How to Create a Keepable Gallery

The first big thing that some people miss is picking something you really like. You need to pick something you’re truly interested in. Otherwise, after a few weeks or months even you don’t see any point in keeping your gallery – it’s just a bunch of items. A gallery should be a collection of items that are important to you for one reason or another. If it is not, you’ll just become another person who sells off their gallery. One good way to determine some items you might really like is look at your real life. Do you have a favorite animal? Or maybe you have a favorite color? It is easy to find and collect items that resemble things in real life. For example, there are a lot of people who have dog or horse related galleries. Another option is to find out what you like on Neopets. Are there pets or petpets? Do you like faerie items? There are a lot of different things to pick from. Try looking at other people’s galleries if you’re not sure what you’re really interested in on Neopets. Finally, it’s good to take a look around at what items you already have. You might find inspiration in what you already own. And if you’re very lucky or a pack rat, you might already have a collection going in your Safety Deposit Box and you don’t even know it. Hopefully you have an idea of what you want and we can move to the next step.

The second important thing is realizing what you can afford. I’ve met far too many people who have decided to sell off their gallery because they believe they will never have the neopoints needed to complete their gallery. Part one to this is looking at how expensive the items you want are. Starting a collection of Hidden Tower or Rarity 180 items is incredibly expensive. Most people will never complete these galleries because they simply don’t have the neopoints and become discouraged over time. Try to pick something that is more affordable. Or understand that your gallery may never be 100% completed. The second part to this is looking at how many items you would need to collect. For example, plushie collections require approximately 3000 items. Not only would you need to purchase all of these (even at only 50,000 neopoints each that’s 150 million neopoints, and believe me there are plenty of those plushies that cost considerably more than 50,000 neopoints) you also have to buy the gallery space. The first few upgrades are fairly cheap. But the cost to upgrade the size of a gallery becomes unbelievably expensive very quickly. If you’re curious about how much it would be to have a gallery with 3000 items, it is approximately 35,940,150 neopoints. If you do try to get to such a large size, try upgrading your gallery once a day to keep your price neopoints in moderation. Now, you have a rough idea of what to look at for the overall cost of a gallery. Don’t pick something too easy; like piles of dung, which are practically free. Don’t pick something that has too many items or the items are all worth tens of millions of neopoints.

What if you really want to collect something expensive or something that has a lot of items? Now what do you do? A simple way to cut back on cost is to narrow your collection. If you decide you love petpets, but you also realize you do not want to spend all those neopoints on a large gallery and all those petpets, then limit your gallery down until you can save for what you want. Decide to only collect one type of petpet or one color (whatever your favorite might be) or just the retired ones. You can use the same system for plushies! You can collect only the retired ones, or only the ones of certain pets or certain colors, and so on. The same goes for an expensive item collection such as items with a rarity of 180. Instead of collecting all of the rarity 180 items, just collect the battle items or some other category within the items that have a rarity of 180 or higher. These are just three examples; this idea can by used for almost any collection. By restricting your collection to only certain types of the item, you make your gallery more unique and less costly. The best part of this strategy is if you decide you do have the neopoints, you can expand your collection. You can add a color or a type or a rarity. Or you can simply wait until the Neopets Team releases more of the item you collect.

Some other pieces of advice that might help those of you who still aren’t sure about starting a gallery are:

1. You can always search for galleries that are similar to yours using the shop wizard. This can be used to inspire you – you can see what other people, with the same item as you, add to their galleries. It can also be used to determine how much you’d have to collect, or you can use it to find other collectors who you might get along with. These people can help you and you might even become neofriends.

2. You can go onto the neoboards to find similar collectors. Again, this serves the same purpose as searching for galleries using the shop wizard. This is even better for advice or for finding neofriends with similar interest.

3. Finally, you should try searching for guilds based on collecting or galleries. This can really help you stick with keeping a gallery. This can also help in finding more rare or expensive items. There is nothing like the support of an active guild to help you out.

Once you have decided all of these factors it makes it much easier all the way around. You know exactly what you want to collect and you should be pretty interested in the items you’ve decided to start putting into your gallery. Plus, you’ll have a pretty good idea about what it is going to cost you. Finally, you also know the ways to find support for your gallery. This makes it a lot easier to continue to keep up a gallery and not get discouraged. Then you can make a complete and fantastic gallery that you’re proud of and won’t sell off. Who knows, maybe you’ll even want to enter the gallery spotlight contest!