Well, a lot of people are trying to justify paying the high prices by saying they're "limited edition" and feeding the "OMG! If I don't buy it TODAY RIGHT NOW then I'll never have it again!" mentality.
Here's how I judge if something is truely rare, and I think it's good advice to those new in the hobby, or those just getting into collecting harder to find stuff. Let's say you're trying to buy a harder to find figure, and you do a search every day, or every other day. If you do an Ebay search for the item, how many items come up? If it's more than one every day, it's not that rare, and you shouldn't pay a premium price, or panic for it. There'll be more tomorrow. Some figures like Hicks or the Aliens and Predators, are available for sale every day (you might not like the price, but at least if you've got the paper, you can buy it.) while others like BBI Lucifer don't show up every day, or every week, or every month. And forget it if you're trying to find certain older Medicom figures. Sometimes you get your chance once a year. Yup, once a year is when someone puts one up for sale. Go ahead, do a search now for Hot Toys Hicks. Now do one for BBI Lucifer. See? Again, you might not like the price, but it's available for sale, and not that "rare". And this is't just today, it's all the time. Sure the amount available for sale will get less and less as time goes on, but so will the price. Think of that hot figure from 2002, or 2003... go take a look how much it sells for now. More often than not, it's retail, or a little bit higher or lower. Sometimes 1/2 the price. And honestly if something is availbe for you to buy all the time, is it "rare"? Does it justify the higher price? I always feel that if you have something no one else has for sale, and I can't get it anywhere else, and I won't see another for a long, long time, then it deserves the premium price; I'm not going to give you a premium price just because it's "hot" and you say so, or you clicked faster.
And Hicks is a cool figure, and a very popular character, but is it a $1,000 figure? No way. Is it a $500? Nope. Is it a $200or $300 figure? Perhaps, if you feel it is. The average price for that figure in the last 2 years is around $200-250. I feel it'll stay around the $300 mark until Hot Toys re-releases it. Since the fall of 2007 and one single auction that was highly written about on the forums, suddenly it's a $1,000 figure. If you look at the original auction, it seemed to most that there was some shill bidding going on there, and the guy was selling a complete MIB set of the other ALIENS Marines, as well as a TON of other 1/6 movie and Hot Toys stuff. Obviously people were looking to buy several figures at once, thus the high prices.
Only a certain few of the Alien and Predator figures were a limited editon. For some reason, people think these figures were really limited. Yes, they were pre-Sideshow partnership, but they were pretty easy to get here in the US. Especially on the East and West coasts. Most places I knew that carried imports at all at least got one or two of them. My local shop sat on 3 or 4 Vasquez figures for almost 2 years. And I know that some stores thought they were a bust, because they sat on the shelf for so long. Remember it's 2008 now and years later. It's something i've talked about a bunch in other posts, the fake "limited edition" hype, so it makes collectors freak out and empty their wallets in a panic.
While ebay is great for finding collectibles, it's also created a horrible monster known as the Scalper. Oh, they were there in the 1990's, but now everyone and their mother is a "store" and trying to sell stuff they bought at retail for a profit to those unlucky enough to have a life, a job, or things more important in life than waking up at 8am to buy every 1/6 thing at Toys R Us, or staying up until 2am clicking away for the latest "exclusive" that ends up on ebay within 5 minutes of shipment. While LA and NYC have been big scalper spots for over a decade, now it's spread to the rest of the US and it's a pain. Hot Toys and Sideshow are currently big targets for these guys. At my old shop, I had several customers who were buying 2 of every Sideshow Star Wars figure because "they're going to be worth money, and I can sell them later on." Take a look how much some of those 1st few releases goes for vs. the original price. Not that much given the expense and effort. But it's for their "buisness" or however they justify it to themselves. Now granted, I have an Ebay Store, and I sell a lot of stuff on ebay, but i don't consider myself a "store" at all and never pretend to be one. And while I part out rare figures sometimes, it's always to get some pocket change, or to get some parts I need for my own bashes.
Sorry to keep hitting you guys with such long posts, this is a topic I feel very strongly about, I think there's been a lot of ret-conning and dishonesty in collecting in general over the last few years, especially about availability.
While we all want to own something "rare" in some way, I think for the last 15 years the hype-machine of the toy buisness has really blurred the lines between the currently difficult to find at a cheap price, and the truely limited edition, obscure items. Star Wars and comic books started this false rarity in the 1990's, Ebay continued it in the 2000's, and Hot Toys Aliens Hicks is only the latest example.
