#365DaysOfWriting – Day 105
The Mumbai chapter of the Action Figures Fanatics India (AFFI) group had its first ‘official’ meet up today!
Finally! It was nice to place actual faces to the names and numbers I’d been seeing on Facebook and WhatsApp.
All of us grown up men felt like 8–9 year olds again.
And unless you are a passionate collector, you have no idea what that feels like! Viraj, a member of our group, had brought almost his entire collection of mint, vintage G.I.Joes. Nishant, another collector and seller, brought the Filmation line Beast Man (which I bought off him at a pretty good bargain).
Ramgopal had brought a Black Series Captain Phasma and a whole lot of other cool stuff. But one of the best sets of figures was shown to us by Rohan – he had miniature Kotobukiya figures of Batman, Robin, Joker, Harley, Catwoman and the Batmobile. Each one came with a separate diorama and base. Ankush and Devesh were generally looking over the entire operation, and talking about future offers, meets and figure lines. Shayne spoke about comics (and he’d worn a cool Superman tee). Parthiv was talking about his awesome collections apart from action figures (my heart broke at the Titanic story man). I also finally met Kotobukiya man Mihir! Sorry if I missed out any one – I’m sure I’ll get to know all of you even better at subsequent meetings!
It really feels good to gather around like-minded people and have a chat.
It was like everyone spoke the same language! I’ve never felt more comfortable around a group of people I was meeting for (almost) the first time. Thankfully there was no one ridiculing our hobby. No stupid questions like why, or what or who. Just good old-fashioned discussions on our favourite hobby.
Here’s a picture of us (I’m hidden, surprisingly).
