Collecting Minimates

[buttheadsmate]

For a man my age the question "How hard should it be?" is perhaps not the right question to ask...... about anything.

I am concerned however that being a Minimate collector is becoming just too hard. It's never been easy but just lately the bar has been set just too high & I'm not sure it's healthy. I am aware that it isn't everybody that wants every single variant of every single figure in every single package but there are many that do....just read the Wants/Haves thread!

We currently have the "masses friendly" TRU exclusives which apparently will encourage younger buyers. For many ,here, these are virtually impossible to get hold of .....even if you live nearby to a TRU! TRU Minimates are a speculator's dream & who can blame them?

These TRU exclusives are available on-line ......really? ......when?

Retailers exclusives have always been exclusives for retailers .....I accept that. What I don't accept is that 75% of all 'Unification Spocks' I have seen on ebay are being sold by a seller who is anything but a retailer. I have actually NEVER seen a retailer exclusive sold by ANY retailer I have previously bought from ....& I've bought from many.*

EDIT*I bought my first Minimate from boondockcollectibles(a good seller) ,Santa Spidey,a retailer exclusive . I don't believe he currently retails Minimates on any huge scale but you'll always see exclusives for sale from him.

Promos ,theoretically ,are given out to people who frequent Conventions which again is perhaps ....... correct . In practice this system sucks . If you go to a convention to "fill your sack with promos & help your fellow collector" ...forget it! Something serious must have occurred at the NYCC because promos from there seem very few & far between despite the fact they weren't specific to that Con.

Terminator & Ghostbusters Minimates were going to be a welcome addition but I am completely confused by what is being sold by whom & when......but that's probably my lack of patience trying to keep up with all the announcements.

That leads me on nicely to the GB Video exclusives. I know many of you here love your video games & I'd become one of you but I don't want any more obsessions .....but paying for a video-game to obtain the exclusive 'mates is by far the most dangerous path AA DST are going to lead us. This path is what I'll call the 'Kubrick Path' where you are led like sheep to buy everything & anything packed in a Medicom bag.

None of this,strangely enough, is sour grapes...I have my Spock,my promos,my UJ/PM TRU exclusives etc.....all with a lot of help from my good friends here.

Being a middle-aged toy-collector perhaps makes me part of the problem but at least I recognise the symptoms of the sadness that is Kubrick collecting & it would be tragic if 'Mates went that way .

I am perhaps concerned mostly for the newer/younger members ....is it getting too hard? Is it me?

Edited April 16, 2009 by buttheadsmate

[Bob Harris]

Being a middle-aged toy-collector

It's sweet how you try to pretend to still be a "middle-aged" whatever, although everybody knows that you must be pretty close to Methusalem these days. That's so cute.*

Seriously, I guess that video game thing is some kind of crossing a line that shouldn't be crossed. At least according to a completist's intention. Making those 'mates exclusive - not only to come with that game, but to be sold via amazon.com as well - will make it pretty hard to get those for everybody outside the USA or the gamers-universe. (I can't imagine anybody paying that much on a video game he or she would never use. On the other hand, I know in which 'verse I am right now... ) And it will lead to enormous black-market (aka eBay) prices. In days were it's already hard to get a "regular" variant that's sold in the past, these are completely new dimensions of defining what "hard" means. (In a narrow sense.)

In that sense, I'm lucky to be just a usual addict, collecting what I like or which characters or designs I really love. (Any other suggestion would lead into Arkham, since you don't really get those little fellows in Germany as I mentioned several times.) Of course the hard to find thing (as well as the whole waiting thing) are part of the fun, this might get some people pretty down.

__

* You know. I couldn't resist.

[buttheadsmate]

Don't get me wrong .....I love the chase....I love the hunt ...but it's the 'here's the product ,here's the price & here's the elitism.....that I find nauseating.

[MiniFiend UK]

I think the answer is its as hard as you want it to be. As you pointed out not everyone wants every figure, for me I collect mostly Marvel/Trek with the movie stuff as it comes out if I like the movie. I dont mind if I dont get a variant or chase I like what I have and it works for me.

To be honest I have actually found it easier in the last year since AA/DST have stopped shipping to UK to get then before hand. When they did ship here I would see the releases Stateside and have to start ringing around a week to 2 weeks later my LCS or FP to see if any arrived If they are in I would ask them to hold the ones I wanted and would pick them up from work. There is a but coming at times I would arrive and find that they had either forgot to hold what I wanted (always seems to be the varient) or had lied and the stock hadn't arrived so then the cycle starts again.

Now when stuff is announced I just email Limited Edition and they mail it out when it lands. The exclusives with the help of members of this board can be found at good prices.

[Rad]

I'm missing out on some news here... Video game exclusives?

[Bob Harris]

Yes, video game exclusive 'mates. You can read all about it over at the Ghostbusters thread.

Oh, and I am pretty happy with Simon Pegg!

[groundhog7s]

I think it's hard enough to keep up with the regular waves/sets, let alone when you start looking at exclusive stuff. What I find really hard, though, is finding a comfortable place with where I am in collecting. I tend to lean towards the Pokemon 'Gotta catch 'em all!' mentality when I collect stuff, but usually find a reasonable standard I can accept when I do. I collect the newer GI Joe line, DC Infinite Heroes and Marvel Universe stuff, but have limited myself to one of each character released. With Minimates, I tried this when I started collecting again and was fine for a while. It wasn't until I got most of them that I started picking up an extra Spider-Man because I liked the costume and I don't know if it was out of compulsion or boredom, but I then continued on to every version of every character. Now I've got all but about 8 of the 2 inch Minimates that have ever been sold and my standard now is I'm not going to collect blanks or promos. But as I get close to finishing my checklist, I wonder if I'll be able to stop there. And I'm sure it's the people like me that are the reason they'll sell video games with Minimates included (even though I don't have any of the game consoles that play the games).

So, I guess them doing all of the extra stuff is partially my fault.

Edited April 16, 2009 by groundhog7s

[Rad]

Yes, video game exclusive 'mates. You can read all about it over at the Ghostbusters thread.

Oh, and I am pretty happy with Simon Pegg!

Thanks Bob, I'm not going to miss out on this one as I'm not into the GB 'mates at all, but I understand the frustration of the GB fans and completists.

That's not Simon Pegg mate, that's John Simm from when he played The Master in Series 3 of 'new' Doctor Who. That avatar's taken from an excellent scened too.

[Punisher]

I find it very hard collecting mates lately. I just don't have the room or money to keep up with all the new waves/exclusives/box sets/etc..

I have been picking and choosing since day 1, and by no means am I a completest (would love to have a complete collection of marvel, LOTR,etc. though. I do have all the DC mates spare one, Ma Hunkel, and the c3s), but I have to cut back (and sell off) even more now.

There are just too many!

[Bob Harris]

That's not Simon Pegg mate

Not Simon Pegg?

It does look a lot like some weired Hot Fuzz scene. So, I am glad you dropped Cartman, I still do miss that Monkey, but as long as I think that's

, I am all smiles. So, don't disabuse me.

[Shanester]

BHM, I think raise very valid points and the question of how hard should it be is THE "big question". I don't think there is one answer to it, either.

Exclusives that appear in stores located only in the US is hard for those outside this country. Do the "higher powers" consider this and its impact? Yes, I think they do. I also don't think they slap eachother on the back and say, "screw the other collectors". I think its another hurdle for some collectors, nothing big to others.

That said, I know what its like to have a hard time with items that aren't even "available" to me. This brings up another paradox. Is Ebay our savior or is Ebay our enemy by "enabling" scalpers?

Overall, if I have a decent shot at an item that completes my collection, then I am happy. But if I must fly to China and sip tea with the emperor just to get into a lottery to buy an item, then it is likely that I'd lose interest and drop the whole line.

An SDCC exclusive with a decent run (2000+), is ideal to me. If I don't fly to SD and attend the con, I can probably still: A) find a friend that is going and will pick me up the set or buy on the secondary market. I realize that even this can be difficult if the item is super limited, but you gotta play the game sometimes. I flew to SDCC and still wasn't sure I was going to score the Monogram Hulk bronze that was limited to 200!! (but I did)

[luke314pi]

Imagine you are DST for a minute. Amazon.com, the largest online retailer in the world, comes to you and wants you to create an exclusive set of minimates for them. You realize this might be difficult for some collectors to get a hold of, but could you really turn it down? With lines like BSG and Star Trek falling by the wayside, I think DST needs to seize every good opportunity to expand, especially large exclusive deals. It might make things harder for some of us, but don't we all want the minimate brand to survive and live on?

[NorthRaider]

Imagine you are DST for a minute. Amazon.com, the largest online retailer in the world, comes to you and wants you to create an exclusive set of minimates for them. You realize this might be difficult for some collectors to get a hold of, but could you really turn it down? With lines like BSG and Star Trek falling by the wayside, I think DST needs to seize every good opportunity to expand, especially large exclusive deals. It might make things harder for some of us, but don't we all want the minimate brand to survive and live on?

I definitely side with your reasoning here Luke, which is why I couldn't *completely* denounce the Amazon exclusive idea in theory. The video game pack-in isn't a bad idea either, perhaps it's just the somewhat steep price (S100+ for a video game, a keychain, a mini-bust, the equivalent of a Minimate boxset, etc.)

I don't blame DST for pretty much sticking to the American market (i.e. the European distribution screwjob a few years back). The way I see it they're trying to become the American Kubrick, and "in theory" Kubricks are supposed to be a Japan-exclusive product. Plus it would probably be Hell for a brand as small as Minimates to bite off more than they can chew and extend their reach internationally. Since reading about how the Charm City Cakes set was released I've respected the reality that Minimates still pride themselves as something of a niche product out of Baltimore.

However DST cannot ignore the reality that Minimates DO have foreign fans. I mean, just look at the membership on this board. One of the highest MMMV demographics besides Americans is Englishmen, we've had members from places like Spain, Germany, Holland, *cough*Southeast Asia*cough*...

DST probably needs to figure out an easier way to distribute Minimates (odd coincidence that some statues are easier to get a old of than 2-inch block figures), which they probably aren't that keen on focusing on when Minimates still carry that dubious reputation among non-collectors as being a "cheap" cross between Kubricks and Lego men (I swear to God this still gets to me ).

The fact that a lot of toy collectors out there would still prefer alternatives like Hasbro Heroes (oh crap, not again...) to Minimates sorta complicates the whole thing. Probably one factor is the character diversity: Hasbro Heroes has the mass market-friendly licenses like Marvel, Star Wars, Transformers and G.I. Joe. Minimates has... other stuff. Of course we can't expect DST to compete with Hasbro on the character breadth alone given that Hasbro is a giant in the industry that tends to shut "minority companies" like DST out... kind of a vicious cycle, when you think about it.

[buttheadsmate]

"....European distribution screwjob...." ? Please elaborate Northraider

[MST3KFan]

It's things like exclusives and hard-to-find that lead me to finally say Goodbye to Marvel Legends... Well, that and Hasbro's screwing up of the whole line and stuff more so. The whole exclusive thing kills toylines a lot of times, especially when you have scalpers snatching them up like crazy. DC Universe's Wal-Mart wave for example was a BADLY distributed wave of the line and has left a sour taste in many collectors mouths.

With the Minimates, I mostly pick and choose on them. I was into DC Minimates until DC Direct killed them. Star Trek too, at least until the last few waves. (Wanted the main Enterprise crew mostly) With Marvel Minimates, I do see the annoyance on trying to get a lot of these guys, but I've managed to get ahold of many characters I wanted. However, I do try and keep some sanity and not jump on getting them at outrageous prices I see them have on eBay.

It's fortunate I have not been desiring a lot of the variant figures, but there are select few Minimates I would like that seem to be IMPOSSIBLE to find, or if found, for a sane price.

Giant Size X-Men boxset, or more so, Nightcrawler...

The Iron Fist/Power Man 2-pack that was exclusive to Toyfare...

More recently, the Jim Rhodes War Machine variant...

Still, if you let the idea of trying to get it all run your life, it kinda makes the collecting less fun and more obsession then anything. I search for stuff a lot when I'm on the net sure, but I need to keep myself from going over the line where I'm willing to pay like $50 for a Nightcrawler minimate, you know what I'm saying?

[Jatta Pake]

As a long time collector, I'll add my 2 cents.

Minimates have always had rares that go beyond the simply one per case packout. They started with the very limited Gold Spidey and followed-up with the Silver Spidey . Both were limited to 50 each. As far as I know, the Gold Spideys were only given to friends of the Art Asylum owners or employees working on Minimates. The Silver Spidey's were given a tad bit more exposure when they were offered as a possible prize at the Wizard World Conventions. Amazingly, I believe Boyd's wife actually won one.

Both are incredibly hard to find and appear on Ebay only once every couple of years.

Even more rare are the "Translucent Spideys" owned by Rob of Raving Toy Maniac. These were factory one-offs from Hong Kong that were never distributed. Not sure how Rob got them. Add to the mix the occassional Prototypes that have made it outside the walls of Art Asylum and you have some very rare Minimates.

So the Completist has always had challenges. Do they consider Gold Spideys a requirement for a completed collection? Prototypes? Translucent Spideys? Canadian packaging? What about the Spanish C3 Javelin? I think the Completist who doesn't want to pay for the video game will put these Ghostbusters into the same catagory as the Gold Spideys.

Is the Ghostbuster pack-in exclusive a new twist? I don't think so. At one point, Kellogs was going to offer Minimates in boxes of cereal, Adam Unger once talked about attaching Minimates to designer clothes, and Napster was going to have their own Minimates packed with something ridiculous. This may be the first pack-in exclusive to actually make it to market.

To answer the original question, I don't think Minimates are harder to find today then they have been in the past. The collector market continues to grow year-after-year despite this vicious recession. I have seen more and more local comic shops brimming with Minimates. They are considered good sellers.

And that may be the real issue. DST and retailers have honed manufacturing numbers to an exact science so as not to over-produce while more and more collectors are joining the hobby.

If you really need the Ghostbuster Videogame Minimates but can't afford the $30.00 apiece price, wait for Amazon to put the set on sale in July. The price will go down after the game makes its street date.

[gambitron]

When I saw the announcement about the GB Amazon set I was upset because I am going to buy the other GB sets and I tend to be a completist and this Amazon set is something that I know that I will most likely never get so that is disheartening. I am excited for all of the great upcoming SDCC box sets and upcoming waves etc of minimates but I have had to drop some other things I would normally collect so that I can get them all.

Speaking of scalping, slightly off topic here, mattycollector.com has been selling the Master of the Universe Classic figures that is a new figure going on sale once a month on the 15th and I have forgotten the last two months (including yesterday) to go on to the website on the 15th and by the time I remember the figures are already sold out. This is because they allow people to buy up to 10 figures at a time. Luckily this month's figure will be getting additional stock in later in the month so I can still get it at regular price but last month's I had to buy on ebay because you know that they sold out so fast because of all the scalpers buying them up to sell on ebay! This is frustrating to me and has caused me to pre-order all my minimate waves so that I can be sure to get the variants without any hassle.

The TRU minimates is something else that has been frustrating to me the Stealth IM wave never showed up to my TRU and the WM/UJ wave did, this is frustrating to me since these are supposed to be TRU exclusive then every TRU should get atleast one box because having to trade, or wait for these to show up on their website was frustrating since I work right next to a TRU and go there on my lunch break every day.

Edited April 16, 2009 by gambitron

[homestar17]

While I'm not a completist (be it series, line, or whatever), I can completely empathize with BHM. For me, collecting is hard, very hard. I don't live in a teeny, tiny village but it's not a huge city like Chicago or LA -- probably just short of 100,000 people. There are several comic books stores around, but none carry 'mates. Instead of closing one of the 12 TRUs in Minneapolis, they decided to close the one & only one here; so no TRU exclusives (or Tower Records' or Suncoast's). The 3 Targets in the area stopped carrying them about 3 years ago, so none there either.

With the exception of a few (2 2-packs) I've found in weird places when I've gone to the Twin Cities, my only alternative is online. You'd think that would be enough, but it's not. Some online stores want outrageous shipping (AFX) or don't care as much as they should for their customer's financial safety/security (CSC) or don't seem to care about their online customers as much as their face-to-face customers (insert half a dozen stores of your choice).

eBay could be a viable option, except they no longer protect either side of the transaction the way they are supposed to. On top of that, it's full of scammers & con artists -- completely giving the legit people out there a bad name.

So, BHM, I feel your pain.

[gledzee]

I generally just get mates I really like and being in the UK love it or loathe it eBay is pretty much the only way for me to get mates I have no problem with exclusive overall as not being a completist I can afford to (most of the time) pay that little extra to get the one I want.....BUT I know mates are no longer available in Europe but it drives me mad that TRU in the US gets exclusive yet TRU in the UK doesn’t even get regular waves. As for the Amazon set as frustrating as it is I believe its a good move as I used to be heavily into yugioh and I know its a bit different being trading cards but people would pay X amount for the game to get the cards the eBay becomes awash with cardless games

[battlecat]

Kinda said this in the GB thread already, but DST did at least stick to using original game characters for the pack-in mates, which is really the most collector-friendly way to approach an exclusive like this -- it's not like fans of the movies who aren't bothered about the game are going to miss out on any important characters because of this. It's specifically geared towards people that would buy the game anyway.

I've always seen completist collecting as a fairly impossible task, so this release doesn't really change that view for me. As a non-completist, the TRU exlusives do make me feel a tiny fraction of the pain that UK collectors must have felt a few years back, but so far we've only had, what, 4 mates that couldn't be found in more widely/globally available sets? I'd love to be able to use some online store rather than bother a board member to get those 4 without an eBay mark-up, but as luke314pi said, you can't really deny DST business opportunities because it makes a couple mates hard to find for us. Anything that keeps the line going/growing, ultimately gets us many more "easily accessible" mates down the line.

Also thank god all those convention exclusive sets have been so easy to get online -- some toy lines have "real" exclusives that aren't available online the next day.

[Nessex]

It's fortunate I have not been desiring a lot of the variant figures, but there are select few Minimates I would like that seem to be IMPOSSIBLE to find, or if found, for a sane price.

Giant Size X-Men boxset, or more so, Nightcrawler...

More recently, the Jim Rhodes War Machine variant...

Still, if you let the idea of trying to get it all run your life, it kinda makes the collecting less fun and more obsession then anything. I search for stuff a lot when I'm on the net sure, but I need to keep myself from going over the line where I'm willing to pay like $50 for a Nightcrawler minimate, you know what I'm saying?

What REALLY annoys me is when characters Jim Rhodes are made the Varient. Maybe i'm not 'up' on the history of War Machine, but for as long as i've been aware of him - the man inside the suit was Jim Rhodes.

In my opinion, varients/chase figures should be for the die-hard minimate fans or the die-hard character fans. JimRhodes shouldn't be made as one of the hard-to-find-one-per-case figures because he IS War Machine. While Tony Stark has worn the armour, he's not the 'standard' for the character. Save the varients for quirky/obscure characters or variations of characters.

I understand that AA/DST want to move more cases & in their eyes, making the chase figure a highly desirable one will help with sales, but it's a bit of a middle-finger to the non-cpmpletionist collectors.

Frosted Iceman? yeah - the fan-boys will buy it, but casual collectors can live without it because they have a normal one.

Visorless Cyclops? - not everyone needs one, but collectors can get it if they want it.

Jim rhodes? Major Marvel character released as one-per-case variant! Kind of sucks for people who are collecting core characters.

Edited April 17, 2009 by Nessex

[MST3KFan]

What REALLY annoys me is when characters Jim Rhodes are made the Varient. Maybe i'm not 'up' on the history of War Machine, but for as long as i've been aware of him - the man inside the suit was Jim Rhodes.

In my opinion, varients/chase figures should be for the die-hard minimate fans or the die-hard character fans. JimRhodes shouldn't be made as one of the hard-to-find-one-per-case figures because he IS War Machine. While Tony Stark has worn the armour, he's not the 'standard' for the character. Save the varients for quirky/obscure characters or variations of characters.

I understand that AA/DST want to move more cases & in their eyes, making the chase figure a highly desirable one will help with sales, but it's a bit of a middle-finger to the non-cpmpletionist collectors.

Frosted Iceman? yeah - the fan-boys will buy it, but casual collectors can live without it because they have a normal one.

Visorless Cyclops? - not everyone needs one, but collectors can get it if they want it.

Jim rhodes? Major Marvel character released as one-per-case variant! Kind of sucks for people who are collecting core characters.

I agree on the Jim Rhodes as a variant was a stupid move on AA/DST's part. Rhodes is War Machine. While Stark only briefly wore the armor, Rhodes BECAME the character and to make him the variant... It's just annoying.

The Vision variant from a previous wave is a lesser version to the classic Avengers one as unless they make a Young Avengers set, he isn't seen as a big deal otherwise. But Rhodes... Yeah, that is a bugger.

[Cappy]

Don't get me wrong .....I love the chase....I love the hunt ...but it's the 'here's the product ,here's the price & here's the elitism.....that I find nauseating.

The trouble these days is that there isn't much hunt or chase anymore. Thanks to eBay, it's now just a matter of how much you can/will pay. No sport in it anymore.

[Dio]

Thankfully I've gotten lucky on most of my purchases and I now have almost every Minimate I want. I don't think collecting is that hard if you know where to look and you're patient, but it also depends on how much you're willing to pay. If you've got a bottomless wallet, then yeah, you can get anything you want very quickly. Thanks to good deals, and the members here on the boards, I haven't had to pay more than $20 for any single mate.

The hard part with getting really old waves and variants is just waiting for them to show up. There's always other people competing with you to get it, so it could be months before you get the ones you want at a price that you consider reasonable. Thankfully I've gotten all of the recent variants I wanted at my LCS instead of having to look on eBay. While it sucks that Jim Rhodes is the variant, it's good that Tarantula is the variant for the other wave because people pay $10 at most for the pack.

Then again, most of the Minimates that were ever released are available on eBay and Amazon, but at high prices. So the difficulty in obtaining Minimates varies inversely to how much you're willing to pay. And this is just in the United States. I can't imagine how hard it is to get Minimates outside of the country @_@

I think Minimates should be easier to collect. Like, DST should ALWAYS produce older Minimates or improve older ones according to demand. They reuse pieces, so why not rerelease older Minimates?

Edited April 18, 2009 by Dio

[Punisher]

I think Minimates should be easier to collect. Like, DST should ALWAYS produce older Minimates or improve older ones according to demand. They reuse pieces, so why not rerelease older Minimates?

We had that happening for a while. All of the TRU/Target exclusives were the same (New Avengers and Astonishing X-Men). And then before that, we had the TRU 4-packs and 2-packs that could be found everywhere that re-released waves 1-6.