F For Fake

Yes, exactly! There were a handful of Gnawgahyde’s in the room, but only one complete figure. I was hoping to buy one of the cheaper incomplete figures and spent a lot of time digging through weapons bins looking for his knife and wristblade, but never found them, so I gave in and paid up for the complete one. The accessories and sculpts from that wave were really cool. I had stopped collecting Joes by that point in my life, and apparently missed out on some really cool stuff. I got that checkpoint in the same original owner auction where I got my Crimson Attack Tank, and all of that guy’s stuff was really nice. I love the battle stations because they come with so many neat accessories, are generally cheaper/less sought after than most of the full vehicles, and take less space to display with the boxes.

Hello all! Long time no see, well, at least a couple of weeks! Today was the summer KY GIJoe fest. Since I blew a hefty sum on those Sears Dreadnoks sets last month, I didn’t have as much on me this time, so I just focused on getting some small stuff. Finally caved in and bought Gnawgahyde and Road Pig to officially finish my Dreadnoks. Also picked up this Swampfire primarily for the box. The actual vehicle is also nicer than the one I currently have, so I’ll probably sell the dupe. I picked up these battle stations last year, and now that my Dreadnoks are complete, my next goal will be getting all of these with boxes, and getting the corresponding figures from the box art. I picked these guys today to go ahead and complete the ones I had. I was also looking for a nice Spirit for my Forward Observer Unit, but each one I saw today was yellowed. I’m not in the mood to drop $75 for a bright blue one on eBay, so the hunt continues.

Beautiful! Here’s mine, folds, pinholes and all. My LCS had this poster up when I started going to the shop, and it will forever be burned into my brain. I also picked up a couple of Excalibur promo posters that I love. One day I’ll track down a nice copy of the Walt Simonson X-Factor poster that hang on my wall for so many years.

Yes, absolutely! I started reading X-Men with Fall of the Mutants, and began to feverishly connect the dots via Classic X-Men and back issues. The run from Mutant Massacre through Inferno is “my X-Men”, though I quickly came to love Paul Smith, Dave Cockrum, etc. It seems like such a short run, but FotM through Jim Lee essentially was my adolescent comic reading peak, encompassing 5th through 8th grade or so, and by the time X-Men 1 hit, I was in high school and no longer keeping up with it. The thrill was gone, in that very specific teenage X-nerd way. When I was 19 or 20 I started working at a comic shop, and began to catch up on what I’d missed.

See, I really missed out on a lot of stuff, and am now playing catch up. I was a big G1 fan, and also enjoyed Beast Wars, but had pretty much slept on all of the Unicron Trilogy and CHUG stuff. It was the IDW phase 2 books that reignited my interest in TF, and then War for Cybertron really kicked it into overdrive. So now I’m going backwards to grab the stuff I want, which I primarily TFTM cast, and Lost Light crew. I’m getting closer, but there’s still so much cool stuff!

Yeah, I’ve seen the hubbub over on the TFW2005 forums. Mine are indeed the misassembled version, but honestly I don’t really mind. I’ve seen a couple of tutorials, and the risk of stress marks/breakage are enough that I’m just going to leave it alone. The difference isn’t really big enough for me to care that much. I’ll just consider him to be a “bumpy shoulder variant”.

That’s definitely my mental stopping point. As far as my collection is concerned, UXM ended with 281, and I’m fine with that. That’s when I dropped my subscription, and when I generally lost interest in the line. I popped in here and there for different runs, some of the Joe Mad stuff, AOA, but my personal connection ended at 281. And honestly, my teenage emotional investment really ended around the time Jim Lee showed up. I liked his art, but the storylines had gotten so convoluted and dull. Inferno was the last crossover I really cared about. There’s still some nostalgic feeling for the Lee stuff, but I honestly don’t remember much about the stories, if anything, by that point.

Lighting can be tough for sure. I got some leds from IKEA, but have never been happy with the wire/cable arrangements, as they’re still kind of sloppy. I’ve tried covering them with heat shrink, and it’s better, but not great. Oh well, it’s good enough I guess as I’m the only one looking at it!

My Pile of Loot from BBTS showed up this week, and I think I’m now pretty much caught up on my cast of the 86 movie. Also got a couple of additions to my Lost Light crew. (No idea how/why BBTS is still getting shipments of Thrilling 30 stuff, but I’m not complaining, as the prices are better than eBay). Looks like my Galvatron has the jacked up shoulders that folks are complaining about, but I don’t care enough to do surgery on him. He’s fine for my needs. Also found this Cobra Trooper at Walmart. I haven’t been following the line very closely, but I knew I hadn’t seen one before. May try to grab a couple more and throw them in the Terror Drome.

I grabbed the Baroness and Trooper, which are surprisingly still available. Viper sold out. I’ve seen several folks grab Firefly as well, apparently he popped up a few times on Friday. I haven’t seen it myself. I decided to stay away from Classified as I don’t really collect the scale, but the Baroness with the bike and now Breaker with the RAM, it may have broken my willpower. The sculpts on Breaker and the upcoming Barbecue (as well as the Snake/Timber set) seem more classically inspired, and makes them harder for me to resist.

I thought you’d like it! Yeah, he put a lot of work into those detolfs. He found the plans online somewhere, I can ask him about it if anyone is interested. Our nearest IKEA is about 1.5 hours away, and he needed a ton of them, so he paid the freight shipping to get them. It’s a flat rate whether you get 1 or 100, so I think he got a couple of dozen. He’s much handier than I am, but he said the conversion isn’t too difficult.

My pleasure! I found them years ago thanks to the Blu-ray.com forums, as they get a lot of great movie deals. Their movie buyer is a forum member and does a great job of interacting with buyers. Comic selections are hit or miss, but they do occasionally get some really nice, cheap stuff. Shipping is cheap and they pack pretty well, at least better than Amazon, for sure.

I wish I had as much faith in me as you do!

Mustn’t let the thread die! The movie sales of the last few weeks, plus a couple of big toy purchases, have kept my wallet lean. Luckily there haven’t been a ton of hardcovers release lately that I really “need.” However, Dark Horse has been going hard with the Mignolaverse books lately, with these three coming out over the course of a few weeks! Plus a little Batman for those who observe.

Got some reading done over the long weekend. Caught up on X-Men just in time for the new Reign of X trades to start hitting. I enjoyed X of Swords much more than I’d expected. Still enjoying Hickman’s grand x-periment. Lots of big ideas and imagination. This isn’t the X-Men of my youth, but I’m enjoying it for what it is, and am still 100% invested. This brings my total up to 373. Not even halfway there, and it’s already July. Not looking good!

Thanks bud! Yeah, it’s been a long time coming in these. Never expected to find them both at the same time in such nice shape.

Yeah, even that is too much. Between vintage Joes and TF, new TF, and my other hobbies like comics, music and movies, there’s only so much money and space. So. I’ll just have to enjoy the SW stuff you all post and stay away!

And now, my big prizes! These have been grails for a long time for me. Although I don’t currently have them, I have owned most of the big Joe pieces in the past. The Flagg, the Defiant, etc. But I’ve never had these, and I always swore that if I found them in person, complete with box at a reasonable price, I’d grab them. So now, at long last, my Dreadnok collection is complete, and my Sears exclusives are 3/4 done as well. They have an SMS compete with box I may grab at some point, but these were my goal. if anyone needs black market organs at a fair price, I could probably be talked into it right now. The bank account weeps…but, worth it! If you’re ever in Louisville, check out Ville-Ans Toys. They’re on FB as well, though I don’t think they’re doing online sales at this point. They prefer to keep it local. They’ve had some eye-popping stuff in that shop. They sold their Eternia set (complete with box) and Flagg (ditto) but they still have a complete Defiant with box for a cool $4k if you’re interested!

Ok, finally ready to share my big pickups, but first, a sad story. I picked up this beautiful mosc Secret Wars Daredevil yesterday, with a lovely clear bubble. Brought it inside, sat it on a counter in the kitchen so I could talk to the wife for about five minutes. Suddenly, heard a rustling, which I instantly recognized as the sound of our cat demanding his lunch (his usual method of getting our attention is throwing stuff in the floor, because he’s a maladjusted maniac.) By the time I got on my feet, I heard a bag hitting the floor, and immediately knew what he’d tossed. So now my mosc DD is a mint WITH card DD. The bubble is still hanging on for dear life at one corner. I could have screamed. Anyway, who wants a cat. Free to good home, or bad, I don’t care. (j/k would never give this jerk up, but lord I coulda punted his little butt out the door in that moment)

Oh yeah, I hear you. I LOVE Star Wars, but I do not collect Star Wars at all. Vintage, new, none of it. There's just too much, it would drive me insane. So I an strictly a window shopped on SW. Love it, but can't buy it. With Marvel Legends I had finally scaled back to JUST X-Men, but I was in a situation where i was wanting to raise money to fund a long desired purchase, plus they took up a lot of space, AND they were selling really well compared to what I'd paid for them. SO, they had to go. Check back in a year or two, I will have probably gone back on my word and started buying them again, for I am a weak, weak man.

It's tough to make those calls. I am mostly dedicated to vintage stuff, but I seem to dabble with other lines, only to get hooked, buy a bunch of them, then sell them off when i want to buy a vintage piece. I've done this, like, 4 or 5 times now with Marvel Legends, for instance. I think they're great, but they're always the first thing I sell off when i want to streamline the collection. I also recently dumped nearly all of my DC Direct stuff, in order to fund the purchase I'm picking up this weekend. It is what it is! Right now I'm hanging in with vintage G.I.Joe, G1 Transformers, some occasional NECA stuff, Alien related stuff, and some modern Transformers, primarily 86 movie related figures and the crew of the Lost Light. That seems...doable. But you never know when I'll get a wild hare and decide to sell a bunch of stuf to buy something else. It's the circle of life!

Hey gang! Hope everyone has been well. Since I can't access the boards at work anymore (stupid firewall) I don't have a lot of time to get on here, since the last thing I want to do when I get home is look at a computer! Anyway, I'm sorry if I missed any responses to anyone or anything. Loving the pics of everyone's stuff per usual! I think I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had my eye on something special. Well, I picked up one half two weeks ago, and I get the other half tomorrow. Will share this weekend at some point. A couple of personal grails for sure. In the meantime, I know I've mentioned my best friend a few times on here. I am a GI Joe "collector", but he is a GI Joe "fanatic", and his collection puts mine, and most others that I've seen, to shame. A pretty much complete set of all ARAH figures, including international releases (Tiger Force figures, Satan, etc). He didn't collect MOST repaint vehicles lines like Tiger Force, NIght Force, etc but has all of the molds in their original colors and a few extras. Anyway, he has been hard at work on his display room for months now, and a couple of weeks ago I finally got to see it. He said I could share some pics. If you aren't too distracted by his wife's Barbie collection, enjoy the pics. I think the coolest piece is his USS Flagg, which he has completely customized below decks. @STORMSHADOW_80 I thought you may get a kick out of this, as I know you've customized your Flagg as well. I have no talent for this sort of thing, so I just have to admire the handiwork of others. Ok, that's that, should have some cool stuff to show you all shortly! Hope everyone is doing well.

It really is a great figure. I posted some pics of mine several pages out, you might check them out if you're inclined. I'm still not going whole hog on this line, but I do have John Constantine and the new "steel box" (or whatever it's called) Wolverine on pre-order. Trying to not get sucked in too far on this line...

I have been sorely tempted by these, but so far have resisted. We'll see how long that lasts.

Who am I? Where am I? Have I grown a great bushy white beard?