We hear a lot from newer players on this and other miniatures sites, but we in the internet community naturally stop hearing from collectors who no longer collect (and probably don't frequent these sites any more).  So in your local community, how many collectors do you know who've stopped, and when and why did they stop collecting?

My brother hasn't bought any miniatures since War Drums.  Basically, for him it's a money thing.  About this time last year, he had to take a hard look at his finances, and DDM just didn't fit any more--he had just moved into his own apartment.  He wasn't really playing the minis game, anyway, and he had moved away from his D&D group.

Locally, I work with a guy who stopped collecting at around Aberrations time.  He says he decided he had plenty of minis by then for D&D, and he has no interest in DDM.  He prefers Games Workshop games (and he also collects Warhammer, Warhammer 40K and Mordheim minis).  I tried to get him interested again, but I don't think it worked.  Funny thing was, just a couple of months ago, I found out that one of his objections to the minis line was that all large creatures were on square bases, even the ones that weren't supposed to have symmetric bases.  He hadn't noticed that 3.5 edition changed things so that all creatures now have symmetric spaces.

Anybody else?  I imagine we've lost some to Star Wars, Axis & Allies or Dreamblade miniatures.  We've probably lost some to price hikes, too.  Maybe others have just lost interest.  Anyone gone because of size creep?  Did the switch from terrain tiles to maps sour the game for anyone?

I guess the reason I bring this up is curiosity.  I'd like to get a feel for how fast our community is growing (since players lost can slow or reverse the growth trend) and what might be holding back the growth.  A growing community is a healthy one, so maybe knowing why some folks are getting out can help those of us who are staying in to encourage other players to stick around.

Hi everybody, I stopped collecting after Underdark.  I sold it all on ebay and made some money.  I figured that it was close to its peak in popularity and the resculpts that were coming out were dropping the value of old desireable pieces.  I stopped for several reasons.

1. The meta game for RPGA.  The only people that played for fun moved away.  I liked to play theme warbands and for fun, orcs, drow, etc...  In other words I couldn't win.  It was the same, very competitive people winning over and over again with crazy warbands.  I'm not complaining, I know that is how the game is played.

2. The money.  The boosters were getting more and more expensive and you need hundreds of dollars at one time to buy cases in order to even hope to get a full set or spend lots of time and money getting singles. 

3. I first started for RPG purposes than the crazy person in me had to get them all!  It was getting a little weird for me.

4. The quality wasn't there.  I also paint metal minis.  I like the quality of what I paint.  When I looked at DDM they just looked rediculous to me.

5. The scaling was stupid.  You had halflings smaller than tiny creatures and large creatures almost as big as huges.  Also the huges were sculpted weird to fit in the box like red and gold dragons eww.

6. So many mins would never get used.  Boxes and boxes, mostly good, would just sit there taking up space.

There are probably other reasons I'm not thinking of now.  All this said I wish I hadn't sold them all off.  I miss my monsters for RPG purposes even though I can't seem to get a RPG game going for the life of me, that sucks.  I liked certain monsters that I can't seem to find in metal, hezrou, barbed devil, umberhulk come to mind.  Then again I probably would have lost money on my investment.  I still might go back and and buy some singles on ebay.

I still look for the previews every week and come here very often for news.  I still like the game but am trying to focus on RPG right now.

Thanks for the rant