Apr 09 Columbus Toy Show

| 14 Comments
Apr 09 Columbus Toy Show -

Another Spring in Cowtown... another Columbus Toy Show.

Giga was very sucessful... in the sense that he got rid of a ton of stuff. Alas, most of it way below what he paid for it.

As usual, I barely made anything. I lost so much money on what I did sell that I don't even know why I bother going to these. From brief conversations, this will likely be our last one. At least for a few years.

Met another TF collector who was selling stuff at the show.

Was also next to a newbie Star Wars/Star Trek collector selling off his stuff.

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Apr 09 Columbus Toy Show -

I really want to know what the hell the figure in the bottom right corner is. Can you get more 70s than that?!?!

Apr 09 Columbus Toy Show -

No doubt, every child was excited to get the Richie Cunningham figure. And imagine the awesomeness of having Ralph Malph.

Alas, sad to say, I had the Mego Fonz.

Apr 09 Columbus Toy Show - Full Size custom S.N.A.K.E.

This custom life-size GIJoe SNAKE armor is pretty cool.

Apr 09 Columbus Toy Show - I almost bought this.

I came close to buying this figure.

Apr 09 Columbus Toy Show - I love the K-9!!!

I love this K-9!!!!

Apr 09 Columbus Toy Show -

Shipwreck, On-The-Town Baroness, and I don't know who the last guy is supposed to be.

_Apr 09 Columbus Toy Show - Um.... why?

Gay porn star with 12" dick action figures? Who knew?

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14 Comments

I'm surprised there were so many people dressed up for a toy show (as opposed to something like SDCC or even BotCon). Or is the thing just really that huge and major?

Is there any way to view larger size versions of your pictures at Flickr?

For my own pictures I get the other sizes thing, but for yours I only get "Add to faves."

There were a lot more folks dressed up than you see. There were some that were with specific groups that had booths, and some that were just folks coming to the show. It was heavily advertised, and suggested that folks come in costume (there are a lot of kids, so it makes it fun).

Also, anyone who came in costume was entered for a random drawing to win $100 in show-cash. The guy who came as the movie Dark Knight Joker won, just as he was leaving.

Hello,
That's really too bad to hear about your Transformers not selling well. I've been collecting them since I was little and I've always relied on the Toy Show here as a big Transformers splurge.

It does seem like there are less of them at the show in recent years and that they are getting more expensive. Back at the beginning of the decade, I remember there was a guy who had a gigantic box of parts and junkers that you could dig through and take whatever you wanted. After assembling a big pile of parts, he'd just make an offhand offer. It was really fun. Now, when people sell Transformer parts, they bag them individually and price them approaching what the whole toy might have originally cost.

I wonder why they've gotten so expensive. You can tell I'm not a seller, so I'm not quite looking at it from that perspective, but I wonder if collectors have just hit their upper limit on what they're willing to pay for a hunk of plastic. I mean, I went to my first toy show back in 1994 and I got a MIB G1 Megatron for only $70. They've shot up in value since then, but they don't seem all that rare. As far as newer stuff goes, the in-store prices always seem high. A brand new toy does not have the same vintage quality as one that's almost 30 years old, so they shouldn't be the same high price. I can understand how that would make it very difficult to resell them, especially since some of the recent series' haven't been very popular.

I'm sorry I'm writing such a long post, but it's a subject I'm interested in. There was another seller I saw on Sunday who had a whole bin of G1 stuff in little baggies that just seemed way overpriced. I bet it wasn't much above what he paid for them, but I don't think an incomplete Wildrider with scuffed stickers should be $24. I kept going back to the bin over the course of the show, hoping there was something in there I missed, but I found nothing. At the end of the day, it looked like he hadn't moved a single one. I guess the Transformers market has just been struck by inflation and there's nowhere left to go.

Oh, and by the way, I recognized your booth from the pictures. Thank you for the great deal on the Animated Ultra Magnus. I feel kind of bad about it after reading your post there, but still, thanks! Better luck next year:)

Wow, that's really cool that you bring things to give away to kids. I was only 6 years old when I went to that first toy show I mentioned in my other post, so I can imagine how you must just absolutely have made those kids' days.

Also, it is great to have my feelings on the quality of the G1 stuff there confirmed. Some of it really is junk. It's like people just ask the list price for a loose, mint toy, no matter the condition. I would buy it elsewhere, but I of course don't play with these any more, so I don't see the point in making all the effort to go out of town for other shows. Collecting them is just so much fun, though, that I justify it by saying my future children will probably thank me for having a pre-existing basement full of toys for them.

@Nala & sppower,

To put it from a former collector's point of view, those baggies of overpriced parts that you would call junk...you call 'em junk because you don't need anything there.

Personally, I paid out for junked TF's before, because I needed an arm, or a leg, or an uncracked torso piece, because I was building a complete Transformer from the parts of others. For instance, I ended up building a complete G1 Jetfire from...I want to say like, seven other broken examples. In fact, I ended up all told out-of-pocket for nearly what it would have cost me to just find and buy a really nice example already in one piece.

I believe that you'll keep seeing these overpriced junk baggies, as long as there remains a steady influx on Ebay of crapped, broken G1 'Formers put up by parents or people who "just found this beaten old Ironhide in a box" in their closet and put it on Ebay thinking it's worth a lot, and you have someone buy it with the intention of fixing it up into a complete one.

That's my take on it.

Well, sadly, you're going to find disillusioned folks in any genre. I was at one of our local comic/toy shops a month or two ago, and the guy was charging out the ass for broken old GI Joe vehicles that very clearly had been stripped of all removable parts...and in other bin, had bags of those parts. Double-score!

I haven't been back.

I totally know what you mean about building a TF from salvage parts. I've been working on a Trypticon and Starscream myself for a while. As Nala said, the things here really are bin material. Bin material is great when you need it, as you said, but to use it properly, the sum of all the bin material you buy has to be the same or less than a complete version of the toy. The problem is, the people at the show ask so much for their junk that it is no longer cost effective to assemble a TF piece by piece out of junkers. It would end up costing twice the complete figure, hence why Trypticon still has only one accessory (Wipeout) and Starscream only one wing.

There are times where I'll see a baggie on a table, construct some preconceived notion about how much it will cost (let's say for instance, I'll guess that this beat-up Cyclonus body will be $20), and then I'll get a glimpse at the price tag and it says $55 or something. It's even more startling when they don't tag everything and have to tell you, with a totally straight face that that that bag 'o miscellaneous Technobots is $125.

And another thought: It doesn't seem like the other toy series there are overpriced, just Transformers. I've started collected Batman Returns, Aliens, and some Star Wars stuff just because its so cheap. And those Star Wars vehicles, even the old ones, are really nice pieces. I got a got a 3 3/4 in. scale Bespin Cloud Car and a Tie Fighter, both sealed in the boxes for what it would have cost me to pick up an alright looking Blurr in a baggie.

Well, to be fair, TF's have always been overpriced, especially on Ebay. Although sometimes you CAN get a great deal, usually on an auction that ends at three in the morning.

That was what drove me to build the Jetfire as I recall, because it was outrageous how much a complete one ran at the time (this was a few years ago). I think G1 Transformers are like GI Joe vehicles. Sellers think that "Well, these guys who want this stuff are adults now and will pay whatever I ask to get it." And that was fine back in the day before it was so easy to find stuff online, but nowadays, you can find TF's and parts in so many places, it's ridiculous. Sellers just put those prices out to catch the unaware. Sometimes it works, sometimes (as in this show that Nala went to's case) it doesn't.

Also, I would probably sell at the September show, if I weren't planning on being in Europe that weekend. That's my autumn break, right before classes start.

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This page contains a single entry by Nala published on April 20, 2009 1:17 PM.

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