My Dwindling Collection

by Crazy Ivan

I have over 500 Myachis in my personal collection and over 300 different types so far be it from me to complain that my collection isn't big enough or extensive enough.  It is.  It's plenty big and even though there are some key Myachis that I've lost (had stolen) over the years, I would have to be one whiney dude to say that there was anything subpar about that collection.

Obviously, it's pretty easy for me to collect Myachis.  I work for the company so I get the new series before they're available in stores.  I usually have a chance to pick up one of almost every promotional sack we make and, as if that wasn't enough, much of the time when Maniacs get personalized sacks made they often gift me with one.

So my collection is pretty awesome.  But I'm not just writing this article for a chance to brag about that.  There is actually a pretty big weakness in my collection and that is the surprisingly small number of solid tradables I have.

It's not even enough to fully bury my face!

Before going any further, I should explain what I mean when I say "tradables".  My ultimate goal is to have one of every type of Myachi ever produced.  I've long since recognized that to be all but impossible so I move ever closer to a goal that I know I can't achieve.  This is not a purely internal exercise, either.  I don't want one of each Myachi so that I can sit in my basement and stare at them.  I want them so that I'll be able to show them to future maniacs.  I'd hate to wind up in a world where only people who could afford the outrageous E-bay prices would ever get to jam with, say, a Snake Skin Tie-Dye.

Gaze upon it's awesomeness...

With the exception of some really rare paper tags and a few more recent small run promos, I've got a nearly complete collection.  This means that if somebody is coming to HQ or one of the stores and really, really wants to see a Yellow Cat in person (or a Red Roslyn Buldogs or a Mountain Dew or a Dunkin' Donuts or whatever), I can either bring mine in or send it with one of the other Myachi Masters.

But in order to protect this element of my collection I never trade anything unless I have two of them.  And herein lies the problem.

Well, that's actually only half the problem.  The other part is that I almost always rip myself off when I trade.  It wouldn't be fair to be stingy about trades.  So if somebody wants to trade for something that I have I can't exactly expect to get equivalent value for it every time.  Every time I make a trade my pile of tradables gets a little bit worse.  If I trade away a 3.1, I usually only get something along the lines of a 4.0 back for it.

"How about your Black Beard for my spork?"

Over time, this has really decimated my collection of tradables.  What makes it even worse is that I'm a real sucker.  If somebody wants one of my rarer tradables I have a lot of trouble saying no even if they don't have anything in their collection remotely rare enough to make a fair trade for it.

Normally in that situation, the trade would be a lot for a little, right?  Like, if you were gonna trade your friend and he wanted your Blueberry Leopard but only had relatively common sacks to trade you might make it fair by trading it for maybe 3 of his or her commons.  But that doesn't work for me.  Makes me look bad to the parents.  Their kids (who are Myachi Maniacs, of course) might recognize that me trading a Purple Haze for two 4.1s and a Wolfman is actually a really generous deal.  But all mom sees is that I just trades one Myachi to their kid and got three out of it and they assume that I've ripped their kid off.

Obviously, I would never rip anyone off in a trade (except maybe Animal), but I can't really afford for it to even look like I'm ripping a kid off.  Because of that, if I was working out the trade above (Purple Haze for 2 4.1s and a Paki), I would probably throw in two 4.5s or 5.0s just so that we're trading three Myachis for three Myachis.

Overtime, this has left me with an ever smaller pile of good tradables.  Sure, I still have a bunch of tradable sacks, but they're always getting less and less rare.  I can't just replenish my supply of 1.0s... instead, I have to store up on 5.0s and 4.5s and hold on to them until they get rare.

"Come back in 2016 and I'll have some ubers..."

I should also note that my pile of tradables is also my pile of "give-away"-ables so much of the time when I lose a semi-rare I'm not getting anything in return for it.  Sure, I can always get more Myachis, but the new ones will always be commons.

Believe it or not, there's a reason for this long, convoluted diatribe.  Maniacs always seem to expect that I (a) have at least two of every sack they've ever heard of and (b) that I can afford to rip myself off on trades forever and still have a good collection.  Neither of these things are true, but invariably when somebody asks me to "bring some tradables", they're disappointed that I don't show up with a bunch of uber-rares.

So if you and I are ever about to make a trade, I ask you to keep these facts in mind.  I probably won't show up with a pocket full of keychain loops, paper tags, 1.0s and Mexican Leopards.  Odds are, the sacks that I'll have up for trades aren't going to be a whole lot rarer than the ones you brought.  Sure, I might have a few solid Pakisacks to trade you, but I probably won't have the super-uber hard to find sack that you've always dreamed of having.

I only mention this because when I do make trades I often get the feeling like people are disappointed.  Either that or they think I've got a secret stash of way rarer tradables that I'm not showing them.  Rest assured; it's not that I'm sinister, it's that I'm stupid.  I wasted all my best stuff on earlier trades.