Help Wanted for a site I'm building

[pawcanada]

I'm currently in the process of developing a website called "My Miniature Mates" that will allow me to catalogue my minimate collection, house a number of blogs and in general allow me to learn and improve my skills with ASP.NET and CSS (my goal is to re-locate but few people want Classic ASP developers these days ). To offer more to the blogs, I was hoping to collect various opinions on some of the topics I hope to write and would appreciate if if you could leave a few sentences on how you feel about any of the following. Full credit will of course be given where due.

• Exclusive Minimates - A great way to expand your collection, or fuel for Scalpers?
• Army Builders - Best thing to hit minimates in 2009?
• The end of a series; when and how best should a series stop?
• Second hand minimates; Have you bought one off eBay? What was your experiences like?

Any and all help is greatly appreciated. And hopefully doing this will cause me to stop procastinating and actually get on with the project

(to the mods, I appologise if this topic is in the wrong forum. Please re-locate as needed).

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[edit] If you have any question in general about the site I'm building, please drop me a message as I'm happy to talk about it (as a procastinator I feel the more I talk about something, the more likely I am to do it ).

Edited February 7, 2010 by pawcanada

[Secaucuscollector]

Exlcusive minimates are fun to collect and have like the SDCC and the AFX ones, howerver it takes forever for them to appear in LCS and bummer to buy them online with shipping costs. The only exclusies that Scalpers are fueled by are the TRU waves, but apparently more minimates are being doubled in TRU Wave 6.

Army builders are definetly the best thing so nowour heroes can fight armies in rder to get to the boss, but we need singles packs and not 8 X force Wolverines and Yellowjackets.

I think this mechandise will be going on forever like the GI Joe toys. I do picture myself still collecting at 30 and I started at 12..... that w 6 years ago rofl.

I have bought many from the internet and here. All awesome experiences and easier.

[HRGMann]

Exclusives

I see a couple of categories imbedded in this category.

(1) Blanks & Promos - such as FCBD white blanks, SDCC GM black blank, or even the AFX keychains of last year. Unless you HAVE to have a perfectly complete, every variation under the sun collection, there are take 'em or leave 'em. Nice to have if you can get them, but a Marvel or DC 'mates display isn't going to look 'off' because these guys aren't there.

(2) Vendor and Store Exclusive - At this point, it's AFX and TRU that drives this. I think it's great that they're willing to put themselves on the line to bring new exclusives, at the risk of overproducing and being stuck with inventory that you can't give away (yeah, thanks for the offer the free Hostile Takeover set, but no, no thanks). Anyone and everyone who wants an AFX exclusive can get one, plus shipping costs (which seem high to me, but it's not like they don't tell me the total and I have the choice to order or not). Though with some of the gas I've burned hunting for the TRU exclusives, it's not too bad after all.

TRU exclusives. Just the existence of these drives the excitement of collecting again. I can order online all day long, but it is not nearly as exciting as walking into a store not knowing what to expect and finding a new series on the pegs. Plus, we've gotten characters that may have never been released otherwise. Yes, 1-per case sucks (but that appears to have been corrected). Yes, scalpers may key into this and scoop them up... 2 recent auctions for this pack closed at around $60 (but that is not a problem new to collecting anything). This sucks especially in the X-Factor Angel case, where many can't complete the team from the box set they ordered from AFX. Now that TRU wave 5 has come, and wave six is likely on the way, what are the chances of new wave 4 cases being discovered. So if no one can get X-Factor Angel, why would that same person want to buy the 4-pack from AFX? SO it's not just the fans that lose, but a vendor that has shown dedication to offering exclusives also has the potential to lose.

Conversely, though, if it wasn't for the TRU Ghostbuster mates, I believe this line would have fizzled quickly with just 2 4-packs spread out over several months. Sure the packs would have sold, but it was the TRU packs that really brought life to the line. Plus, these have even been available on the website, so opportunities have been there to get them. Have they also been scalped? I believe so, after the first wave got cleared out. But again, with any shortage, whether perceived or actual, has the potential to cause some people to take advantage of the opportunity.

Gonna get a second cup of coffee and think about the other questions....

[buttheadsmate]

Exclusive Minimates - A great way to expand your collection, or fuel for Scalpers?

A bit of both perhaps. TRU exclusives can be murder to get hold of but many other supposed exclusives are very very common. Blanks & promos are a different kettle of fish but generally they appear on ebay expensively & then less so.

There are exceptions & I have yet to see Goth Girl on ebay & only one Comicpro.

Army Builders - Best thing to hit minimates in 2009?

TRU was the biggest thing to hit Minimates last year....TRU Ghostbusters Minimates especially.

The end of a series; when and how best should a series stop?

When it's on top of its game .

Second hand minimates; Have you bought one off eBay? What was your experiences like?

I have bought many & my overall experiences have been good. Baldymates are perhaps a different matter but you get what your under-paying for.

[HRGMann]

Okay, with my second cup of coffee in me...

I agree with BHM that army builders are not the best thing to happen in 2009. Maybe it will different in 2010?

Army Builders are a great idea for filling out the variant pack in a regular set. For collectors, who really needed the duplicates we were getting when you got the whole set. 2 Lokis? No thanks. Two AIM agents? Two Hydra? Yes, please. Unfortunately, the problem is getting more than 2 without getting back to the original issue of getting multiples of figures you don't want. Would I like to have 6 AIM and 6 Hydra agents? Sure. Do I want to pay full price so I can have either extra Iron Mans or Extra Bucky-Caps to get the AIM agents? Didn't want to, but I did. Now, how do I get the Hydra army? I have to buy multiple X-Force Wolverines. No TRU option.

I don't mean to turn this into a rant... simple solution, have TRU offer in its waves a 2-pack of army builders. An AIM/Hydra pack, or a Kree/Skrull pack. I think fans would really like this, and I don't think they'll warm the pegs as much as some of the other TRU sets.

Make the armies more available to those who want to build armies, and maybe it could be a bigger deal in 2010.

[buttheadsmate]

HRGManns comments about army-builders are ,word for word, what I feel about them.

The only army builders we're never going to get are the 'ones' that WW2 Cap & WW2 Wolverine ought to be fighting......

WW2 German soldiers! Marvel is still totally pre-occupied with Cap fighting the Nazis in Reborn yet we'll never see them although they would be awesome .

Edited February 7, 2010 by buttheadsmate

[pawcanada]

A big thank you to Secaucuscollector, HRGMann and buttheadsmate for your comments so far. I've been working on the articles over the weekend and will probably post the first one here later today (if I get it done). To be honest your comments have given me more to think about on the topic, allowing me to cover more than I intially expected to, so thanks again.

[NorthRaider]

I guess I should've posted here sooner, but seeing as there's already a lot of good comments here on some of the "headline-making issues" nowadays (exclusives and army builders) that echo my own thoughts, I thought I'd take a stab at the other topics

Second hand minimates

My experience with secondhand Minimates has mostly been gushy and bittersweet: while some 'mates in my collection did come from eBay (like when some runaway surplus from China sneaks into a sale or when an all-Iron Man collector sells off his spare AIM guys), a good number of them have come from trades with collectors who had to quit the Minimate hobby for financial or personal reasons.

This inevitably makes me wonder about the Minimate's origins: Which comic book store was it bought in? How much trouble did somebody go through to save money for or get this mate? Did they take it with them to school or the office? How many times has it changed hands?

That last question especially freaks me out when it comes to rareish Minimates I've gotten this way like wave 16 Thor or blue suit Professor X: How much did the original owner pay to get this mate? How many people have stared longingly at eBay/flea market listings for this very mate? How far has this Minimate traveled? Is this Minimate cursed? (That last one was a joke )

The end of a series; when and how best should a series stop?

Depends on the source material. The ideal Minimate series are the ones based on established, wacky stories with several years worth of canon and can (in theory) last a very long time, at least 8 waves or so. ANY series with this potential that gets cut short too early will by default incur a lot of disappointment or rage from fans. (I'm looking at you, DC and Star Trek)

The more tricky ones to gauge are the shorter or more "vanilla" stories: the TV-and-moviemates are a pretty good example of this. There comes a certain point where you have to pull the plug on a line before you start hitting the ceiling of non-redundant variants... the minute you pass this point, you risk jeopardizing the very integrity of the whole line. There are too many cautionary tales here for me to mention, but there are also a couple of exceptions.

[pawcanada]

Thanks for the comments NorhRaider. Your comment about "how many times has this changed hands" is something I hadn't really considered. I recently bought fourteen mates off a guy in the UK, including a Martian Manhunter and Darksied mate. Considering how rare those two can be (least from my experiences), now you mention it, I do wonder if the guy I bought it form was the first or fifth person to own them.

I will mention though, two of the mates I got from him (as well as a Cap mate I got last year) had faults. The Dr Fate mate was missing it's hairpiece (which I know was missing from the photo) and the part of the bow that holds the arrow on the Hawkeye mate had been snapped or cut off (the Cap mate was missing the piece that attaches the shield to the arm). It's annoying when that happens but sometimes it's the price you have to pay to get them loose and potentially cheap.

Anyway, my first article/blog is done. To be honest I feel I could do with re-vising what I said. I cut out a whole chunk as I knew I was rambling. In general articles like this often go through two or three re-writes so expect to see some changes in the future. Feedback is appreciated:

Exclusive Minimates - A great way to expand your collection, or fuel for Scalpers?

Exclusives are common among toy collectors, as well as collecting in general. Though this might be a bit of a stretch, how many CDs have you seen with an extra bonus disc or extra tracks you won’t find on the more traditional version? However, in the case of collectables like Minimates, they’re often more than just a bonus track or making of disc. Exclusives often come in the form of box sets designed to be sold at either a specific shop or a convention. For the last couple of years, the San Diego Comic Con has seen a couple of exclusive box sets, while the online store Action Figure Express also hosts a few box sets. Additionally Toys R Us has recently started stocking their own wave of Minimates, usually featuring a pairing from an up coming wave, a pairing we haven’t seen before from an existing wave and an exclusive pack or two. With only a handful of waves being released a year in comic shops (at the time of writing it was only Marvel based waves that were), exclusives allow collectors to expand their collection with Minimates they would otherwise not get, either due to a character’s limited popularity or to tie in with a popular comic being released at the time, such as the two Dark Avenger box sets that were released in 2009. However in the long run, exclusives are both a blessing and a curse.

Thanks to exclusives, the amount of Marvel Minimates released in 2009 alone was easily double, maybe even triple what we’d otherwise get with just waves alone. And DST has aimed to release a box set with at least a character like Jewel and the Noh-Varr version of Captain Marvel who otherwise won’t make it into a regular wave. Somehow I doubt we’d have seen Union Jack in the next Marvel wave. Exclusives have also been designed to compliment each other. The SDCC 09 Tunderbolts set lead to Bullseye, Moonstone and Swordsman getting released at Toys R Us. While they were at times an expensive pain to get, it helped give a completed look to the army of collectables on my bookshelf. And the Toys R Us Ghostbusters wave have given us more than just the handful of characters released in the (at the time of writing) two box sets.

But exclusives aren’t without their problems. There’s nothing more annoying than seeing your favourite character released as a store/convention exclusive and know full well you’ll potentially have to pay an arm and a leg to get it, as the exclusive’s rarity attract “Scalpers”. Scalping, in the collectable market, refers to someone buying a rare, hard to get and/or much desired collectable, then re-selling it at a higher price in an attempt to make a profit. And with exclusives being rare in the first place, they’ve become thus the ideal target for Scalpers. A good example would be the 2009 Toys R Us exclusives. The Union Jack/Wonder Man, Bullseye/Moonstone, Spider-Woman II/Molecule Man and Warpath/Angel packs were all limited to one per box, and therefore could be found going for as little as $20 and as much as $40 on eBay. And even if you don’t fall victim to a Scalper, there’s always the risk of another collector spying the auction on eBay. My Union Jack mate cost me a good $20, simply because other people were as keen on him as I was. However it would be valid to say it was my own fault for getting involved in such a high auction.

Thankfully there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. For starters DST are now making the exclusive packs more common in the TRU waves. This means fans will stand a better chance of getting them and Scalpers are less likely to get away charging $20 for World War Hulk/Battle Damaged Mr. Also the community in general is more than willing to help out others, especially international collectors like myself who can’t simply pop into their nearest Toys R Us to get the next Ghostbusters or Marvel wave. And if you’re lucky you might just find a box set or lose figure going on eBay for a cheap price.

While it may seem like I’m anti-exclusives due to the measures some people have to go to too obtain one, they are in the long run a great feature. Without exclusives, characters like Ares, Union Jack, an updated version of the Sentry wouldn’t have made it into my collection (outside of customising anyway). While I may in the long run have to pay a little more to have all the ones I want, it is ultimately the case with collecting any kind of model. I’m sure my Warhammer playing friends have had to spend equally large sums to get the powerful piece they want.

[pawcanada]

I hope double posting isn't considered bad here. I've finally begun work on my site... Sort of... For the moment I've made them ASP pages, and the design is still very much work in progress (I'm more od a developer than a designy guy), but here are my first two blogs complete with the comments.

Once again a big thank you to everyone who's helped me so far. If you can offer me any feedback and critasism on my

blogs, I'd appreciate it:

Blog #1 - Army Builders - Best thing to hit Minimates in 2009?

Blog #2 - Exclusive Minimates - A great way to expand your collection, or fuel for Scalpers?

Edited February 21, 2010 by pawcanada