.

You and I will be dead before we see something like that available to the general public at an affordable rate!

Good news for Mattel and Hasbro. I plan to live forever.

CCC.