Variants etc

[Cyborg-Fett]

I found a TFA Guavian Enforcer (BAW) series with no battle-scar across his face, obviously a manufacturing fault where it was left out for some reason, but i've been told these are actually valuable to some collectors and deemed a rare variant. Also, the letters "TM" are missing at the bottom left of the card where all the cards have them. Anyone think this will be worth a lot down the rd?

 

[Cymonguk]

The question is more whether the modern items will be worth anything. I would say this is probably unlikely, vintage sw is valuable because of its rarity in surviving and nostalgia.

Nowadays you get lots of people buying up boxes of moc figures to store in the hope they will be worth something. This means that the rarity isn't there, rarity occurred for many of us because we sold or threw our figures away.

 

[MarkG]

People can tend to pay that bit extra for variations, but modern stuff will not keep it's high value in later years.

The POTF2 line for example had half circle Fetts, long lightsabers, extra short sabers, tan vest Luke Jedi etc etc. To start with people were paying stupid money for them, but over the years prices have dropped as people have lost interest or they are not as 'rare' as first thought.

 

[Dorsetmark]

Yeh I remember seeing a half circle no circle boba Fett at a convention years ago for £150 and there was also a ESB Kenner for same price.
Know which one I should have bought :roll:

By the way if anyone wants to buy a half circle Boba Fett I'm your man :lol:

 

[Cyborg-Fett]

The question is more whether the modern items will be worth anything. I would say this is probably unlikely, vintage sw is valuable because of its rarity in surviving and nostalgia.

But we see vintage 77 SW figures selling for around $10-$30 everywhere, even the ones in reasonable condition with all original parts (Cape, Lightsaber, Blaster etc), thus at that price they are essentially worthless, so it looks like 40 years and so called rarity hasn't done anything for the price of those.
All we see is the MOC vintage ones being worth quite a bit, obviously MOC tells the tale. So, why wouldn't that be the situation for the modern items, as in the 3.75" TFA BAW series ones? They could possibly end-up selling for more than the vintage series, you might be miscalculating, since no one has a crystal ball to say definitively what's gonna happen with the modern ones relating to price?


Secondly, we know that rarity is the main driver behind price, yeah? Whether modern or vintage figures, rarity still rules the roost to dictate sell-price. With the example I gave in my OP, my Guavian figure has no variants, nothing like the POTF Bobba Fett. I've searched everywhere on the net and no such variant exists, but more accurately it's a manufacturing fault, albeit of the type that constitutes a valid variant.

From what I can tell, some freak-mishap at the factory caused the battle-streak across his face to be left-out, which is a defining feature of this particular figure, and after searching high-&-low on the internet, I cannot find any mention of anyone else having one. It is looking more and more likely that I could plausibly have the only one in the world, which would make it even more rare than a DT vintage Obi-Wan, and since rarity largely dictates price, feel me?

 

[grinchy]

I doubt its the only one out there, not with the way these things are churned out in multiple factories,,as has been said modern doesn't seem to keep its value varient wise, at first its popular but then as time goes on it looses that perceived value.
It may not be online yet as these figures have only been available for a few months, given time a list of varient and factory error figures i'm sure will show up.

 

[Cymonguk]

But we see vintage 77 SW figures selling for around $10-$30 everywhere, even the ones in reasonable condition with all original parts (Cape, Lightsaber, Blaster etc), thus at that price they are essentially worthless, so it looks like 40 years and so called rarity hasn't done anything for the price of those.
All we see is the MOC vintage ones being worth quite a bit, obviously MOC tells the tale. So, why wouldn't that be the situation for the modern items, as in the 3.75" TFA BAW series ones? They could possibly end-up selling for more than the vintage series, you might be miscalculating, since no one has a crystal ball to say definitively what's gonna happen with the modern ones relating to price?


Secondly, we know that rarity is the main driver behind price, yeah? Whether modern or vintage figures, rarity still rules the roost to dictate sell-price. With the example I gave in my OP, my Guavian figure has no variants, nothing like the POTF Bobba Fett. I've searched everywhere on the net and no such variant exists, but more accurately it's a manufacturing fault, albeit of the type that constitutes a valid variant.

From what I can tell, some freak-mishap at the factory caused the battle-streak across his face to be left-out, which is a defining feature of this particular figure, and after searching high-&-low on the internet, I cannot find any mention of anyone else having one. It is looking more and more likely that I could plausibly have the only one in the world, which would make it even more rare than a DT vintage Obi-Wan, and since rarity largely dictates price, feel me?

Not sure your point here, many of these figures loose are worth more than any standard not sought after toy of the time (maybe you could compare to loose plastic army men?). The fact that they have any value is mainly down to two things:

1) Nostalgia from people with spare income - this drives the size of the market
2) Rarity of items - drives the value of the market

So the question then has to be:

1) Will there be sufficient nostalgia for these items in the future. This is a complete unknown in my opinion, of course its possible that there will be lots of kids who will remember these items as they get older and wish to buy them up. Of course this is where you think there may be a market, I am not so convinced about this, most kids that I know dont really play with figures in the same way as we did when we were kids.

If I was to guess at what might be more "nostalgic", I am going to say some very specific things such as "Skylanders", "Disney Infinity", Nintendos' minecraft figures from this generation, probably with the computers and games to match. This is what kids seem to play with and seem to have little value after they are finished with . My brother who is 28 was brought up in the generation of pokemon, beast wars, etc, so his generation in 10 years time will probably want to rebuild those collection of figures. I just dont see the market for the modern figures, but I may very well be wrong.

2) Rarity - Of course your figure could very well be rare, searching the internet really only works if that rarity is being recorded in detail. At the time of Star Wars noone gave a monkeys which variant of Han Hoth they had, only now when we are recording rarity do we have a database.

Even then the actual value of any given item is driven by the highest values of the top end items. For example the top end items in SWV are early MOCs. These are very valuable because they are extremely rare now, this partly down to how many survived and the fragility of existing stock, so the top values are driven by this.

Unfortunately in comparison modern items are kept in huge numbers by people hoping for an increase in value. People sit on boxes and crates of this stuff hoping for the value to sky rocket, see how many people have boxes of PotF2 or Episode 1 items. Modern items will just be worth less at the top end of MoCs because they lack rarity in comparison, people will flood the markets with their stored items hoping to cash in.

So (!) does this mean your item is worth nothing? No. Does it mean it might turn out to be a rather interesting and expensive variant in 40 years time? Its a huge gamble that I am not sure is going to pay off. Does that mean it might not be worth sticking in a box in your attic hoping it will pay off your mortgage, who can say, but I just dont see it. SWV gained a lot of value because almost everybody just chucked them away or sold them to buy new clothes/car parts/Masters of the Universe items.

 

[Cymonguk]

From my current experience researching vintage variants there seems to be some debate over what constitutes a variant and a factory error. It seems that figures are generally more valuable if they are variants rather than errors. There are some exceptions to that, especially miscards or incorrect blasters, and focus collectors will find virtually anything interesting.

The difference might be seen in where a true, intended variant, such as red coat bib is more desirable than the grey coat. I can only think of miscards which equate to what you have, ( I am sure that there must be some true factory errors in SWV).

 

[Cyborg-Fett]

You said "Nostalgia from people with spare income - this drives the size of the market" < I have to ask, is that really what you think?

I don't agree. All of this comes down to the popularity of Star Wars, it's common-sense to deduce that, it's all about popularity, I don't think your notion about nostalgia has anything to do with it (who on earth pays $40,000 for a DT vintage Obi-Wan MOC because they feel nostalgic? LOL. Luke DT MOC sells for $25,000).

And I don't need to mention just how popular Star Wars really is, do I? Popularity drives demand, and nostalgia is only one aspect of popularity. Now since we have demand, rarity of certain figurines will ensure high-price, vintage or modern, makes no difference, rarity remains the immutable constant behind price in any sphere of buy-&-sell! The balance of supply-&-demand is the sole driver behind price, trust me.

And with the modern TFA figures, demand is there because it's Star Wars, not Spiderman! FYI the TFA figurine I have is more than likely the only one, or possibly at the very most one of a only hundred, which means it's 'ultra-rare'. This figure also has another factory fault, where the letters "TM" are not printed beside his name at the bottom left of the card, whereas all the other TFA 3.75" figures have "TM" printed beside their name at the bottom left of the card, so there's two things on this figure pack making it special and rare.

I say again, the demand is there because Star Wars is 'popular', nothing to do with age-group from the 70's and quaint longings. It's about a collectors mentality and the must-have mentality of so many kids.

Yes, the prequels were a flop, but even they were still popular; TFA wasn't a flop, far from it, and is regarded by many old school fans (including myself who saw ANH in 1977 with my own eyes) as on-par with ANH, TFA in it's own right has equaled the all-time classic for viewing pleasure (not interested in getting into an argument about that).

TFA was extremely unique in that it had the main characters return after 40 years (no movie in history has ever managed to achieve that), plus awesome new characters were introduced, and the movie itself was a smash-hit worldwide, and it only has Avatar to usurp before it will be the highest grossing movie of all time, which utterly proves it's popularity. As soon as the home movie release hits stores, it's gonna surpass Avatar in the blink of an eye... TFA WAS, AND IS, HUGELY POPULAR! STAR WARS< demand for figurines, I don't think vintage has much say in the matter.


Then rarity of any figure comes into play, since the worlds population has nearly doubled since 1977, another factor ensuring a certain amount of rarity because Hasbro has not been keeping up with demand, not even close; in fact, they are under-supplying to a shocking degree, which ultimately is more good news, certain TFA figures are harder to find than the 1977 ones.

 

[Cymonguk]

Like I said it was only an opinion, certainly keep it as of course what have you to lose?

I would say a good portion of why we buy the vintage lines is down nostalgia, of course some people will buy and collect anything Star Wars. If you had asked me in 1988 whether all my figures would be worth thousands of course I said no, so you may turn out to be correct, or you may turn out to be wrong and find they turn out like the PotF2 or Episode 1 figures.

For the one figure you have, at the cost you paid then put it in your collection and lets hope it turns out to be worth £ks!