F For Fake

Ok, well NOW I'm into it!

Hater alert: What on god's green earth is going on with the anatomy over all? That intersection of thigh and waist is a trainwreck. It's like one big fused glob of muscle. Of course, I'm not in the buyer pool for something like this anyway, so it doesn't matter what I think.

That's a good plan! Yeah, there are a couple of other Prime 1 pieces I've thought about, but I have no idea, like zero, or where I'd put them. I'm pretty much tapped out on space period!

My giant box of clearance priced Super 7 Ultimates arrived. As I said earlier, I'm not so sure about them at $55, but at $20-$30 they're a steal. Satisfyingly chunky big pieces of robot fun. Grimlock is ENORMOUS, even bigger than the Studio Series 86 version. The fact that they gave him his little apron and serving tray? Chef's kiss. This is exactly the kind of weird stuff I love about toy collecting. Tons of accessories, great cartoon-accurate sculpts, I think it's a really great line. Just have to work on that price. As mentioned before, I do think it's possible that they're winding the line down, which is a shame given the diversity of the early waves. Would love to see them keep making this weird junk. Bludgeon is insanely cool. Looks and feels like an articulated version of the G1 Pretender shell, comes with a bunch of parts, just such a cool figure. I may grab another one if they're still on sale. Kudos to Ross for the $2.99 SLU basketball goal, so Prime can dunk on Tracks.

This was my other recent big pickup, which I'd been mulling for a bit. This is my first Prime 1 statue. I've always thought they made really nice looking stuff, but the 1/3 scale is just so huge, it's hard to find a spot for anything that large. I am literally running out of display space as it is. However, I really fell in love with this one, so when Sideshow put it on sale, I went ahead and grabbed it. Some reward points, and the option to make three interest-free payments instead of one lump up front, made it much more appealing! This is definitely the most I've spent on a statue. Is it worth it? It's hard to say, but it really is stunning. Will I buy more Prime 1 stuff? Tempting, but I'd have to add a wing to the house.

Oh wow, that's amazing! I love the documentation that goes along with them as well, a real piece of history. Lovely stuff. Do you know what happened to his massive collection of painted miniatures? I'd love to get ahold of something like that.

I remember a while back I picked up several slabs, I think via CLink, and I noticed some time afterwards that they were all in sequence. I thought "heh, whaddya know?" And then went back to not thinking about it. To be sure, there has to be some guy out there, somewhere, who very much intensely cares! But I don't think there are many, no.

I totally agree, I can't think of another commercial release which has captured their portraits as well as these do. Oh wow, now that is something, please be sure to share it once you make the acquisition!

This will be a fun bit of nostalgia. I'd just started working at a comic shop when these came out, and I fondly recall the excitement. People were going nuts, we had to keep filling the stands on Wednesdays because we were running out of front stock so quickly. The funniest thing was that so many people had trouble pronouncing "Amalgam". You wouldn't believe some of the variations we heard.

Hey thanks bud! Appreciate the kind words, the collection is always a work in progress. Always selling something or moving something to make room for something else. As I get older I've adopted a philosophy of "if I can't see it, why do I have it?", which means I'm trying to keep less stuff in storage, and instead slim the collection down to just what I can display and enjoy. However, that is not always successful, there's still plenty of stuff crammed in the laundry room ha So while these pics may look orderly, trust me, you're not allowed to peek in the storage room! It's a disaster ha

These guys arrived a couple of days ago. I'd had my eyes on them for a minute, and when they were offered on B1G1 50% off, I had to pull the trigger. They were originally about $530 a pop, so for around $800 shipped, I thought it was likely as good as I was going to do on them. The portraits are stunning, and the soft goods are terrific. The tailoring, the fit, and the materials, all top notch. Oddly, the hands and heads were a real pain to pop into place, due to how tight the cuffs and collars were on the shirts. They definitely didn't just slide into place with the ease shown in the Sideshow videos! But at the end of the day, it could have been much worse. They look fantastic together, and I'm very glad I finally grabbed them. The only downside was that while the Cushing shipped in a typical Sideshow brown shipper, Lee was instead shoved diagonally into a huge cube cardboard box without a proper shipper, and zero protection. The art box has some ugly punctures on it. I guess it's not the end of the world, as the boxes will just be put up in the rafters in the garage, unseen for years, but it was still an odd experience. The boxes really are fantastic, with great artwork on the sides highlighted by red foil embossing. I wish I had room to display statues AND boxes, but I barely have room for the statues as it is! All in all, I'm delighted with them. I'm sure @Cushing Fan has ten of them!

Nice, good to know!

That is a very nice one, indeed. One of the best CNC's they did. Congrats. Mattel were absolutely killing it at the time. Between DCUC, Justice League Unlimited, and Infinite Heroes, there was an INSANE variety of DC product on the shelves. Great times.

You know I thought I'd heard that as well, but couldn't remember the source so I didn't mention it. But I'm glad I'm apparently not nuts ha Maybe they mentioned it in one of the livestreams or something?

I'm all about horror anthologies, and this is a nice group of creators. However, there's a big difference between "a nice group of creators" and "the best stable of artists that comics ever produced", which is what EC had. Can't really compete with that. But if we get some cool books out of it, I don't see the harm.

Subscribed!

My biggest concern with the Defiant would be the gantry wheels. They tend to be fragile from bearing the weight of the gantry over the years, and are often broken. You could try removing them before shipping, but that also poses a risk of breakage. I personally wouldn't ship a Defiant, or buy one to be shipped, but that may just be me. That's definitely the sort of thing I'd hit local toy shows to pick up. We have two GI Joe shows here in town every year, and there's usually a Defiant, or Flagg, or both, floating around in there. Also save on the shipping cost, which I'd imagine is going to be substantial.

I throw tracking bids on tons of stuff, but with the things I REALLY want, I tend to go ahead and put my top bid in, as I sometimes forget about the auctions ending and might miss out otherwise. I leave a little wiggle room for an extra hail mary bid at the end, should I remember to log in, but for the stuff I REALLY want, I go ahead and put in what I'm willing to pay. It works out about 50/50. In the most recent auction, I didn't bid on any art, but I bid on several comics, and made my "real bid" for about four or five books. These are books that in the last couple of months, my "real bid" would have pretty handily won. Instead, my bids were blown past in about 24 hours. I feel like the Featured auctions bring a lot more eyeballs, and stuff that seems fairly common to me seems to do much better than in the focused auctions. Just my anecdotal observation. I'm a small fish in the pond, I don't have any shot at most of the art sold in the Featured auctions, so I don't even bother bidding for the most part. But on the comic side, it definitely feels like there's a lot more action than in the last couple of auctions.

This is it exactly. I have always been a big believer in "buy the book, not the label", and that you need to give the book an inspection before buying to see if the listed grade matches up with what your expectations would be for that grade. BUT The CGC grading was supposed to take care of things like restoration check, things missing check, things being totally shady check, etc. It was supposed to eliminate that baseline stuff. I will decide for myself if the book is truly a 9.8, but the label is supposed to tell me that I don't need to worry about whether or not the book is complete, or has been monkeyed with. If I can't trust the label to do that, then it truly serves no purpose whatsoever. I guess in theory you at least get a pretty frame to display the book, but with scuffs and newton rings, even that part isn't true anymore.

Sweeet. Not really a video game guy, but I am an Aliens guy, and it took me forever to find a halfway decent raw. They tend to have dinged up spines. A 9.8 is really something special, congrats. Great book (terrible game, though!)

Haven't bought much in the wild lately, but my LCS got in a really nice collection of Marvel Graphic Novels. All first prints, and in beautiful shape. Also very happy to grab the HC of Strange/Doom for $20! DJ has some waviness along the top, but I can live with it. Beautiful book.

The cards on these figures are notoriously shoddy. And it's not exclusive to Walmart. I got my retro card Storm Shadow and Zartan from Hasbro and they were fairly bent up. Wish they'd use a sturdier cardstock.

You're absolutely right, I will partially walk back my comment. I'm specifically referring to his 7" DC Multiverse figures. The Super Powers figures are a lot of fun and priced reasonably, and though I don't collect them, the Batman 66 line is pretty neat. But his mainline DC figures have me very nostalgic for Mattel and DC Direct.

Thinking about McFarlane makes me sad. Hope they give up the DC license soon, but it seems unlikely. Their stuff is really terrible these days.

Oh, that's good to know, maybe they course corrected after wave 2. Flint and Lady Jaye both went without, which was a big letdown after Duke in the first wave. This is good news!