Hi,
Interesting thread.... Yes, IMO too, at times asking (and selling) prices can go to ridiculous heights; or perhaps better put: things that on my scale are way higher than I can or want to afford for it. I simply walk away from such items, and hope for something else nice to come along the lines someday. If someone else does have the money for those items, I just think: "good for them, I hope it finds a nice home", and then just forget about those items. In the end something else always DOES come along the line. I have previously collected other things too, and one thing that hasn't changed over the years, is the satisfaction in finding rare things for good prices. That gives me far greater satisfaction than paying high amounts for the items. This then means that the collection may grow slower than it could, but each item acquired in such a way will yield an additional nice feeling to it, as being a "small victory". This, and trading, are for me the ways to go about the collection.
Over here there's an interesting saying, which (literally) translates to something like: "'it's only worth whatever a madman wants to pay for it". Very true words on one end of the scale, but I also like US-SUBS view on it, from the other side of the scale: "it's worth 0.00". I guess the trick for anyone then becomes to find a location on the scale between those two extremes that they are comfortable with.
At times it can be frustrating to see items one really wants go to great monetary heights (mind you, I collect Jap stuff, so I know what I'm talking about :tinysmile_cry_t2: ), but still I don't let that drive me crazy, and just stick to my own limits; which then means having to walk away often from items. Occasionally I too fall off the bandwagon though, most notably so at the last ECRA fair, as my first swoop through the hardware didn't yield anything at prices within a -for me- reasonable range, in the end I forked out an amount of money that I personally thought was about (at least) twice as much as it should have been for two nice Taisho era cases. I did really want to get something from the Taisho era, and now I have something from all three eras. That, in combination with not having found other items, made me make an exception for once... :tinysmile_eyebrow_t
What I by far prefer though, is to swap when possible, and otherwise simply let some others have stuff they have a particular interest in and I don't, and have that work the other way round too. Without mentioning names, some of my best ammo-friends all have this type of agreement with me, and so far for all of them the balance has been pretty equal over the years, without any of us ever having put Dollar marks on the items when letting them shift hands...
O.k., just some of my ramblings, I don't know if they serve anyone, but at least it may help to get to know me better as a person as well as my attitude towards collecting. My number one priority in life is our little one, who started out as a 6Pr and is now just about a 30Pr already. Almost all other things in life are futile, and nice-to-haves. :tinysmile_fatgrin_t
Cheers!
Olafo
