GI Joe Pics from SDCC…in 2007
Apologies for the lame joke, but I couldn’t resist posting something relating to San Diego Comic-Con. With all the galleries of pics being posted at the usual geek hangouts, I though I’d share some of my own from my first (and only) visit to the con. It was quite a mad rush of people on preview night, and I can only imagine that it’s exponentially worse eight years on.
I found a few shots I took of the Hasbro booth that year, and was surprised to see some pretty amazing customs mixed in with the coming soon product. It was a heady time to be a Joe collector, to be sure. It’s also interesting to look at the customs in relation to the later “concept case” figures that have since made the rounds at JoeCon.
By the way, I skipped out on the ridiculous Hasbro shop line that year and managed to snag a Pimp Daddy Destro the next morning from the comfort of my hotel room. Nice.
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Is it comic con time again already?!
I spent most of 2007 buying first movie Transformers toys on the asumption they would be worth something; they arent.
Never buy toys for investment. It sucks the fun out of the hobby. And you will probably lose…..
25th at its best!
The Alley Viper didn’t quite turn out like that, right? Looks nice. And I so wish that test shot Zartan glowed in the dark! Seems like a few companies have eschewed SDCC as a place to show product ideas, and the ones who do go generally show retail items. I hope Hasbro gets back into GIJoe at ToyFair or at least sticks by JoeCon. It’s exciting to see items like even Zarana here that didn’t come to fruition.
… and generally when things are touted as collectors items or potentially valuable in the future *at* release, that usually means they won’t be. Who knows how many Death of Superman issues are floating out there, meanwhile, Golden Age, Silver Age, and heck, any random issue from a year or two from before it, would have a lower print run than it, meaning lower supply. Usually, it’s the things that go unnoticed or seem unwanted that have higher value later (like the SNES game Earthbound, which bombed and was being discounted to as low as $5 and 15+ years later, can go for a few hundred bucks), where present demand is lower than anticipated future demand.
I always used to say that today’s pegwarmer is tomorrow’s hot collectible. It often held true in the 1990’s and into the 2000’s. These days, though, so much has changed in the retail arena that I’m not sure it holds true anymore. Though, it does seem that anything that’s part of a “major” toy line that has a trumpeted low production will generally appreciate in value. But, when you have to drop $250+ to get it in the first place, the notion of using them as “investments” is somewhat negated.