F For Fake

I mostly do loose Secret Wars stuff, but there are three exceptions. I have an unpunched Hobgoblin and Wolverine (silver claws) that I bought off of a FB guy locally a year or two ago, and I have my Iceman that I bought waaaaaaay back at a comic show for $30 when I was about 10 years old. That was my first real "collectible" toy. I knew I'd never seen anything like it and desperately wanted it. I made a deal with my folks, signed a little handwritten contract and everything, agreeing that I'd do any amount of chores, lawn-mowing, etc that they saw fit, for as long as they wanted, if they'd loan me the money. It was a good investment! It's my favorite piece in my collection. I'm not sure if the bubbles of the European released figures were made of a different material or not, but it has always seemed a little thinner to me than the domestic releases. Still, 30+ years later, it's clear and tight. And the other two are similarly clear and tight, no issues. I see a lot of yellowing on SW bubbles, I guess it's all dependent on the environment they were stored in, which is the case with pretty much anything, really. .

Indeed, you are correct! Deadpool is already one of the pricier figure in the series. Not crazy expensive yet, but a solid seller in the $50-$75 range, which isn't bad, considering most of the other figures from that wave/era are in the $5-$10 range. I fondly remember buying that one off of the pegs. Even though I was "too old" to play with them, that figure had pretty decent articulation at the time, and a cool retractable knife. For the same reasons you cite, I'm surprised that the Secret Wars Wolverine figure isn't more expensive. Perhaps its just because there's too much product out there, but you can still pick up MOC figures for about $100, which feels low to me given the significance of the figure. Of course the black claws variant is much more expensive.

Sure! The initial Toy Biz wave was Wolverine (brown costume), Nightcrawler, Storm (black costume), Cyclops (white/blue X-Factor costume), Colossus, Archangel (white wings), Magneto, Juggernaut Apocalypse. All came on cards with "punch out" hangers, and corresponding Marvel 1990 Impel trading cards. Cyclops was also sometimes issued with the Apocalypse card, for some reason. All were later reissued on cards with hanger tags and randomly inserted character cards. Finally, Cyclops was reissued with the classic Blue/Yellow costume, Storm with grey/silver costume, Archangel with grey wings, and Colossus with a maroon/brown costume. I don't think they reissued that initial Wolverine or Nightcrawler sculpt. Wolverine soon came out in the popular "TIger Stripe" classic costume with pop-out claws, and the Nightcrawler figure wasn't issued again. The initial line also had two Danger Room playsets, a weird motorcycle with claws for Wolverine, Magneto's "Magnetron" vehicle, and super-size figures of Wolvie and Mags.

Yeah, not worth much, but I think that's largely due to the size and people being unfamiliar with Silke's work, which is always really nice. His Bettie Page stuff is great as well.

I mentioned this in a thread in CG a couple of days ago. I hit nearly every comic shop, peddlers mall and antique mall in town last week, places which always had TONS of GI Joe. Pretty much every issue before the real glut years (50's through 70's) was sold.

Those are great! I don't see them often, I'm assuming because of the odd size. A lot of folks don't even know they exist.

So, I guess I've decided to go back and re-buy the Toy Biz X-Men figures, at least the first wave. My connection to the series is odd. When they came out in 1991, I was a teenager in high school. I still occasionally read comics, but I no longer "played" with toys, and didn't really have the money or interest to start collecting them at that time. I bought a couple out of duty to my younger self. All I wanted when I was a kid was X-Men toys. We got Secret Wars Wolvie, and Iceman, and that was it! I so desperately wanted X-Men toys, in the scale of Star Wars and GI Joe. By the time X-Men toys came out in 1991, I wasn't interested in playing with them, they also weren't in that coveted GI Joe scale, and frankly, the initial figures were kinda ugly. So, aside from the few I bought out of supposed obligation, I didn't LOVE them the way I might had they come out a few years earlier. Throughout the 90's, there was a glut of X-Men product on the shelves, a seemingly endless supply available on clearance at KB Toys, and all of the flea markets littered with old stock. It seemed like you couldn't give them away. Then Marvel Legends happened, and whatever shred of relevance the original X-Men line may have held was completely done away with. Now, fast forward 30 years, these are vintage, and suddenly everything that made them cheesy to me as a teen, is now charming. So, I thought I'd pick them up on the cheap. BUT...they're not that cheap anymore! At least not what I'm looking for: the original release, which came with punch-out cards and Marvel Impel cards that related directly to the character in the package. As far as why these are no longer common as dirt, I'd imagine it's a variety of factors: Rule of 25/30; the retro card Marvel Legends releases further stirring nostalgia; and the boom of the Marvel Card market. The cards included with these toys are nearly identical to the Marvel cards, but they have a Toy Biz logo on the back, which makes them a variant. I think folks are finally wising up to these as well, so all of the cheap figures have been sucked up off of the bay. They'd soon be replaced by cards with hang-tabs and random cards, which are still fairly easy to find, and then repaints on hanger cards, which are easy as well. But that original wave, on NICE cards? Not so easy to find. Toy Biz used some sort of cheap cardboard to make these packages, as nearly every figure you find has a warped card. I'd really like to get some unpunched cards, and have my eyes open, but this is the start of the collection. We'll see how long it takes me to complete the set at a price I'd find reasonable. I really love the orange TRU sticker on Nightcrawler. Hits the nostalgia button hard. Also, I remember this back in the day as well: Nightcrawler was easily the nicest sculpt in the initial wave, but they stuck GD giant suction cups on him, which ruins the effect! Oh well, he still looks pretty cool on card. tl;dr: I'm having a midlife crisis.

My LCS got in a collection of GPK's, complete sets of each series they made, plus some giant sized cards as well. I don't know much about them, they're asking $999 for the complete series 1 set. Is that insane, or about right?

Great points all around, John! Were you on the old Bowen Designs forums? Those were fun times. I remember I had the blue collector club shirt, and I wore it until it pretty much fell apart! I got to meet Randy at SDCC back in 1998, bought my blue box Grendel Hunter Rose statue directly from him. Also have many fond memories of buying stuff from "the vault" back during those collector club days. I wish I'd held onto the stuff, I'd be rich now! It seemed like prices dipped once BD kinda called it a day, and Sideshow started to take over the market. But looking at prices now, they clearly rebounded! You're right on about the pre-Golden Age. We take it for granted now just how much product there is, and how easy it is to find. But back then, there just wasn't much around. Superman, Kelley Jones Batman and Sandman, and a few more here and there. Speaking of garage kits, I used to love Bowens' Kongzilla piece, which you could get as a statue or a kit. I remember that one being pretty cheap back in the day because it seemed like people only cared about his licensed stuff. I checked out prices last night and...whew boy. Insanity. I also really wish I'd held onto my HP Lovecraft and Cthulhu statues, and my Hellboy Bronze and etc etc etc So much cool stuff. Also a great point about the sculptors that Bowen brought to a larger audience. It was a huge move to credit the sculptors and turn them into names in their own right. The Shifletts, Ray Villafane, many others I learned of because of BD. And yes, DC had Paquette and the great Tim Bruckner, who also sculpted some great action figures for them. Lots of good memories here, in danger of sending me down a very expensive eBay rabbit hole, so I'd better punch out before I start trying to buy my collection back!

Oh @piperone more thing! Sideshow also sells/distributes pieces by Prime, Tweeterhead, DC Direct etc, so it’d be worth your time to check out their site, as you can do some direct comparison on scale/sculpt/price all in one spot! Good luck and have fun!

Happy to help!

Congrats! That's a great set! The mini comics sells well on its own as well.

Luckily there are a wide variety of statue sizes and price points available from a variety of vendors these days. I was a big Bowen Designs collector back in the day, when that was pretty much the only game in town. In a way, I really miss those days, as you could be guaranteed to get a beautifully sculpted 1/6 scale piece for $150-$200. Prices crept up, more companies started doing their own things, and times changed. Sideshow really pioneered the 1/4 market, but seeing how they've progressed from the $250-$300 range to the current ask of $500-$700, it's gotten hard to keep up, to the point where I sold off most of my stuff. When it comes to display, the Premium Format statues from Sideshow are my preference, though as you note, display space is definitely an issue. The XM stuff is just too big, expensive, and too hard to get ahold of, for my tastes, and the Prime Studios stuff is just too crazy big. Sideshow's 1/4 PF stuff fits the bill as being impressively large, yet not unreasonably so. Also, SS stuff is usually mixed media, so you sometimes get soft goods which can really enhance the piece. Plus, Sideshow offers Flex Pay, so the $500-$700 is still hard to swallow, but breaking it up into bite sized installments helps a bit. That being said, I don't buy many of them anymore, because I'm too flaky with my collecting whims. I love buying and collecting, but very little is in my "permanent collection", so when something new catches my eye, I usually sell something old to pay for it.. But with the Premium Format pieces, that can be very difficult. They're extremely fragile, and it's difficult to ship them without something getting broken. It seems like many of the new pieces shipped directly from Sideshow end up having breakage issues, I've had several arrive damaged myself. So, when it comes to selling, dealing with returns, insurance, etc can be a real hassle. Therefore, I only have a few Premium Format pieces, because I don't want to have to deal with the eventual shipping hassles. But if you don't expect to be reselling down the line, that wouldn't be an issue for yuo. If you're just wanting to get your feet wet, there are also a variety of cheaper, PVC based statues from companies like Diamond Select and Kotobukiya. Nicely detailed statues, though much smaller, but usually available in the $50-75 range. And while DC Direct is no more, there's still a lot of product floating around out there from their full size, miniature, and mid-size lines, that are very afforable. At the end of the day, I'd say Bowen Designs is still the all time champ, but as for new stuff, if I could pick just one scale and company to stick with, it would be the Sideshow PF line.

I know last time he posted, he mentioned not being on the boards as much, so hopefully he's just been busy. Always enjoy hearing from him!

So cool that you also have the display to go with it! I saw one of the figures at an estate sale last year. I showed up early as I planned to take a run at it, but they wanted like $2k for it, and I just couldn't justify it. This one looks very clean as well. Super cool!

One of my best friend, going all the way back to our middle school years, was the first of any of us to get a job, when he was 14 or 15, and he put ALL of that money into video games. So growing up, if there was something you wanted to play, he probably had it. He was the only person I knew with a TurboGrafx16. We played a LOT of Bonk's Adventures. He was also the only person I knew who had all of the various Sega add-ons for the Genesis, including the CD, the 32x, etc. He had it hooked up to his Dad's old Quadraphonic sound system, so when we played Ecco the dolphin, it sounded like we were underwater. Great times. Now that we're all old, he has a dedicated gaming room in his house, with pretty much every system released domestically. The one he's missing? A Jaguar. Luckily he bought a house just a few blocks away from mine a couple of years ago, so when the pandemic is finally over, I can run over there anytime to play pretty much anything! This is the same friend I've mentioned in the past who has a more or less complete GI Joe collection from 82-91 or so. He has finally completed his "GI Joe room", and it's pretty amazing. Once I'm able to get back over there, I'll take some pics to share. Puts my piddling collection to shame!

I got my Dreamcast at either Babbages, or whatever Babbages turned into (Electronics Boutique, maybe?) Anyway, I remember at the time I was dumbfounded, because I got the console, two controllers, two of the memory pad things, and a couple of games, all for $60! I eventually sold it, but it was a sweet system. It really was ahead of its time with the online component, amongst other features. Spent a lot of hours with Crazy Taxi, Sonic, etc. Very underrated system.

In other card news, huge thanks to @Robot Man for the lovely package that arrived at my house yesterday, full of Vince Coleman goodness! Can't thank you enough. This was like injecting my childhood right into my eyeballs. So many great memories. Thanks so much. I've tried my best over the years to be a good boardie and pay things forward, but there's no question that I've benefitted from the generosity of the boards far more often than I've been able to repay. Very lucky to be part of such a great community. Thanks again, Bob!

Man, the Jaguar was soooooo expensive when it came out, so nobody bought it, and then eventually you could grab them on clearance at KB Toys for next to nothing. Really wish I'd picked one up at the time, along with AvP. I, instead, invested my clearance gaming dollars in the Dreamcast. Sigh. Oh well, Dreamcast was still a pretty cool system at the time!

About three/four weeks into the card explosion, things have definitely calmed down quite a bit, but pretty much everything is still selling well above what it was selling for just a month or two ago, so it's still good times. I drove about an hour last week to meet a lady about some cards. Bought her Marvel 1990 and 1992 sets (already sold), but then I went to a Peddlers Mall and bought a few more things, including this set of Colossal Conflicts card from Comic Images 1987, meaning they were issued a full three years before Marvel 1990, MEANING THIS should be Wolverine's "rookie" card, or at least closer to it. Please help me spread the word so that I may sell them upon eBay and use the windfall to retire to private island. Oddly enough, the set also appears to feature the rookie card of little known Marvel super villain ADOLPH HITLER?! I mean, I realize Hitler showed up in the GA Marvel books, and he was also the original Hate Monger, right? Still, a licensed Marvel trading card of Hitler, that, uh...that hits sorta different these days.

This next one may stretch the definition of "toy", but I think it's still the best place for it. This game was where my Alien obsession started. I got a Commodore 64 for Christmas one year, and on my birthday a couple of weeks later, I got a handful of these cheap "Load n Go" games. I played this game endlessly. I think it may be the true first "survival horror game." It was very simple, but supremely effective. When the game began, someone had been killed by an alien, and someone was an android, but you wouldn't know who until you got into the game, as this was randomized every time. The sound was so eerie, as you often only heard the beat of the selected character's heart, slowing or racing as they grew more or less scared. Suddenly you'd hear a grate opening in the distance. Maybe it was just Jones the cat preparing to run across the screen, or maybe it was...THE ALIEN! Suddenly, flashing lights and warning sirens! I swear, this game scared the out of me, but I never got tired of it. A couple of years later I finally saw the movie (and Aliens), and I was a fan for life. I've been tracking these for a while, but last week I finally landed a beautiful sealed copy. And it even has the K-Mart price tag, which takes me right back to those days of seeing the spinning rack of Green Valley Publishing Load n Go Games, including this one. Best $5 my parents ever spent on me. The other game that made an impact on me was the Aliens The Computer game for the C64. I was high bidder on a sealed copy this afternoon, put in my "safety bid", increased it in the last ten seconds, and still managed to lose out. Damn and blast. Not sure when I'll see another of those.

Found a pretty good deal on this set of 52 figures on eBay a few weeks ago. Took forever to get here, but they appear to be in decent shape. This is one of the best examples of why I loved DC Direct: an entire wave of figures based on a single comic series; no "BIG" characters like Batman or Superman to anchor the wave, instead you get TWO of my personal favorites (Animal Man and Booster Gold), a character that was relatively new and unproven at the time (Batwoman), and two characters that would never appear again outside of that series (Isis and Supernova); and the sculpts are sooooo good. I really enjoyed Mattel's DC Universe Classics, but they couldn't touch DC Direct on sculpting at their peak. That Isis figure is simply gorgeous. I had these back in the day, and still have my original Booster, but I'm glad to have a nice set of these again. As McFarlane continues to leave me cold, I find myself diving deeper into rebuilding my DC Direct collection. I think it's the best series of DC figures ever, when comparing sculpt and character selection. There's really no contest.

I'm loving the figures based on the movie. I have this set on preorder at BBTS, so I should be getting it, oooh, within the next five years or so.

Weather was nice yesterday, so I thought I'd run around to my usual haunts and see if I could scare up some of the most recent "hot" books that popped in the last week or so. Completely struck out on what I was looking for (GI Joe 1st Lady Jaye, Earth 2 Superman, Infinite Crisis, and a few others I thought I might still run across in dollar bins) but I brought home some consolation prizes. A handful of junk from HPB, complete strike out at two comics shops and two Peddlers Malls. Finally found a few goodies at the antique toy mall. One of the regular dealers suddenly has a chunk of silver Marvels for sale! My eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw a JIM 83 for $250...of course, it was the GRR, so I left it behind. If it had been 1/2 that, I probably would have picked it up, just because it still LOOKS cool, and is probably as close as I'll get to the real thing anytime soon. Settled on the Cap 100 and Sub-Mariner 1. Both are around GD/GD+, or GD+/VG- if you're being generous, but I couldn't leave them behind. I'll buy nearly any Cap 100 I find at a not-ridiculous price, regardless of condition. I just love that cover. This one is beat, but the colors are still nice and dark. Oh, and I don't really collect Heavy Metal very much, but I've always loved that Jusko cover. This one was pretty nice, so it came home as well. Happy hunting! Oh, and anecdotally, I will tell you, even beyond the Lady Jaye thing, GI Joe is apparently selling like crazy. Over the last few days I hit a ton of shops, which in the past had plenty of copies, and suddenly I can't find anything earlier than the huge-print run years, issues 50-75, around that area. The first 20-30 issues just aren't around. It's odd, because I never had trouble finding them in years past. I guess collectors have finally caught up with them.

When it comes to Aliens, I've always been a hoarder. For years you could pick most of the Dark Horse books (except for the first series) out of the 50 cent and dollar bins. So when I saw them, I bought them. But the one exception is the vs Predator stuff, because I just don't like the concept. Since they were common as dirt for so long, I didn't mind letting the ones I had picked up go. Who knew? I was looking at my remaining copies last night, and I don't think any of them are good enough to get graded, so I'll just be happy with what I have, I suppose!