What happens when what you collect changes?

I have been collecting since about 2007. I loved the Muppets: at one time I had every muppets pin but 3. Anyway, to make a long story short, I collected with my ex-wife, and now that we are separated, there is too much emotion tied up to these pins.

Has anyone ever changed what they collect? Is it easier to sell these as a collection and start over or to piece them out? Any words of advice?

For awhile, I collected Nightmare Before Christmas pins. But about three months ago, I decided to stop collecting them. I kept a few of the nicer pins, but the rest I combined with my traders. I started to focus more on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea pins and some of my Nightmare pins (that were put into my traders) helped me trade for my new collection. I guess it depends on whether you'd rather try and use the Muppet pins as traders or if you'd like the money instead. My suggestion is that if you do sell them, sell them individually. Selling as a collection can be pricey (and a lot of us pin traders are poor folk). By selling individually, you're more likely to appeal to more people who are seeking out specific pins. Any that you do not sell, try to trade them off.

That's how I would do it. Do whatever works best for you. I'm sorry to hear about your separation. I completely understand the whole aspect of emotion being tied up in the pins. Hopefully it will be an easy transition, and you can start a new collection with great new memories attached.

I'd say figure out what you want to collect now, try to trade your Muppets pins for a while, then sell the Muppets pins that aren't trading. Muppets doesn't have a huge collector base so once you see who wants what and if they are willing to trade you what you want you'll know pretty quick what to trade, keep, sell. I say a lot, every pin trader has to purge pins once in a while. Even the most die hard people against resellers have to sell a few pins once in a while to refresh and make room for new pins in their book. So many people here have DSF pins, once you show the same pins to the same people at 5 PTN's, it's time to move them. Some people keep traders forever I suppose. You never know what will be crazy valuable way down the road. But I think you can figure it out.

I have changed my mind about collections and keepers several times. Sometimes removing a whole group from my cvollection, sometimes just being more picky about specific things, and sometimes, just setting a collection aside.

for instance,

• I was a HoND completist, but have pretty much changed that to "whatever ones strike my fancy" from that movie. Which means that I am willing to trade certain ones from that collection for the right thing.
• I collect specific Thumpers. I have stopped and started Thumper collecting 3x now. and there are only 3 pins of thumper which has survived a "culling" from my book multiple times.
• I started off collecting specific horses, then switched to all horses, then switched to just certain ones, and now am back to ALL Disney horses again. lol
• TinkerBell was the first thing I ever collected. But now I only collect certain ones, and my 4 yr old has a collection of Tink's with "sassy comments" on them.
• Atlantis... I have stopped collecting it 2x now. I was very torn about it. I like obscure movies and characters. But right when I started collecting it, other people started too, and I didnt think it was really obscure anymore when so many people suddenly wanted it so I stopped. Go figure.

Each time my collections change, some pins come out of the keeper book and go to the trade book, or even the sales list occasionally. Sometimes it occurs because we need the money, or the trade book is bare. Other times it is just on a whim. And sometimes, I regret a choice later. But, they are just pins. The ones with sentamental value will never go away. But the rest are just pins.