I used to be a FF collector as well during the PSOne era. I would get the Kotobukiya Squall, Rinoa, the 4 disc OST of FFVIII, Japanese and US versions of FFVII, VIII and IX. But as time went on, I expanded my view of games and moved more towards action games like Kingdom Hearts and Devil May Cry. Now changed taste towards FPS which don't have much in terms of collectibles outside of guns/Titans.
Was a collector of Disney Infinity until they discontinued the game and now just trying to dig for the remaining figures cheap.
Anyways, while I like to collect stuff. The one thing that's keeping cost down is simple. I only focus on R1 games (or NTSC/UC). I would look up rfgenerations and check the serial number and if it doesn't correlate with the US version of PS games I don't buy. I get most of my games digitally when they go on sale. So my physical collection focuses more on games that stood out to me. Like the PS3 Uncharted Trilogy + The Last of Us, Souls + Bloodborne series, Vanillaware games, Platinum Games, Ninja Theory, etc.
I rarely collect Deluxe or Collector editions because I'm a bit OCD that when I put the cases on the shelves they look the same. Same with my books, all HP from the same collection, GoT with US price tag and similar design. I was a bit peeved that Uncharted 3 has R-All for the US version of the game and wish I could change it. Same with Shadow of the Damned that has English + French of the cover but is R1.
So I'm just OCD is all.
Sounds like you started early and have a long history with collectors edition bro.