Have modern prices effected your vintage spending?

[torgospizza]

What I mean is, are we getting used to paying $200 for a Hot Toys figure (or $125 for an ACI Spartacus or VTS Revenger, f.ex.) and that makes it less painful to spend, say, $100 on a Kenner Large Size Ben Kenobi? Thinking about the first time I dropped $90 on a mint, complete vintage figure and telling myself "I'd better keep this to myself" doesn't seem as crazy as it once did. How have these prices effected your views? Have they at all?

[samurainoir]

for me it has. Vintage Star Wars these days just prior to the new movie hype is a steal compared to high end stuff like Hot Toys or even the convention exclusives.

[MIB41]

That's an excellent question. For me I still place value on my perception of what I'm getting. I buy Hot Toys figures, but not with any kind of frequency that I do a Mego style figure. But if someone is selling a new Mego figure for $60.00, I'm not going to feel like it's a good deal because I spent $200 on a Hot Toys one. It's like asking someone to pay a steak dinner price for a McDonalds meal. I'll pass. In general I'm going to assess market value based on similar items on that virtual product shelf and ask myself if it's fair. If it's within a reasonable percentage of the medium market price, I'm game. If it's well outside the norm (even with a few bells and whistles added) I'll consider it a poke at my 'collector gulliability' and pass. The wonderful thing about these lines, is another company can always pick up that license and do it the same or better. I think that's more relevant now in the action figure market than ever before. So I don't feel pressured to buy into a bad deal because I think it may not happen again. There's plenty of fair market deals to keep me pacified for a long time. A great question though!

[zeedox]

Well since you asked...

I am very interested in toys. My feeling was the higher priced 1:6 scale was a way of expanding on the folks who were buying the high end statues. What I dont understand is why how it all started. I used to get all the Sideshow Star Wars until i really noticed i wasnt going to get the main group of heroes. Then there were the Hot Toys/sold thru Sideshow figures which were different than the Sideshow. Very confusing at the time.

Then the Hot Toys craze. Does anyone play with these things? I still have a bunch of Sideshow 1:6 scale, and you can really see the progression into this over priced genre when you see the simplier ones like the Monsters or the Apes, which are still great figures btw. I kept my Han Leia and Luke in hopes to get Chewbacca and the Droids.

Then it got wierd and the Hasbro 90's line starting not looking as bad. Now we have taking Disney. I have all the original loose too I consider them superior to anything else that has come out.

[ovenmitt]

Remember when Sideshow 1/6 figures like Universal Monsters and James Bond were only $40 each? Sideshow 1/6 Star Wars started at $50 each in 2006, I have 17 of 1st SW. Then they went up to $70 each which was my limit. DC Direct 13" figures were $90 at 1st then went down to $60 then $70 and finally $100 at end. I collected that line, I could get $100 figures discounted to $70. I was disappointed when Sideshow 1st DC 1/6 figure the Joker came in at $190! Sideshow previously said in a cooltoyreview interview that 1/6 DC would be 1/6 Star Wars and GI Joe prices which I thought would be $150 or less. This has me worried about Sideshow 1/6 Marvel figures, too, because I really want them!

Remember when Kenner/Hasbro 1/6 Star Wars figures were $20 each? Playmates 1/6 Star Trek were $25 tops! *SIGH*

[torgospizza]

Remember when Sideshow 1/6 figures like Universal Monsters and James Bond were only $40 each?

And I passed on all the monsters except the Wolf Man and Nosferatu (which I grabbed cheaper off eBay) and all the PotA except for Cornelius and Zira, because I couldn't justify that sort of price. If I had it to do over, I'd pick up most of them.

I can't believe I didn't get Hot Toys' General Ursus, which was $125 at release. It seemed crazily expensive at the time, but I've spent more than that on kitbashing a single figure since then.

[Gorn Captain]

I remember when the first Sideshow SW 1/6 came out, they were like $45.
That was enough for me. I just can't justify buying the Cantina Aliens for $125 now. I don't think they're worth it.

In the past few years, I slowly hunted down my Sideshow favorites (Bond, Apes, Monsters) with a $50 shipped maximum each. Got quite a few of them cheaper as well.

I regret not getting HT Ursus, but again, I felt it was too expensive. That one still hurts.

[cjefferys]

The first Sideshow 12" I bought was Frankenstein (around 14 years ago) and he retailed for $24.99. Back then only Medicom was selling 12" figures at crazy retail prices of $100 or so. Then I saw the Sideshow figures' retail price creep up more and more to the point where it wasn't worth it to me. I have no problem spending three figure prices on a vintage toy, but just can't do so on a new figure, I would just end up thinking what vintage I could have bought instead for that money. I don't think this really answered the OP's question though...

[MegoSteve]

I'm definitely a lot less price-resistant than I used to be. However, I really don't make the comparison with Hot Toys when I'm buying vintage. I just look for a good price in general.

[The Batman Professor]

I'm getting ready to completely walk away from new stuff and focus on what little vintage I need. I just paid $340 for a SDCC Lego Batmobile, and I don't think the bad taste will ever leave my mouth.

[MIB41]

I can't believe I didn't get Hot Toys' General Ursus, which was $125 at release. It seemed crazily expensive at the time, but I've spent more than that on kitbashing a single figure since then.

General Ursus is one figure I did like, but never got because I felt it was still lacking something. $125.00 seemed high to me at the time because it didn't really do enough to place itself above the pack for that price. This was also during the era before Hot Toys took that next big step from having SOME likeness to reaching near realism in many figures. There was definitely a moment when they took a very prominent leap above the competition and never looked back. That remains true today.

So I don't look at these as action figures so much as pieces of art to display. I would never consider a Hot Toys piece something you would play with, since that's not the engineering that went into them. I've had many people see my Hot Toys displays and people are typically wowed by them because unless they're in the hobby, they would never know of their existence. So the word "toy" is not something that ever enters their vocabulary. I'm actually hoping Hot Toys revisits the Apes license and many others to reinterpret them with this higher grade of manufacturing.

[Gorn Captain]

Coming back to the original question, I'd say yes.
They have affected my vintage spending to some degree. When and if I spend money on toys these days, I do pay more for vintage than I would have ever done before, because the higher prices now sound "normal". Which is not a good thing, really. I strongly oppose the new trend that spending $200 on any action figure is "normal". $200 is a lot of money, and IMO overpriced. Hot Toys has elevated the market on the quality level, but ruined the market on the money level. Just look at Sideshow: their quality has gone up a bit (especially sculpts), but their prices have skyrocketed, just because of HT's example.
These days, my strategy is: buy vintage stuff, not the overpriced AFA supermint factory fresh kind (which isn't normally priced either), but stuff that's "ok", still extremely cool for your collection, but affordably priced. Middle-of-the-road items, which are still decent quality, but don't appeal to the C10 kind of collector. I love this stuff, and I can live with "shelf wear, played with" condition, as long as I see that reflected in the price.