So it is now day 3 without any power at the old House of Love IV but work is back online so here I am.
Setup went really fast on Saturday evening. They opened earlier this time so that helped a lot.
They also opened to the public earlier on Sunday and that meant we needed to be at the show at least an hour earlier.
I rummaged around the basement for 30 minutes looking for other boxed and easily purgeable items and grabbed a few things.
We were a table or so off from the prime spot we had last show. There's just something about people walking down the one aisle and your tables being at the dead end of it that worked so well.
But we seemed to have a lot more space in the back to walk this time which was nice.
I had most of my stuff on the shelves and Giga took most of the tables and under table space.
Within seconds of opening for the early-bird attendees I was immediately accosted by Kid B.! Kid B's my hands down best customer for crack and I happily work within his budget, discounting things way beyond what I'd do for an adult collector.
He grabbed me and wanted to know where my stuff was so I headed back to the tables.
Within 30 secods he had purchased Energon Unicron and was insanely happy!
Now I've mentioned it on posts about previous shows and I'll say it again: making the kids happy far outweighs any other reason to do this. Honestly! It really is fun when a kid gets excited about a silly old toy!
Kid B's currently in the early stages of Articulated Reconfigurable Paperweightophilia and unfortunately, that puts me in the role of "drug dealer" at this show. I call this thing of ours plastic crack for a reason don't I?
I can't remember everything he ended up buying but it was mostly Energon stuff and Minicons. He left happy!
Giga finally got this Tweet from Skippy and that had to be the funniest thing I've read in a while.
Yes. Adult toy collects exist to be mocked. Such is our fate in life.
However, adult toy collectors who take themselves way too seriously exist to be mocked twice as hard.
The cosplay people were out. I guess you can call them cosplay. If you dress up in anything I guess you'd be cosplaying.
The Predator and Star Wars trooper outfits are pretty well done. RamenJunkie commented that the above trooper guy is this guy. His blog content pretty much confirmed it! I think his wife is the stroller-wielding Jedi.
Jason was doing his thing too.
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Eventually I ended up walking around a lot since Kid B. and one other guy were the only ones really interested in my TFs. (It just isn't really a TF show at all.)
I walked around quite a bit with Kid B's uncle D.
Tauntaun intestines are the greatest Star Wars accessory ever!
A Bea Arthur figure from the Star Wars Holiday Special would be the only thing that could beat it! Srsly!
Lots of new Who stuff out too. The Sarah Jane line is also appearing.
But honestly, why would a kid buy the faceless old woman figure from the episode "The Idiot's Lantern"?
I don't get that one.
(Now if she had intestines...)
The only Micronauts to be found were some very worn figures.
My rule with Micronauts is that I'll drop down major dollars but it has to be in good shape, complete, and at least have the box/card.
Honestly. For every 1 Micronaut I find I come across 5 MIB G1 Jetfires! That's how rare this shit is!
One thing that sucks about Transformers but totally rocks about the 3 1/4 action figures is how easy it is to display the action figures.
You can put up a lot of stuff in a small amount of space whereas Transformers, even in a bin, take up way too much.
I love coming across 70s stuff that I remember on toy shelves. Yes. I'm a billion f'n years old!
I loved me some Colorforms and had a Superfriends set and a few others.
I didn't see any Shrinky Dinks around. I don't think they make those anymore.
I was suprised to see the very rare Lucky Draw Nucleon Fire Annette Funicello figure for sale.
This poor lonely Cliffjumper was surrounded by Star Wars crap.
(I constantly had to remind JackOfAllGeeks that Star Wars was crap and that Transformers could totally kick the ass of Star Wars! Yelling that out around Star Wars fans if always fun.)
The one gaming dealer had all kinds of kickass handhelds from the 70s and 80s.
I still have a few of these around somewhere in a box.
All in all, I ended up selling from the purge collection:
- Energon Unicron
- Energon Insecticon
- The full set of Cybertron 2-pack Minicons
- Some other Energon Basic that Kid B. got.
- Binaltech Zoom-Zoom (Red Meister)
And that was it.
The fun really started though when we started packing up around 3.
I didn't believe it when Giga and MrsJackOfAllGeeks said that it was getting windy and 4-5 bins flew off the cart into the parking lot.
And thus....another Columbus Toy Show ended. Not much of a bang but a whimper.
But the fun was yet to come!
Oh yes! The Massively Insane Cowlands Windstorm of September 2008 was only just starting!