Raving Toy Maniac

Just an FYI to everyone. The data center that houses the RTM server is located in the Maryland/DC/ Northern Virginia area of the United States. With that in mind and the extreme weather that is hitting the eastern part of the US it is possible the data center may go down and the site might be unavailable until power has been restored.

We will hope for the best for anyone in the area that they will weather the storm safely.

-Rob

RTM is taking a look at the Collector-Actionfigures.com (DASH for short). DASH has been online since 2009 and the site offers tools to help manage your collection. There are also tools for buying, selling, valuation and trading as well as showing off your collection.

Full disclosure: RTM was asked to review the site by DASH and they are also an ad sponsor for RTM at this time. We were granted a premium membership free of charge to facilitate the review. The review itself was sent to Collector Dash for fact checking, but not editorial input.

Working with DASH, we have a redemption code that you can use to get a paid subscription at a discount. The code is listed at the end of the review and RTM does not receive a finder’s fee or any payment if you use that code.

DASH does some things very well, and some it does not. We’ll cover those areas and a little more in this look at both the free and premium (paid subscription) service.

Along with SyFy’s Collection Intervention there is another show this fall that may appeal to toy collectors, Toy Hunter. While Collection Intervention (my look at the first episode here) changes the collections from show to show, Toy Hunter is about one and only one thing – toys.

The show is on the Travel Channel and highlights trips to parts of the US with Jordan Hembrough while he looks for toys to sell in his business. He is a large toy dealer and runs Hollywood Heroes, based in New Jersey. If you wondered how he gets his leads, you can find it on their website where you can contact him to buy your collection. He uses these trips to find things he can sell for a profit. Each show is a half hour and he usually sees 2 or 3 people per show and each show has a bunch of smaller deals and one big deal.

There are two new shows that may be of interest to toy and pop culture collectors this year – Collection Intervention and Toy Hunter. Collection Intervention is on the SyFy Network and Toy Hunter is on the Travel Channel. Today we will take a look at Collector Intervention.

The premise (per SyFy) is a show where Elyse Luray (a collectibles expert) ‘helps couples, families and individuals whose pop-culture memorabilia collections … have become damaging obsessions, creating financial strife and a huge strain on their lives.’

These impressions are from the opening show of the series, and they may change as the show continues.

The format is to introduce a collector, highlight their collection and to highlight the ‘damage’ that their collections inflict on their lives. During the show they will try to find a solution to help with the problems from the collection and the result is (at least so far) to sell off some of the collection. The first show has two subjects, so they split time through the show going from one to the other. Since it is an hour long show, I would expect it will stick with the two subject format for the immediate future.

I opted to respond to some questions and concerns here in a blog rather than a forum post. The length made more sense away from the forum and this will let it stand alone better. It is more a case of providing insight rather than answering questions or debating ways to do things. This is just a look inside what drove the changes and why we made the choices we did.

I want to make it clear we made the decisions, just the two of us. We didn’t take a vote or anything like that. Since we run and own the site and do not have any staff beyond us, it was on us to do this. We have a couple of friends who help look over things when we travel, but that is it in terms of help on the site.

Go ahead and settle in – it will be a long one.

From my perspective I can say the change has been mostly positive. However I had different goals in mind with the change and upgrade. And my perspective is different than that of a reader.