Likey's Magical and (Final) Fantasy Collection

[Likey]

Hello All,

It's about time I created my own thread now as it would be rude not to and I've been here for about a month without introducing myself! I'll use this thread as my blog for posting my purchases as well as my views on things so feel free to post here to create discussion. It will be mostly Final Fantasy related but will mix it up with posting my other collections as well.

How I discovered Collectors Edition Forum:

I only found this place by accident. I was doing some research on Final Fantasy XIII-2 Crystal Edition and saw that there was a special boxset of FFXIII which was only released in Asia. There were a few threads on here where people were either wanting or selling it so that interested me too. This then went on ebay but it was too expensive for me so I’ll just look at the photos and dream for now.

So after a bit of lurking I decided I would register and post on here. I find the members here are really nice and friendly, very helpful and no sign of anyone trolling so I decided to join the community. You guys have some really amazing stuff on here, I look in awe as I go through some of the collections you guys have wishing I had something similar but without burning a hole in my pocket.

Hans v Hube has an amazing thread of his vast collection (worthy of his 5-stars) and he's also created a new one which is purely on his Final Fantasy collection - which I love very much!

I've yet to check out everyone's collection but will go through them all soon. At work I browse with the images turned off sometimes because I'm in the open area with people walking around all the time, so that'll be why I haven't gone through them all yet.

A little about me:

I'm from the UK and work in London. I've always had a passion for computers so naturally I took that path as my career as an IT Consultant. Got into gaming at a young age but my parents were too poor to buy us a games machine so I used to go to my cousin's or friend's house to play on their Sega Master System and Mega Drive. Not sure why none of them had a Nintendo strangely enough.

So as a kid, eventually I got a Master System but it did involve a lot of begging and some tears lol. I had fun swapping games with friends to play and would read games magazines from cover to cover. I never owned a Mega Drive but did own a Super Nintendo which I saved up hard for, which easily became the best console of its time! I discovered Final Fantasy VI and fell in love with the game and JRPGs. The next big step was when the Sony PlayStation came out and Final Fantasy VII was released for that instead of the N64, where Nintendo and Sony had a falling out as some of you may know. I got FFVII on the day of release and it also came with a rare T-shirt, I'll post a picture of this at a later date.

After PS1 I sort of phased out of console gaming, even though I bought a PS2, Saturn and Dreamcast but never played them as hard as PS1 and SNES. I got into building PCs instead then phased out of that too when I was at University. After graduating, I got a job so never really played much games as I was too tired when I got in– just watched TV shows or went out instead.

So, for like 10 years or so I never really played much games but have always loved Final Fantasy stuff. The best thing is that now I can afford these luxuries whereas in the past I have always been too poor to get anything, my parents were very tight with money so I never owned any toys and basically very deprived as a child!

So here we are. All the stuff I’ll be posting now are because of my missing childhood so blame my parents!

My other interests:

Oh, my other passion is Magic and Poker. I love Card Magic and have an interest in some Coin Magic as well as Mentalism/Mind Magic. I used to post on the Derren Brown forum until it closed down a few years ago, but I phased out of that as I discovered poker so I have been posting on there for the last 6 years or so.

I'll be posting up my Magic collection if that's OK? I have some really rare stuff which can be considered collector items e.g. limited 1st edition books (that are long out of print) and some are autographed.

I don't have any trophies from poker but if I do, you can be damn sure I'll post them on here. I do have other poker collectibles, though.

I realise that this forum gets a little dangerous as it encourages me to spend, I end up buying stuff I never considered such as steelbooks and boxsets that have interesting content. So to counter this, I'll need to get back into Poker again to win money so I can fund my new addiction - which is COLLECTING stuff!

Let's begin:

As I said earlier, I've been putting it off ever since I joined, mainly because I wanted to take some nice photos at the weekend to give it a good kick-start but never found the time. I am forcing myself to do it now because I have loads to post and wouldn't be right to post it all on Hans v Hube’s thread.

Here's a photo of my first order from Square Enix Shop which was about 1-2 months ago. It was delivered to my workplace in 5 big separate boxes so taking them home throughout the week was fun lol! The items unboxed were bought second-hand.

I hope you enjoy my thread despite the long intro!

(Click on the images for the full size)