Having a comic and toy shop comes with a ton of fairly cool perks. I get to work for myself which is pretty awesome if I do say so. My beautiful pup Maya comes and hangs with me there a couple days a week. I surround myself with stunning statues and all sorts of rare collectibles, so the scenery is fun and never boring. But one of the coolest aspects of the shop as I’ve mentioned countless times here, is the opportunity to build and grow our inventory through the purchase of collections.
People offload their collectibles for a plethora of reasons…car broke down, they are moving, having a baby, they inherited or found it. Maybe they want cash to score some crack?!? I dunno, but regardless of the reason, I’m always there to take a look and see what treasures might be found. Usually in most cases, folks make the trek in and bring me a box of junk. Ripped or beat up comics that have no desirability, or loose/broken/incomplete action figures in a bin. But once in a while a gem is found, or in this case…3 gems.
Now, regarding this purchase, I’m going to state that I feel a bit bad about this one. This happened several months ago and I have yet to see this gentleman again. This guy came in a few weeks before this purchase, and tried to offload a few Vintage Star Wars figures that were fakes. It was the Original card backs but opened, replaced with a newer figure, and resealed (fairly poorly). Now I’m not sure if he was aware of it or was just playing dumb while trying to pass off the junk to me, but that soured me a bit.
So when he came in with this lot a few weeks later, I paid so little attention and reminded him of the prior incident. I had a full shop of folks needing my attention and I couldn’t devote the time to wheeling & dealing with him, especially knowing he tried to offload fakes to me just weeks earlier. I conveyed that and he said he just wanted a little credit to put towards a figure for his kid. I obliged, he got his DC Batman figure, and these Star Wars figs went on the side until later that day when I had time to actually look at them. Much to my surprise, these were NOT fakes but in fact the real deal…and they were alot more valuable than I expected. These 3 gems are in excellent shape considering they were released in 1984. They are part of the Power of the Force Collection that all came with a snazzy coin.
Let’s start off with the Lando piece. Going back a few months, you can see that these are fetching on average between $300-$400 bucks each. There are some a bit higher, but the bulk tend to hang in that realm.
Next up is Luke Skywalker in Battle Poncho. These badboys dance around the $300-$500 range mostly with an outlier or two as expected.
But the real treasure (as if the prior two weren’t juicy enough) is the Luke Skywalker in Imperial Stormtrooper Disguise. This one is highly sought after for whatever reasons and fetches double to triple the others. These seem to consistently sell for between $900-$1300 beans! Wow!!!
So with all that being said, just for my own sound sleep at night…I hope this gentleman comes in again at some point as I’d like to give him a Gift Certificate to make up for the fact that I gave him what amounts to peanuts for his gem of a haul. But for now…time to find these lonely figures a new home where they will be appreciated more than at my shop sitting behind the counter.
Thanks for taking the time to read this drivel.
Blewitt