What do you find the most frustrating about collecting

[HIPPEEDUDE]

Hello to all. Have been looking around at my collection lately & realised some of the frustrations i have had with collecting.
It made me wonder what does everyone else find the most frustrating or annoying about collecting.
I dont think anyone can say they dont have any because there will be at least one thing or even more that annoys the heck out of you.
The list of some things i have come up with so far is:

*Evilbay & Painpal-pain in the bum with fees & general BS
*Sellers who take your money & stuff you around
*Deciding what edition of something to get,horrible when there may 7 or more variations with different things in each you want
*Sellers who say items like new but when you get it,its like a cow shat on it & then a train ran over it
*Deciding wether to get everything you like or just stick to a particular theme or platform
* When you buy something for $2 but postage costs you $20
*When you can buy something from somwhere like Amazon for example for $17 but they wont send it to you,so if you want it you
usually have to pay the higher price which can be double or triple the cheapest price.
*Knowing when to stop spending but bloddy hard when you find that elusive item or a deal so cheap you would be mad to say no

Thats a few of mine off the top of my head,whats yours?

[Madigan]

- When there are 4242392 editions exclusive to 3428432 countries

- When I have to choose between buying a bunch of games or a CE to keep sealed : /

- DENTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- Hoarders (leave some for the peasants)

- When a CE comes with a stupid low quality statue/figure/cat helmet (I hate figures in my CEs >.<) or is a disappointing piece of shit (Sony I'm looking at you)

- A guy with more money and more CEs than me

- More dents

- Yodel

[foreverflash]

What a great topic discussion Hippee. Kudos.

Most frustrating aspects of being a collector and collecting:

1. Publishers (not so much developers) milking consumers for money. This applies to games, movies, music and television. Well, pretty much all aspects of entertainment. A perfect example would be the upcoming AC3. Still 7 fucking months to go and they've already announced 3 different editions to be released in Europe and Australia. All with unique items or DLC. Why not put them all into 1 big edition and sell it numbered and limited in select parts of Europe, Australia and America? Say, limited to 10,000 units numbered? Hello? Is that too much to fucking ask for Ubisoft? Or even if they just sold some of the extra stuff (like the collectible coin in Join or Die edition) separately on ubiworkshop.com instead of making it exclusive to a different game edition. Fucking brilliant Ubisoft...
2. Here's a big one: What I like to call "fit to box" style shipping. The Industry standard shipping method for extremely valuable collectibles (like statues, folio books, replicas). Basically, what I've come to find is very disturbing. As a collector, the outer package/box of a collectible is just as much a part of the whole thing as the collectible itelf, yet, at least 75% or more of the leading collectible manufacturers and retailers in America (and abroad) do not care about keeping the outer package in good condition. In fact, they don't even care about keeping it intact! They only care about protecting the collectible INSIDE the outer collectible box. So they use "fit to box" shipping method with gives packages a 50/50 chance of being damaged. Of course we all know the "real" reason they use this packaging method: TO SAVE MONEY. It's all about maximizing profit. Greedy fucking bastards have to scrounge every last cent. Fit to box basically means you take the collector's item which is inside a collector's box and put it "box on box" in a shipping box and tape it up. No additional protection is used. This INFURIATES me beyond belief...
3. Dents! Dents! Aaaahhh!!!
4. Scuff marks. VERY VERY common on guides and certain types of boxes (like the US collector edition of Uncharted 3 type box).
5. Did I already say consumer milking...? Yea, all we are is fucking cattle to them...remember that people!
6. Not having enough money to get EVERYTHING I want ALL at ONCE! DAMN IT! GIVE ME MOAR!
7. Finding out about a game, tv or movie series you never heard of, falling madly in love at first sight and realizing how impossible it would be to "collect" for the series because it goes back too far or has too much material (an example of one I just found is "The Walking Dead" - yea, I know, exactly... or Batman)
8. Having to tear your hair out trying to search the globe for that "rare" item.
9. A bunch of other things that annoy the shit out of me but there are too many to list...

[HIPPEEDUDE]

Forever flash your definately right about the fit to box method. I think the worst case though is sometimes the collectable box isnt right either. Not made right,poor materials used,wrong size etc. Simply because of maunfacturers etc not caring about the box to much,for me at least the worst would be Bioshock 1. That damn Big Daddy just doesnt fit inside the box properly,the drill bit on his arm near pokes a hole in the box,you rub your finger on the outside of the box & you can feel a dimple where the drill bit is. Its ridiculosly stupid,if your not carefull you end up with a broken drill. I think there were alot of them broken when it was first released & they had to send replacement Big Daddy figures out to customers simply because the damn drill broke. I'm sure it cost them more than it would have just to make the box that slight bit bigger

[scottcross]

This one is easy for me.
HAVING NO MONEY

There is nothing worse than finding an absolute gem and then realising you havnt got enough money to buy it

[vhal_x]

1. CEs all coming out in fast succession of each other, giving you no time to have a cool-down period, and no time to bloody save for them (lateAugust-September onwards, GRR!).
2. Buying a CE off of eBay and it getting damaged in the "post" when really it was damaged by the seller (considering the shipping box was mint).
3. When you miss out on a CE, and look on eBay and they are now all 5000x the RRP .
4. When an awesome deal appears, but I've already ran out of money .
5. Not having enough money, time or space for my needs and wants! xx

[themidlandmaster]

Overproduction making the vast majoirty of editions valueless

[twistedsymphony]

1. keeping track of new CE announcements, particularly with retailers that don't often carry exclusives (like publisher's online stores or big box stores like Best Buy).

2. stores with exclusives that wont ship to where I'm located. I only collect north American releases because I don't want to have to deal with importation issues, sadly Futureshop in Canada refuses to ship to me in the US and they're only about a 4 hour drive away

3. Poorly made/poorly designed/poorly packaged CEs

4. CEs that are way over produced to the point where they're worthless.

5. the fact that so many crappy games get CEs and I feel compelled to buy them, while so many awesome games never get a CE release.

6. CEs with boxes roughly the size of a refrigerator, I'm ok with a simple SteelBook, really I am.

[Gazereths]

1. People who buy loads of a certain CE then resell them on fleabay for stupid prices

2. Poor packaging from major companies (I'm looking at you Zavvi)

3. Customs charges

4. Lack of communication from some sellers/companies

[nipperkipper]

while many things frustrate me, one thing that has really started to annoy me is when a CE is released in limited or numbered quantities and thn later restocked making it not so limited, sees to happen more often i.e MGS and capcom sign o name just a few