F For Fake

Target continues to kill it with the sales these days. They had a 25% off one item circle offer last week, plus several items already on sale, so after those discounts plus red card discount, I was able to get this Draculus for about $19 out the door! The mash-ups they've been doing have been pretty amusing, and as a Universal Monsters guy, this is my favorite by far. What a terrific reuse of the Mindwipe mold, to make a vampire bat! He even comes with a cape! What a wacky, dumb, wonderful thing this is. They also had their 10% off gift cards offer this weekend, which is always a good deal. I picked up a couple of mostly got books and movies, but I did also use it plus the current sale price to order the exclusive Road Rage, ended up being about $15 shipped all discounts included. Wasn't a character I really cared about, but for the price, I figured I may as well. he should be here before xmas.

I agree with @Buzzettaand @followtheleader that Skystriker and Rancor are getting funded, no matter what. Whether they keep adding stuff to the list, or they extend the window, or they're suddenly saved by a wave of "mysterious last minute backers", these things are getting made. My concern with the Skystriker is that we're not going to hit any of the other tiers, which is really all I cared about. I wanted those flight crew figures! Oh well. The "Cobra Hack" figures soften the blow a bit. I'll take any new o-rings they want to throw at me, these days.

Hmm, I wonder if they'll be able to finish collecting everything in the hardcovers before the deal is up? I haven't bought the floppies in a long time, but I love the hardcover collections, and they just started Phase 3 recently, I believe. The high points for IDW are some of my favorite comics ever, being More than Meets the Eye/Lost Light, and Robots in Disguise. Those are such great comics, and reignited my love for the license.

Sounds cool, looking forward to seeing the results! Unfortunately I am TERRIBLE at model kits, just never had the skill for it at all. I very much admire those who do, and love seeing them. I recently picked up a Transformers Furai Rodimus kit, to go into my Lost Light/More than Meets the Eye collection. I'm going to try my hand at it over Christmas break. We'll see how it goes!

Yesssss.excellent...let the interest die down, so I can go back to buying books again! Prices have been pretty dumb for a while!

Yes, for sure, they're great for toys. I've gotten most of my GI Classified, Transformers WFC, Legends and MotU stuff from them via various sales. The 5% red card plus free shipping plus sales, as you noted, are hard to beat! I may not hang on to the stealh Peggy, I may give her to my wife. I thought it was a neat deco, but I wasn't crazy about What If. The Zombie Cap figure is pretty cool, though!

A somewhat overwhelming number of boxes have been arriving with Black Friday/Cyber Monday spoils. Some good deals, bad for the wallet though. I don’t buy many Legends, but between Target’s B2G1 and Amazon’s copycat sale, I was able to get the entire 6 piece FF wave for the price of 4. I was going to pass but the High Evolutionary and Psycho Man are so sweet, for the price I figured I may as well finish them off. Also saw that the Stealth variant Captain Carter released today, so I ordered one for pick up. This isn’t a wave I really care about, but I dig this deco. Speaking of Target, they marked a bunch of MoTU stuff down, so I grabbed these. The BattleCat is absolutely massive for $27! Also grabbed the two Origins cats for $13 a pop, which seemed about right. The Rise of Evil two pack is a funny one; when it was released, each store only got TWO. I tracked them on Brickfindr, and was waiting for the truck at Target on release day. Never saw them. Pretty soon they were $200 on eBay, so I officially gave up on the line. I hate chasing exclusives. Fast forward a few months and stores are now drowning in them. For $23 I had to give in. Not sure if this means I’m back in on Origins, but these are pretty great regardless. Finally, Walmart had a sale on all of their Beast Wars anniversary pieces, so I grabbed Primal and Megs. Hi have very fond memories of getting these on Xmas…I mean, I was a fully grown man, but they were still really cool Xmas gifts! I regretted selling them, as they’re really fun toys with cool transformations. Just fun to futz around with. I think I’m going to hold off until Xmas to open em up and play with em!

Well ok now let's not say CRAZY things...

I didn't notice the picture backgrounds until after my suspicions were raised, because of the five, only one had a different background. So it didn't really register. But yeah, just a crazy situation. His feedback is now -2 and private so I'd have to imagine he's long gone, thankfully!

Thanks for the heads up. I used to order these in the large packs, so I still have a bundle right now, but they won't last forever. Wonder if it's worth checking the local USPS and seeing if they have any of the old ones around...

I grudgingly went ahead and signed up for the Skystriker. I'm not excited about it, but I also don't want to end up regretting it down the road if I pass on it now. I 100% understand anyone's reason for passing on it. The arguments all make sense to me. It's my FOMO that lead me to sign on. That being said, I agree with you, this will get funded in time, either by extending the window, or by a sudden influx of mysterious "supporters". I feel like with most of these pieces, Hasbro is 100% going to make the item, they're just using Haslab as a way to offset some costs, and promote the thing. I question the decision to launch this and the Rancor at the same time, and right on the heels of Galactus and Victory Saber. I know each toy line has its own fans, but there has to be some crossover between those groups, and not everyone has $1k to throw at custom shop toys. I'm not a Star Wars guy anymore, but I'd have been tempted by the Rancor (simply due to the size of the thing) if not for the fact that I'm already in for $250 on the Skystriker, and they both hit at the holidays. Christmas shopping, Black Friday deals, there's a finite amount of money to be thrown around. I can't imagine that didn't also impact both of these campaigns. What will burn my biscuits is if it funds, but we get NONE of the tiers, because honestly that's the only part I care about. I really wanted that flight crew, the final tier, and it looks like there's zero chance of that happening now.

I should add to my comment, I absolutely don't judge anyone working on registry sets. I'm working on a couple myself, on the cheap. So, I get it. I can't justify it, but I get it.

If CGC was worried about their submission levels, they wouldn't keep adding signing events. The submission backlog is not a problem for them. They do not care. Sure, there are a lot of folks getting surly, here on the boards and elsewhere, but as of this moment the submissions and money keep rolling in, more than enough to blot out the cries of those affected by long TAT's. Maybe at some point it will get so bad that they'd actually notice a drop-off in submissions, and therefore a threat to their bottom line, but as long as books keep coming in, they're not going to make any changes. So they'll keep taking books, and keep announcing events, and it'll just get longer and longer. And why would they care what kinds of books are coming in? They are here to grade and slab books. The moment when folks started sending in "drek" to get graded was a godsend for CGC! Books no longer had to be seen as valuable to be graded. Anything could be graded! And should be! The registry is an example of that very way of thinking. Many people paying crazy prices for books that are otherwise worthless outside of a 9.8 slab, because they "gotta complete their set!" I don't care. I don't mind. I'm also not subbing anymore, not that I ever did much. People should collect, and therefore slab, whatever they like, and any judgments of whether or not they're worthy are ridiculous. If it fits in the holder, you can slab it. End of story. But I'm curious to sit on the sidelines and see just how bad TATs can get before anything actually changes. What's the longest you're willing to wait for your book? A year? TWO? We may see it before too long.

Now that was an interesting read. The BBB aren't exactly 100% on the up and up themselves, but hey, if it helps hold CGC's feet to the fire, I'm for it.

Ha, I had the same exact feedback, he must have left the same thing for all of us. I was tempted to message him with my thoughts regarding being a P.A.B., when he's the one failing to successfully scam people over comic books, but I thought it best to just leave it alone.

Yeah, maybe he actually had SOME of the books on hand, but at least one of the ones I purchased was owned by a boardie with a registry set. That's what tipped me off that something wasn't right. I'm assuming once the heat started coming down and the negs started hitting, that's when he pulled the plug. I'm still not sure if he canceled it or if eBay canceled it, but either way, the refund has been processed. Yes, I reported him as well, particularly in regard to the comments. He left positive (sellers can't leave negative for buyers) but he left the same nasty comment on all five positive fb's. So hopefully eBay will scrub them, I could do without seeing them, for sure. I went ahead and blocked him, but you're right, now my name and address are out there. Most likely he's a fly by night scammer, and not a psycho killer or anything, but you just never know anymore. Just glad we were all compensated. Won't be surprised if he shows up again under another ID, that seems to be the case fairly often.

This is absolutely true. I have a hard time paying up for books that I used to pluck from the dollar bins. Luckily, most Legion related books are still dollar bin books, for the few that I still need.

The slow march of cheap slabs continues. Since I picked up the Legionnaires 16 at Clink a couple of weeks ago, figured I may as well look into the other AH Legionnaires covers, as they're some of my faves. I have one of these signed raw, but it may be fun to put together a slabbed set if I can find them cheap enough. Even with the great cover art in this series (Sprouse, Alan Davis, Adam Hughes, etc) this title doesn't get much love. Hopefully that means less competition!

Coming to this thread specifically to post this guy! Same thing. I won 5 books. Was notified by another Boardie that one of the books was actually theirs. So, I contacted the seller and asked what was up, and received no response. So, i figure I'm getting scammed, but was going to wait until Dec 1st, which was the earliest I could file the return/refund. Instead, this weekend I suddenly get a "shipping" notice, which makes me nervous, because I'm afraid the guy is going to drag out the refund process by doing shenanigans, like saying it's lost in the mail or something. Was extremely relieved when the transaction was canceled yesterday. I also received the "LOL Cry about it B----" feedbacks, not sure how to get those removed. What a waste of time. Not sure what his endgame was. What a frustrating mess. Anyway, hopefully it's over now. Glad I wasn't the only one! Funnily, his feedback was 100% last week (all private...that's sus) and as of today is about 54%, so the chickens have clearly come home to roost.

I don't feel very strongly either way but my vote can be purchased!

Sweet! Would you believe just a couple of days ago I got the wild hare and decided to try to pick up this set, as I fondly remembered buying the Innovation Nightmare off the stands when it came out (still love that cover). I thought "Hey, you know, it'd be good to own that set again." Went online and my jaw dropped when I saw the prices! Holy cats! I knew that the Jason vs Leatherface books, the early Halloween books, and several other horror books had been selling for a good price for a long time, but I hadn't kept track of the NoES books. I guess I'll go back to hoping I dig 'em out of a bin. Great pickup!

Hey, you may dig it, so don't let me dissuade you from trying it out. The big news is that Kevin Maguire is apparently coming onboard for art duties, so that's at least something to look forward to. I think my biggest gripe is that it feels very...Dan Jurgensy, you know? Middle of the road, kinda dull, and what really grates is the ongoing concept that we are looking at the comments posted by "fans" watching Booster's live stream. It definitely smells of "middle aged guy tries to capture the zeitgeist." You mileage may vary. I'm still buying it simply because it exists, gotta support my boys. But I'm hoping it gets better.

Thanks! I slowed down on it a few years ago, but going through it last night made me think that maybe it's time to take it back out to shows again!

Thanks! Yes, you're absolutely right, last night as I was taking the pics it was a happy trip down memory lane, but also a very bittersweet one, as I noted just how many of these folks are no longer with us. I'm happy to have had the privilege of a moment of their time, and have shared that moment, but the list of those who aren't around anymore is much larger than I would have expected at this point in time.