I really want to start collecting Lady Gaga items, but do you think it is too late to start? Im asking this because some of her things are numbered and I don't think there are anymore left :(
And this was my answer:
That's an interesting question! No, it's not too late to start any hobby at any time or any age!
Collecting-hobby becomes more difficult the later you start it, since the more time has passed after the release of the things you are collecting, the more difficult it will become to find those things. They might have been sold out, and things appear less and less frequently on Internet auction sites as times goes by, since the things at last end up to collectors who don't sell them onwards anymore.
I would like to continue that answer here, because of Youtube's very limited comment space:
Collecting is a very nice hobby. It's fun, it requires patience, hard work, sometimes detective work, which is very interesting, sometimes, but not always, money. Sometimes a lot of it.
Certainly not all collecting hobbies require large amount of money. Some are even completely free and will be free forever.
I am a passionate collector. I have been collecting all kinds of stuff throughout my life. And I will certainly continue to do so until I die. Maybe someone can start up a museum of my weird collections after that. Would be fun. I have been collecting things, which to some people would be complete rubbish, some things which are considered valuable, and some things which have only sentimental value to me.
Collecting something is a very nice and advisable hobby to everyone, but you should first decide what to collect. I am a good example and indeed you can collect everything, but that's going to be hard. Not hard at all to collect everything, but hard as ever to store the things anywhere. My collections fill up every place in my room and apartment. I have had to gave up collecting some things, because the space is not nearly big enough to sustain all my collectable items.
You can of course collect everything, but I don't recommend you to do so. My collections have included postal stamps, post cards, phone cards, books, comic books, films on DVD, PC-games, movie tickets, amusement park wristbands, museum visitor stickers, pins, interesting newspaper articles, old maps, crown-bottle corks, wine-bottle corks, seashells, nice cones, nice stones, nice branches and roots, multi-leaf clovers (four and up), all the flowers in our garden (pressed), photographs of all the plants in our garden (about 200 different species!), photographs of beautiful sunsets from a window of my previous apartment, self-made games (board games, card games, role-playing games etc.), self-made miniature soldiers, self-made books, ancient Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Persian, Mesopotamian etc. related pictures from Internet, symbols of all kind, ancient Roman equipment (self-made), Indiana Jones-film props (self-made props, bought clothes), other movie- and game props, materials of all kind for future prop making, Lady Gaga drawings (self-made of course) and Lady Gaga records on CD, LP and other formats. And I don't even have a vinyl-player!
And information, data, facts and everything which increases my knowledge of everything!
That is most probably not all, but I can't remember every collection I've ever had, and some of them are quite hard to describe, like my collection of all the nice little things I've ever got in my hands.
That is quite many collections, over thirty. Maybe you can start with one collection. Start by choosing which one it will be. Considering the nature of this blog and it's readership's mutual and quite narrow interests, I suppose you all want to collect Lady Gaga records. Mostly on CD, since most of them are released on CD, some on LP, some in other sometimes quite bizarre and peculiar forms, like singing toothbrushes and pins. I only collect the real records, not the kinds of singing toothbrushes, which have inferior sound quality and are only made to milk money out of little girls ('s parents).
Now when you have decided that you want to start to collect Lady Gaga records follows the next question, how?
First it's very easy, go to a record shop and buy every Gaga record they have. You can also ask if they have some in storage which are not displayed on the shelves. Older records are usually storaged somewhere, so they almost always have them despite the fact that you don't see them in the store. Just ask for them. If they are sold out, they can most probably order some more from a distributor, that will take from days to weeks. Better to check other stores first if you can find the records there more quickly. It's also advisable to compare the prices a little before buying everything from the same store, since you could save a big penny by buying them from some other store. Big super-markets and the like also often have sales, in which they put sometimes a ridiculously low price tag on the records. That's the time to buy the old records if you haven't bought them already. Smaller record stores can also have sales. Best sales are usually after Christmas, in January.
The older a record gets, the more cheap you can usually get it from regular stores. This applies to all regular mass made items, which are priduced of unnumbered copies, meaning that they will make them infinitely more when they are sold out of the stores. You can get almost all Gaga's music in regular CD:s and mp3 downloads. None of them will sell out since they can be produced more infinitely.
Then there's the collectable items. The ones that "serious" collectors are really interested. Or should I say only interested. I used the word serious inside quotation marks because I think everyone who are serious about their collecting hobby is a serious collector, but many of the so called serious collectors despise those people who collect things which are not valuable in the serious collectors mind. Which' monetary value doesn't rise up when time goes by, that is. That means all the regular items you can get from stores from now to infinity. Their price will only go down, so they are not interesting to the "serious" collectors, who are only interested in the calue of their collection and increasing the value through time.
I am not interested in the value of my collections. Or, yes, I am interested in how much I have spent money on my collection and how much it have gain more value through time, but I am not interested in its value in that sense that I would be selling it to anyone, ever. I am not selling my Gaga record collection ever. Period. So don't ask that, not even a single object. I am not giving them away either and I am not changing them for other objects. Don't propose that anymore, some of you have tried to do that.
I only collect Gaga records, as well as all the other things I'm collecting, for my own amusement. And maybe for a possible future museum exhibit, perhaps. I collect Gaga records because I want to have them all, I want to be able to say that I have them all and I would like to have the best Gaga record collection in the World. I know that it is not possible because there are more privileged people in existence who are collecting Gaga records as well and their goals are exactly the same as mine. People who have much more money than I have to put in this collecting hobby, and people who have started earlier and got something which is impossible to find anymore and people who live in New York, who have even met Gaga when She was not so famous and bought or got Her early records then.
The collectable items can be devided with many classes, but I like to use the following taxonomy:
Regular CD:s, cheap, infinite copies, I value the first edition best
Regular LP:s, cost a bit more, but just a bit, infinite copies, I value the first edition best
Extended edition CD:s, more songs that on regular albums, infinite copies
Deluxe version CD:s, made usually for a release in a specific country and not sold anywhere else
Unnumbered limited edition CD:s, limited number of copies
Numbered limited edition CD:s, limited number of copies
Unnumbered (versions of things which should be numbered) and/or promo items, rare and pricy
Super Deluxe versions of anything, very expensive, numbered, limited edition with all the goodies
Stefani records, before Gaga was even Gaga, so scarce that practically impossible to find and buy
I have excluded pirated copies, bootlegs, white labels and other unoccifial and fan-made items, which are not qualified for any Gaga collection, since they are not designed nor made in co-operation with Gaga, not released by any of Her official record labels, not even meant to exist by Her. So, they are worthless crap, the quality is usually very poor and they don't fit in the canon altogether. Don't buy them, if you do, you are only giving your money to thieves.
Always try to buy the records from official record stores and supermarkets, because then the money really goes to Gaga and Her record label, the people who really have made the record and reserve a price for it. If you buy second hand, it's some money away from the makers of the record. But buying second hand items is very recommendable if the items are not sold anymore in the stores. It's a really minor money loss to the artist.
In internet you can find many great places to buy Gaga records. The best are Ebay and Amazon. Try also other versions of the sites, aimed at other countries. .com for U.S., .co.uk for U.K., .de for Germany, .fr for France etc. Of course it might be impossible for you if you don't speak the language used in those sites. Most products you can always find from the .com ending sites.
You have to be careful in internet auction sites because of several reasons. You cannot look the product, and someone can cheat you. I have bought a record with a wrong image, the seller said it was a wrong image, but he hadn't another one, and told that the record had minor smudge on it's cover. When I received the record, it turned out to be completely ruined with boll point pen and marker smudge. The selled was a lousy thief and cheater. I gave him a bad criticism on the action site. That was not any of those big internet auction sites, it was a smaller one in Finland, but at least the biggest in my country. Anyway, always remember to look at the seller's ratings given by other users. It tells alot about the seller. If he/she has many negative reviews, you should consider if you really want to buy anything from him/her.
Some people ship the things fast, some slow, but usually it's pretty safe to trust in those biggest sites like Ebay and Amazon, they will most probably give your money back if the seller cheats you and you don't get the product.
Auctions also have another problem, the changing price. In Amazon you can buy pretty much anything with a standard price, but in Ebay you have to bid for an item. The highest bidder of course wins the item. This leads to situations that several people are competing for the same items, and the prices might get really high. There can also be a "buy now"-option in Ebay, if the seller has put one, but when talking about really rare collectable items, the buy now price will be really high, it the item has one. The starting bidding price can also be pretty high considering the rarity on the item.
The rarities only will become more expensive through time. This is because when time goes by, the people who originally bought them, but are not collectors, sell the items onwards when they don't need them anymore, and then they are bid on in an internet auction. The prices go up everytime they are bid on depending on how much people are willing to spend on them. Slowly there will be fewer and fewer items available, because they always finally end up to those collectors who don't want to sell them anymore, but want to keep them themselves. Collectors like me.
Collecting-hobby becomes more difficult the later you start it, since the more time has passed after the release of the things you are collecting, the more difficult it will become to find those things. They might have been sold out, and things appear less and less frequently on Internet auction sites as times goes by, since the things at last end up to collectors who don't sell them onwards anymore.
I would like to continue that answer here, because of Youtube's very limited comment space:
Collecting is a very nice hobby. It's fun, it requires patience, hard work, sometimes detective work, which is very interesting, sometimes, but not always, money. Sometimes a lot of it.
Certainly not all collecting hobbies require large amount of money. Some are even completely free and will be free forever.
I am a passionate collector. I have been collecting all kinds of stuff throughout my life. And I will certainly continue to do so until I die. Maybe someone can start up a museum of my weird collections after that. Would be fun. I have been collecting things, which to some people would be complete rubbish, some things which are considered valuable, and some things which have only sentimental value to me.
Collecting something is a very nice and advisable hobby to everyone, but you should first decide what to collect. I am a good example and indeed you can collect everything, but that's going to be hard. Not hard at all to collect everything, but hard as ever to store the things anywhere. My collections fill up every place in my room and apartment. I have had to gave up collecting some things, because the space is not nearly big enough to sustain all my collectable items.
You can of course collect everything, but I don't recommend you to do so. My collections have included postal stamps, post cards, phone cards, books, comic books, films on DVD, PC-games, movie tickets, amusement park wristbands, museum visitor stickers, pins, interesting newspaper articles, old maps, crown-bottle corks, wine-bottle corks, seashells, nice cones, nice stones, nice branches and roots, multi-leaf clovers (four and up), all the flowers in our garden (pressed), photographs of all the plants in our garden (about 200 different species!), photographs of beautiful sunsets from a window of my previous apartment, self-made games (board games, card games, role-playing games etc.), self-made miniature soldiers, self-made books, ancient Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Persian, Mesopotamian etc. related pictures from Internet, symbols of all kind, ancient Roman equipment (self-made), Indiana Jones-film props (self-made props, bought clothes), other movie- and game props, materials of all kind for future prop making, Lady Gaga drawings (self-made of course) and Lady Gaga records on CD, LP and other formats. And I don't even have a vinyl-player!
And information, data, facts and everything which increases my knowledge of everything!
That is most probably not all, but I can't remember every collection I've ever had, and some of them are quite hard to describe, like my collection of all the nice little things I've ever got in my hands.
That is quite many collections, over thirty. Maybe you can start with one collection. Start by choosing which one it will be. Considering the nature of this blog and it's readership's mutual and quite narrow interests, I suppose you all want to collect Lady Gaga records. Mostly on CD, since most of them are released on CD, some on LP, some in other sometimes quite bizarre and peculiar forms, like singing toothbrushes and pins. I only collect the real records, not the kinds of singing toothbrushes, which have inferior sound quality and are only made to milk money out of little girls ('s parents).
Now when you have decided that you want to start to collect Lady Gaga records follows the next question, how?
First it's very easy, go to a record shop and buy every Gaga record they have. You can also ask if they have some in storage which are not displayed on the shelves. Older records are usually storaged somewhere, so they almost always have them despite the fact that you don't see them in the store. Just ask for them. If they are sold out, they can most probably order some more from a distributor, that will take from days to weeks. Better to check other stores first if you can find the records there more quickly. It's also advisable to compare the prices a little before buying everything from the same store, since you could save a big penny by buying them from some other store. Big super-markets and the like also often have sales, in which they put sometimes a ridiculously low price tag on the records. That's the time to buy the old records if you haven't bought them already. Smaller record stores can also have sales. Best sales are usually after Christmas, in January.
The older a record gets, the more cheap you can usually get it from regular stores. This applies to all regular mass made items, which are priduced of unnumbered copies, meaning that they will make them infinitely more when they are sold out of the stores. You can get almost all Gaga's music in regular CD:s and mp3 downloads. None of them will sell out since they can be produced more infinitely.
Then there's the collectable items. The ones that "serious" collectors are really interested. Or should I say only interested. I used the word serious inside quotation marks because I think everyone who are serious about their collecting hobby is a serious collector, but many of the so called serious collectors despise those people who collect things which are not valuable in the serious collectors mind. Which' monetary value doesn't rise up when time goes by, that is. That means all the regular items you can get from stores from now to infinity. Their price will only go down, so they are not interesting to the "serious" collectors, who are only interested in the calue of their collection and increasing the value through time.
I am not interested in the value of my collections. Or, yes, I am interested in how much I have spent money on my collection and how much it have gain more value through time, but I am not interested in its value in that sense that I would be selling it to anyone, ever. I am not selling my Gaga record collection ever. Period. So don't ask that, not even a single object. I am not giving them away either and I am not changing them for other objects. Don't propose that anymore, some of you have tried to do that.
I only collect Gaga records, as well as all the other things I'm collecting, for my own amusement. And maybe for a possible future museum exhibit, perhaps. I collect Gaga records because I want to have them all, I want to be able to say that I have them all and I would like to have the best Gaga record collection in the World. I know that it is not possible because there are more privileged people in existence who are collecting Gaga records as well and their goals are exactly the same as mine. People who have much more money than I have to put in this collecting hobby, and people who have started earlier and got something which is impossible to find anymore and people who live in New York, who have even met Gaga when She was not so famous and bought or got Her early records then.
The collectable items can be devided with many classes, but I like to use the following taxonomy:
Regular CD:s, cheap, infinite copies, I value the first edition best
Regular LP:s, cost a bit more, but just a bit, infinite copies, I value the first edition best
Extended edition CD:s, more songs that on regular albums, infinite copies
Deluxe version CD:s, made usually for a release in a specific country and not sold anywhere else
Unnumbered limited edition CD:s, limited number of copies
Numbered limited edition CD:s, limited number of copies
Unnumbered (versions of things which should be numbered) and/or promo items, rare and pricy
Super Deluxe versions of anything, very expensive, numbered, limited edition with all the goodies
Stefani records, before Gaga was even Gaga, so scarce that practically impossible to find and buy
I have excluded pirated copies, bootlegs, white labels and other unoccifial and fan-made items, which are not qualified for any Gaga collection, since they are not designed nor made in co-operation with Gaga, not released by any of Her official record labels, not even meant to exist by Her. So, they are worthless crap, the quality is usually very poor and they don't fit in the canon altogether. Don't buy them, if you do, you are only giving your money to thieves.
Always try to buy the records from official record stores and supermarkets, because then the money really goes to Gaga and Her record label, the people who really have made the record and reserve a price for it. If you buy second hand, it's some money away from the makers of the record. But buying second hand items is very recommendable if the items are not sold anymore in the stores. It's a really minor money loss to the artist.
In internet you can find many great places to buy Gaga records. The best are Ebay and Amazon. Try also other versions of the sites, aimed at other countries. .com for U.S., .co.uk for U.K., .de for Germany, .fr for France etc. Of course it might be impossible for you if you don't speak the language used in those sites. Most products you can always find from the .com ending sites.
You have to be careful in internet auction sites because of several reasons. You cannot look the product, and someone can cheat you. I have bought a record with a wrong image, the seller said it was a wrong image, but he hadn't another one, and told that the record had minor smudge on it's cover. When I received the record, it turned out to be completely ruined with boll point pen and marker smudge. The selled was a lousy thief and cheater. I gave him a bad criticism on the action site. That was not any of those big internet auction sites, it was a smaller one in Finland, but at least the biggest in my country. Anyway, always remember to look at the seller's ratings given by other users. It tells alot about the seller. If he/she has many negative reviews, you should consider if you really want to buy anything from him/her.
Some people ship the things fast, some slow, but usually it's pretty safe to trust in those biggest sites like Ebay and Amazon, they will most probably give your money back if the seller cheats you and you don't get the product.
Auctions also have another problem, the changing price. In Amazon you can buy pretty much anything with a standard price, but in Ebay you have to bid for an item. The highest bidder of course wins the item. This leads to situations that several people are competing for the same items, and the prices might get really high. There can also be a "buy now"-option in Ebay, if the seller has put one, but when talking about really rare collectable items, the buy now price will be really high, it the item has one. The starting bidding price can also be pretty high considering the rarity on the item.
The rarities only will become more expensive through time. This is because when time goes by, the people who originally bought them, but are not collectors, sell the items onwards when they don't need them anymore, and then they are bid on in an internet auction. The prices go up everytime they are bid on depending on how much people are willing to spend on them. Slowly there will be fewer and fewer items available, because they always finally end up to those collectors who don't want to sell them anymore, but want to keep them themselves. Collectors like me.
Hi sire! Do you still collect?
VastaaPoistaWell, I have my collection, although I haven't actively searched for new collectable items in a couple of years or so now. I will buy all new albums of Gaga when she will release them of course. And I'm still interested in USB dance mat and that kind of extremely rare collectables from Gaga's earlier career.
Poista