Well usually it's me and my mom (thanks mom) going out and then we pass by a sticker shop or those places where there'll be a bunch of these in like, street shops and stuff (it was the '90s) and at some point it became my mom asking me if I would want something and that smile on my face must be the only thing that kept me collecting all these stuff.

Eventually I stopped mostly because I've moved on to higher stakes (lol) but also because they don't sell them anymore at these prices either they got expensive or those stalls or shops get closed down because they got "cleaned up" by local authority since they weren't recognised establishments. Oh well, there goes my childhood.

Since I still have the sticker album... here it is in all its glory haha >w<

Man, if you thought this was like Duel Masters or like, Pokemon cards then you are horribly wrong. As a kid I don't know any of those (not until I watch the TV series especially Duel Masters) but yeah, before these two I was actually interested in something way more relevant to me as a Chinese... and as a kid: Jackie Chan Adventures. If you don't know of this series don't look it up, but suffice it to say that's when they released like, talisman sets and trading card sets to collect and if I'm not wrong there was a game there I just have no one to play with lmao

The whole set should be about SGD60 if I'm not wrong (yep) and then the subsequent card packs from each monthly magazine release was around SGD12 if I remember correctly. Yeah, the stakes were up real quick.

So, in exchange of my grades, my mom would promise me to buy the latest monthly release of the magazine when I was like 12 as long as I maintain my grades. Yeah, no joke. Those weren't cheap already, so of course my mom would take no chances to exploit of my diligence in exchange for my desires for things such as this. It sort of worked for a couple of years though, and it was until I graduated that I noticed collecting these lacked meaning and I did not put in more effort to maintain my grades (RIP Higher Chinese lol), and I think I did tell my mom that too. She probably had a smile on that face or I hooked myself with something else at some point that she still had to pay for haha (it was probably a female lmao) (nope this is not going to be a post of my crushes as a kid)

[Below are not my images btw because I probably threw them away already haha yeah]

Screenshots are a great way to show off (it's still on Facebook when I started playing this though) so here they are:

This one is easy. They come with the CDs for review. You need more? Because of a certain phenomenon called pre-ordering, one is able to get a free gift, a photo, a bromide as Japan calls it, and they are as rare as you can think because limited stock for so called First Press release. So, they eventually appear on auction sites like this today and you should consider if those I've collected are worth anything. But to me, they are worth my effort to go through all lengths to get the CDs from places where I shouldn't go, because normally you would need to forward that shipment which allows one to receive from an online shop to a local (Japan) address and many other complications which will increase the risk of them being delivered to here instead of an international shop like this or this. (Well HMV wasn't until 2 years later since CDJapan in 2012 so...) So around end of 2013 I took my first effort to buy 2 singles on pre-order from Animate Online Shop, and got them shipped to here. It was my happiest day ever since buying my first batch of CDs haha

But it was only recently that I had that desperation to get more than I can get my hands on without buying the original products, and that's where those auction sites come in. The rest should be history because I talked about them twice, in "The Auction House Journey" and "The Auction House Journey Part Deux". Feel free to read those in detail yourself. In summary, it was a huge waste of money just to make me happy haha

So since those ones I got for free couldn't be measured financially, I'll talk about the various times I went to the auction site and precisely calculate for all of you guys (outside of those posts) how much they costed.

Overall: 27481 yen (SGD 388.54)

For the free ones since it was always due to a pre-order I had to buy the product in advance, knowing full well that I might hate the songs inside because maybe I didn't get to hear the songs in full (refer to the Twitter reading post two days ago for details) so suffice it to say I'm taking a gamble. And I did a lot of that with Toyosaki Aki and her singles, to be honest. It was only on two specific occasions (which I still do today) that I specifically bought bromides to keep them, and they are (1) Komatsu Mikako because she's the only one who will still sell her live performance goods online becuase she has her own online store and (2) Tachibana Haru aka Futon-chan because she also has an online store in which she sells her stuff sold on comiket (ok now I wished I did that other post first so I don't have to explain who she is, so Twitter profile for reference)

For the auction house ones I just felt like giving them a shitload of money so the reasons behind going on a spending spree are on the posts themselves haha

Overall: 28660 yen (SGD 441.84)

Well it was first supposedly used as an excuse for a birthday present early this year, but now it has just turned to me going "who's the next person who will come out with a photobook in which I know" because I hardly even know Toyota Moe but I want her new photobook SO BAD haha. So yeah, considering the women I knew of today (goddamn now I really wish I did that post yesterday) I set a list of requirements on who and how then I could get new photobooks to do a review on. "She must be younger than me" and "I must have known her for years" are probably the current standing ones so I haven't violated any of them just yet, but who knows? If in the future I want to get Moeshi's photobook in which she is half-naked who is to stop this pedophile? *laughs*

Here, here and here. Period. *laughs* They will be easy to identify in the future too becuase the titles in this blog will contain the phrase "Worth Of Photos" so you know that's me enjoying myself again hehe

This shall be it. Didn't expect this post to be this long to be honest. Finances can't lead to this long of a post, or so I thought. I'll try to update this place for consistency (especially pricing I just copy pasted from the relevant sites) but don't expect more images this is all you are getting haha. Cya guys next time then, and until then... I think I'll be continuing the legacy of collecting stuff after all, as much as they aren't collecting now since I am paying for them haha bye

P.S. Well technically collecting calendars is a thing lol but I've done that already (it's here) and they aren't collecting because if I were to "collect" I'll be buying Sumipe's calendar for every year since she ever released one haha NO WAY lol