XVII

It's been a while.

There has been some stuff in my life, but I didn't wrote about them bc I didn't think it was worth it, like I didn't think they were actually that important. I tried to write them a couple times but it just seemed to me like I was just complaining—like I'm doing right now.

Anyway, I'm fine—I could be better, but I could be worse. My life, as you already know, is my Funko business and barely anything else. That hasn't changed a bit.

But I'm dangerously comfortable like this.

And speaking about Funko, right now I'm getting back on my feet. What happened? Well, I did a really dumb thing that didn't seem that dumb at the time, and I'm paying the consequences for that. And what was that dumb thing? I got a second loan.

So, with the first loan—which I'm still paying rn, but I don't mind that much tbh—I was able to buy a nice laptop to work with, and to invest and reinvest in a lot of Funkos. It helped me so much I decided to take a second one when I stumbled upon a really big lot of LOTR, even though I could just take that money from my savings. I knew my bills would increase, but I was earning so much money at the time, so it didn't seem like a big dead.

And it wasn't… for the first month or two. Then I started to use some of the savings I use to invest in new figures until I emptied them. That meant I didn't have money to buy new figures to sell, so I almost stopped looking for new ones, meaning my reinvestments consisted mainly of the ones I'd already preordered from an authorized distributor and wholesaler—which tbh I don't consider a good investment bc they're ones everyone has, so the market is filled with them, and that means customers see them everywhere, so they're not that eager to buy then, except if they're really cheap, which sometimes are bc some sellers get tired and just want their investment back, so the market price of those figures lowers, and there's a lot of times that you're not earning that much from them—there are times on which those pieces are on high demand (like the Demon Slayer ones when they finally arrived to Mexico,) so you end up earning a lot, but that's not very common.

In order to pay for those figures I was using all the money I was earning, sometimes a little more, and for everything else I was using credit cards. I've using them for quite a while, and I never had any interest rates or anything. Even when I was owing quite a bit of money and it was almost the closing date—or maybe a few days after, in some cases—I just simply used some of the saving I use to invest in new figures, and that was that.

But I didn't have those anymore.

Also, I had to pay for two different loans.

So, I ended borrowing some money from my life savings to pay for everything that needed to be paid.

And I was doing that more and more often. At that rate I would spend all the money I had saved in this year of Funko business (yeah, it's been a little more than a year since I started this. Crazy, huh.) The only thing I could do to stop it was to take a bigger amount of my savings and finish paying my loan. From there everything's coming back to normal (except there's a couple k's missing from my account, but I'm planning to get them back eventually. I'm even considering to finish paying the loan I still have to get another one in order to get that money back and have a little more to invest, and I know getting a loan in order to pay for what I lost bc of another loan seems the stupidest thing I could do—really, I KNOW—but I can pay one loan without sacrificing or losing anything, except for the fact that I would be harder to start living on my own if I already have a loan to pay but, let's be honest, it doesn't seem I'm close for that at the moment. If I was earning the same as January that would be a completely different story, but at least I know that's possible, so I just need to work harder this year.)

Anyway, right now the first thing I'm doing is to pay my credit cards—and my loan, obviously.

And then I need to restock with rare and vaulted figures bc I have less and less of those and, as I said earlier, the ones I get from the distributor are everywhere, so they aren't that profitable as the vaulted and rare ones. I already got a few and sold a couple of those.

So I need more.

And besides that Funko stuff, I don't feel there's much going on with me. I'm currently using part of my free time creating a story I could write in the future and researching about some things related to it. I'm really enjoying it, even though it probably never be something else than a hobby. And that's a shame bc I'm pretty sure it could be something else, but that depends entirely on how good I plan in, develop it and write it. That's not an easy task, especially when the story grows and covers so many different topics—I know it sounds like a mess, and that's bc it kinda is, so I need to find a way to connect everything in a way that's organic and easy to understand.

Anyway, I hope something interesting happens—preferably good—to me in the future.

I'll see you around.

No.

No, no, no, no.

No.

This isn't over.

Or should I say: "this is not all"?

The thing is there's a lot of half-truths there.

I just wrote them bc I was being really optimistic at the time, but the truth is things aren't that well tbh. They're getting better over time, but they're still kinda shitty in a way.

First of all, I might got scammed. Let me explain: during last year I started checking out the fb marketplace and some specialized groups there. It's a big market and I had to take part in it. Anyway, there's also raffles and auctions. I'm not that interested in the first ones bc I don't like the idea to spend money in something and end up empty handed, but sometimes there's also "everyone wins" raffles on which every ticket gets a Funko from a list. You could get some cheap and worthless ones, but you can also get some rare and valuable ones. And that's why I participated in a couple of those.

About the auctions: they can be a great way to get Funkos at very low prices. Therefore, I participated in a lot of those. Most of the times I got great deals. And the other times, well… There was one guy who did a couple auctions a week—let's call him Swindle from now on—, and the auctions always started at $0 so you could get some really cheap pieces (I always wondered how that business model could work; I mean, how could he get profits if some of those pieces were being sold way cheaper than market price? But maybe the answer is that it just didn't. More on that later.) The only issues there were 1) sometimes the pieces weren't in a great shape, and I didn't know until I received them, and 2) I needed shipping. And this shouldn't be a big of a deal, but Swindle was a disorganized guy, to say the least; I needed to tell him multiple times to send the figures I won—I always waited until I win a few to ask for shipping—and he would tell me excuses until he finally sent them. Sometimes I even send him the shipping guides to make his job easier—and cheaper for me—but he waited so long to use them that they didn't work anymore when he was planning to send them—he would end up paying for them, though.

In February I had won a few figures, so I asked for shipping, like I always did, and in the meantime I was still winning some more figures from his auctions bc I knew he would take a while to send them. But this time he didn't send anything. He just told me excuses and more excuses. Time passed. I started suspecting and stopped bidding in his auctions. Also I insisted and insisted, and he would just tell me excuses and excuses. Eventually he compromised to send them, and he kinda did.

But it was only half of them.

His excuse was that he just hired someone, and bc this new employee couldn't find a box big enough for all my pieces he just sent half of them. He then compromised to send the rest and pay for the shipping.

He never did btw.

He only refunded one of those pieces bc apparently that new employee robbed him or something, and a lot of people were complaining—oh, yeah, by this point in the story a lot of people were complaining in the fb group (the biggest Funko group in Mexico, but that didn't stopped this from happening during several months, in the first place,) and the admins were extremely busy trying to solve all these cases.

Time still passed, I ended up complaining to those admins, and asking for a refund.

Nothing, until one time I tried to tell Swindle I wanted a refund for the eleventh time, and I noticed his account didn't exist anymore. I obviously thought he just disappeared with my money, so I checked the fb group, hoping there were more people with that problem. I immediately noticed there was a post on which the admins said Swindle was banned from the group, but also they were asking for everyone who had unfinished business with him.

It was flooded with people.

I obviously commented there and checked the other comments.

Some of them were saying that guy owed them more than 25 figures.

He only owed me 6.

Also one of the admins posted there was also a messenger group, and I obviously asked to join. There were 95 people there already. Days passed. I contacted some of the admins telling them what happened and asking them in. No one answered. But after a couple days they accepted me.

Everything was on fire: people were extremely mad saying the admins were fucking worthless, and everything was also their fault bc, even though they knew Swindle wasn't delivering the Funkos, they let him continue to do so in their group with complete impunity—one time they banned him for a week, but after that he continued doing exactly the same thing. Some even were saying they were covering him up bc they didn't want to give his personal info; they said they couldn't do that bc that's illegal. Some wanted to sue; apparently had a ton of conversations and evidence of many cases.

The admins, on the other hand, were saying that they were doing everything on their hands to solve this, but what could they do if Swindler didn't seem to care? That's why they were sick and tired of everything.

They just gave up.

And then they eliminated me—and everyone else—five minutes after they accepted me.

I can still read all the messages people posted there, and the more I read the hopeless it gets. And I get madder and madder bc I kinda understand both points of view, but I still can't get why they didn't do anything during almost four months. Why did they protect him that much? Were they involved in the scam? And no.

I don't want to keep thinking about this bc I've been thinking a lot about it.

And for what? I've only stressed myself out to the point I can't concentrate during the day.

Also it's been harder to sleep.

Fortunately, in the end I simply decided to give up on that money and eliminate any message threads about it; that money is not worth all this stress.

But there were more reasons that stressed me out, like a Dabi figure with a fake sticker. Let me explain: back in December I was earning so much I decided to invest a lot, and although I made some great deals, I also decided to buy a couple figures with con stickers from a guy that was retiring from collecting. The figures were original, but time passed, and no one wanted to buy them—well, that was mainly bc of the price; figures with con stickers tend to be way more expensive that the ones with shared stickers (and yes, I know, it's just a sticker, but that's the world of collectors, my friend.) A couple days ago, one guy was interested in them. I send him pictures of the figures, and he was also pretty sure the figures weren't fakes. He then asked me for pictures of the fronts and backs of the stickers. I did, and then he asked me if he could ask in a fb group if the stickers were legitimate. I was a little shocked about that—they are only stickers, and the figures are original—but he told me someone had sold him a figure with a swapped sticker, and I was like "ok, I didn't know that was a thing, but I can see people swapping stickers to increase the price of a figure. Anyway, what's wrong about that? You got the sticker you wanted. Why are you complaining about it? It's just a sticker of a figure that you'll do absolutely nothing with it. Why the fact that the sticker it currently has is not the same it got at the factory is important? So that means if the original sticker fells down and you paste it back on the figure, now it's worthless? What kind of random shit is that? Jesus, you really love drama, don't you?"

Anyway, he asked in the fb group, and most people said the Dabi sticker was fake, but the figure was original, meaning someone bought an original Dabi with a shared sticker, and replaced it with a fake con one, meaning my figure lost most of its value. They were also saying the other sticker—from a Bakugo figure—was legit, even though it was the Chinese version—apparently there are different versions that look almost the same, but their value changes. The guy who was interested in the figures said he saw three different pictures of con stickers that people sent them, and they were all slightly different than the one the Bakugo figure had, so he assumed it was fake, even though everyone was telling him it was legit, only not the most valuable version, well… there was one guy who said that sticker was also super fake, but in all post I've seen about someone asking if something they have/wanna buy is legit, there's always at least one person that says it's super fake, followed by "I don't know how everyone else can't see it; it's so obvious."

And this last part really pissed me off. Yeah, the Dabi revelation bummed me out, and made me sell that figure way cheaper—obviously I told the buying what was the deal with it, but he just wanted a cheap Dabi, so that sticker situation was irrelevant for him—but the fact that the guy just assumed it was fake really hit my nerves bc, even though I respect his decision, he ended up ignoring all people and making a random assumption. He asked the group to know the opinion of people who knew way more about this topic than him; he wanted them to help him make a logical and factual decision bc he had already made a mistake in the past. He clearly wasn't prepared to determine if that sticker was legit or not. And he knew that.

But he did anyway. That's what pissed me off. It pissed me off so much I've also been constantly overthinking all of this when I'm trying to sleep.

I just feel kinda restless now. It's like my mind is punishing me, using my feelings against me or something, like that's the only thing my feelings are good for.

Man, it seems my mind doesn't really like me at all.

But I didn't lie on the first half of the chapter.

Things are getting better.

But please don't screw it up.