I'm gettin' old . . . enduring 4 days of standing in lines and wandering the halls for hours on end, just for the possibility of spending big $$$ along with a million Chinese chancers and American asshats doesn't sound like good times anymore! A morning blitz on Superfestival, checking out the random Japanese craziness and picking up some cheap mementos before a Ten Don lunch and an afternoon mooching around Nakano Broadway sounds more my pace these days. But each to their own.
Hopes - The grumpy old timers and recently jaded collectors realize this is the way the “scene” has and always will be. That’s it’s not that bad and every collector goes through phases which weeds out the long time collector from the casual. That no one else’s collecting habits impact them in anyway what so ever and there is room for it all. Nightmares- New makers step further away from actually hand sculpting their own work and move to farming out work to digital. That collectors are less kind to each other and forget this is still a community and can help each other.
Specific, but I think I need to quote @kichigai in the HS thread for looking two years into the future
Fixed your morning blitz, blitzkrieg bop comment. Oi!!! Who you calling asshat over here, you !&()#ing RED COAT.
Hopes: More shows with smarter sales systems for the big artists. The most fun I've had in this hobby has been at shows that were more social. Fears: More toy-as-stock behavior with zero appreciation for the art. I had a dude flat out tell me he wanted something that "made my collection more popular". It utterly baffles me that people spend thousands of dollars on toys they don't give a shit about so they can look cool to strangers on the Internet.
physical defecation being turned into mass produced plastic. I don't about you but I'm stocked up on fiber.