Returning to Inside the Mind of a Toy Addict Part 3 - It Is a Group Effort

Part 1 , Part 2

This crystal clear problem was once again enabled by the loves of my life. I mentioned I had been stalking the price of a Marvel Legends box set of a new Black Suit Spidey and a collection of his foes (2022) for several reasons
A) The version of "Symbiote Spider-Man" I have from my earliest days of collecting isn’t an official Marvel Legend.
B) I always liked the villain Human Fly, for some reason.
C) Silvermane featured prominently in the Zeb Wells run on Amazing that no one but me liked.
D) Molten Man was shiny. (Yes, this is a valid reason, haven't you been paying attention?)
E) Honestly, I have no idea who Razorback is, but a giant figure of a dude with a wild boar on his head fits my idiom.
F) As should be crystal clear by now, I still have a problem.

The set's price had dropped but had not quite yet reached what I consider my “acceptable per figure price.” This was dividing by four instead of five since Spidey- though coolly sculpted and highlighted with shiny bits- would be a duplicate.
 
I pointed this out to my wife and daughter BOTH of whom stated, 

“That’s a really good price, you should get them.”

As should be crystal clear by now, we all still have a problem.
 

Upon trying to change Silvermane from his “fist hands” To his "gun holding hands" - as Hasbro has long since abandoned Toy Biz's "insane articulation" for "replaceable parts" - one hand snapped off and the nub got stuck in his wrist.
There was much swearing.
Rosa and I tried multiple things over two days and eventually the giant needle I use to correct tinsel painting mistakes saved the day once more and I was able to lever it out. Due to that Hasbro migration away from articulation, I have many Ziplock snack bags full of hands and heads (which aren’t creepy at all) that I will likely never open again. Now there is one with a broken hand in it.
 
The bad guys (and boar head dude, who may be an ally?) went directly into their proper location on the Spider-foes shelf.

My original plan was to try to sell either my old “Spider-Man Classics” version or the new acquisition Black Costume Spidey to defray the cost. However, unlike EVERY FIGURE I WANTED BUT MISSED ESPECIALLY SPIDER-MAN ONES LIKE THE EIGHTY SEVEN JILLION MILES MORALES FIGURES WHOSE PRICES SYROCKET EVEN BEFORE RELEASE the price for both of them was on the low end of negligible.

AND THE BOX SET AS A WHOLE HASN'T GONE UP EITHER!!!!
NOT THAT I’M BITTER!!
 

Therefore, after careful aesthetic consideration, I left the original “Symbiote Spider-Man” on the New York shelf, while the new, smaller, one with purple shiny highlights adorns my home office table…

Where he regularly sides out of position when the table shakes in the slightest and ends up looking like a pole dancer. 

Weeee!

 
Sometime around this point (coinciding with my ankle injury, but not in a cause and effect way) Blind Box Disney Dorables showed up in our home. Anabelle calls them “Tiny Pennys” after the Rescuers themed one she got first. (Whether “first” as in “First one she obtained” or “first” as in “First one she got excited about” or [most likely] "first" as in "First one she decided to name them all after" is left as an exercise left for the reader.) 

She found the Star Wars ones more desirable. (That’s my girl.) I don’t have years for these. Though occasionally they hit “impossible to find and selling for a fortune at auction” they often end up in the “clearance aisle for spare change” range. 

Anabelle figured out some of the serial number codes for the Valentine’s Day ones and gave me Boba Fett and Fennec Shand (Woo!) after filling in her “needs.” There was also an extra Han Solo I took due to her irrational hatred of Harrison Ford. I put them on my work shelf, where they would be safe from my addictive habits.
(Spoilers- Suuuuuuuure they would.)

Hunting for the expected (or at least hoped for) post Christmas Marvel Legends sales led to a couple more accidental finds. Tombstone had an even larger role in the Zeb Wells run on Amazing that no one but me liked than Silvermane did. He had a new figure in a suit come out (2024) that I was checking the (skyrocketing) prices on. While doing that I accidentally found an older version (2017), loose and clearance priced with a much more Tombstony face.

Not only that, but another villain from way back in 2015 showed up equally loose but intact, yet deeply discounted in another "buy it now." The last time I saw him was in my local comic shop, and when they announced a sale, I drove over on not a Wednesday (unheard of!) only to learn someone had snapped him up the day before.
But now Batroc Ze Leapair proudly adorns the villain shelf!
As should be crystal clear by now, I still have a problem.

And a fixation with some weird, barely known characters. (Shoutout to the Falcon and Winter Soldier show for making him more comic accurate than the nearly unrecognizable version in Captain America 2. )

 
By this point my birthday had rolled around and a couple carefully curated figures from different releases remained on my wish list.
 

As a huge fan of Agatha All Along, being able to recreate some assemblages from that show was a “need.” Fortunately, the figure (2023) of the title character’s appearance at the climax of Wandavision wasn’t in demand. (Thanx Rosa!!!)

Guess who else was not in demand AND had a big role in that Zeb Wells run on Amazing that no one but me liked? (Reading comics is the number two cause of buying action figures.) It was Kingpin’s son, Richard “The Rose” Fisk! (2023)

The number one cause of buying action figures continues to be… buying action figures.

This is in both small and large scale.
As should be crystal clear by now, I still have a problem.
 
Having found Yelena and knowing the Marvel Movie schedule, coupled with scoring Hyperion from the Squadron Supreme as the second Superman analog on my Marvel shelves meant it was time for “The Thrill Of The Hunt” again. The hunt this time was for Sentry, before the entire world learned who he was. (2022, but there were multiple options I tried “make an offer” on, finally scoring the coolest looking of them loose. Woo!)

As for larger scale increases. Remember how I jokingly listed which Star Wars Figures I would “need” to keep Black Krrsantan, (the over sized, clearance racked, Wookie pit fighter) from being lonely in a shelf space I did not have?

There was some birthday money, on line salea, and suddenly I found the cast of The Book of Boba Fett at a six inch scale sitting on the Rotating Shelf while I tried to figure out where the heck they would fit in the comic room. Boba (2022- deluxe but well below deluxe priced!) Fennec (2021) and the Tusken Chieftain (2023) were all marked way down. Due to the weird ordering style of a different place with a sale, while I found a Mandalorian (2020) to go with them, due to linking orders and Diamond filing bankruptcy, Mando sat in shipping Limbo while the rest assembled impressively.
 
As this was going on, downstairs there were problems above and beyond “as should be crystal clear by now, I still have a problem.” Luckily, Rosa knows me well enough to have found more storage than I thought I needed. I cleared the rest of the shelf to make room for a “Supernatural Marvel” section next to the Inhumans.
 
Also, after about a month, I realized the Black Panther and Kree/ Skrull collections needed to be reversed for optimal viewing. 

There was much swearing.

 
Speaking of problems: Putting away comics one day, behind me I heard the normally well balanced Doctor Spectrum pitch forward for absolutely no reason, hitting his fun-takked Power Prism holding hand on the edge of the shelf and launching the gem into another dimension. I scoured the comic room, to no avail. Alas. 

There was much swearing.

With this rearranging. I foolishly thought the room had reached a steady state.

Click here for evidence that it had not in Part 4

Part 5