Small Scale Military Headquarters

I don't have anything to sell or want to know what something is 'worth' before buying. This is a question concerning 'what's with the high 1:18 prices and what should I EXPECT to pay?"

I've been out of the hobby for many years and sold virtually everything I had. I miss collecting/displaying and want to pick up a few pieces, mostly WW2 aircraft and figures. Checking online retail and auction sites, I see prices have gone up three, four times original and more than twice what I 'thought' they would be. I know 1:18 is virtually out of production, stores are long sold out, we'll never see $40 aircraft again, etc but the 1:18 community wasn't that big in the first place so what's with today's high prices?

I was thinking I would find most of what I want - generally P-38; Zero; Avenger at around $100 each, maybe as low as $80 if I'm lucky. Prices I'm seeing are easily double that. Figures that I thought should be about $5 loose are $15. Pretty shocking for someone who hasn't kept up with prices the past years.

Are the prices I'm seeing accurate, or just sellers marking things up? Would I be a fool to pay $150 for an avenger when a more fair price is $100? Looking for some input, thanks.

These items are out of production and weren't made in huge numbers to begin with, so prospects aren't good unless you have the patience to wait it out until something you want happens along at just the right price. It has been a while now since the fun ended, so people are fighting for the last bits of unclaimed merchandise before everyone's collections are complete.

Flayrah, a quick review of what is on eBay or etsy will give you an idea of the value of some of these items. The typical 21c 1:18 scale XD plane now seems to average about $100-$150 with the rare or more desirable schemes going for higher. Even the 21c 32x planes seem to average $40-$60 now...

There are some of the 21c and other manufacturers items that had limited production runs (think the Spitfires and Supercobra helicopters) that can command $200-$300 or more in MIB condition, but others that were more common so the prices are a bit lower.

A few companies, including JSI and Flight Wing have released new repaints of the old 21c toolings. JSI did repaints of the 21c Corsair, Stuka, P-38, BF-109E, F-86, ME-262, Huey, etc BBI even put out new repaints of their F-16, F-18, Blackhawk, BF-109G and 1:32 scale F-4 Phantom that were nice. Flight Wing has done several repaints of the 21c retooled P-51 and Mig-15 but the retail prices for these were higher than what we got in the Wal Mart days. Further some of the JSI repaints are out of production now and just as costly as the 21c planes because they had limited runs. The BBI planes were more expensive than back in the day, but had great quality. A lot of the BBI stuff was recently on sale, so you can still find it relatively cheap...

However, [CAT]CplSlade is correct about people fighting for the last bits of unclaimed merchandise as well as on having the patience to await something coming along at a good price

From the reverse standpoint... as a seller, is now a good time to sell or is it better to wait till prices go higher as stock becomes even more limited?

For P51, as an 'outsider' coming back into the hobby, I'm honestly amazed at the prices and at this point I wouldn't be surprised if the prices continue to rise, at least in the short term. But the value of anything is only what someone will pay, and the higher the prices go the fewer buyers. I used to collect the 12" vintage GI Joes, and for a time prices where basically whatever a seller would ask - individual figures at $100 or more. Then the bottom dropped out, partially because of repros that casual collectors were happy with, but also because most of the serious collectors already had what they wanted. Prices for rare/unusual sets are still high, but I consistently see vintage pieces go unsold.

So if you're interested in selling any XD, I'd say the next couple of years is a good time for 'standard' pieces, but keep hold to the unusual and rare.

It seems to me that prices have been fairly stable for a couple of years at this point, especially for the more common items. It's also been a while since we saw a release of prototypes and really rare stuff - mostly from that one ebay lady from California.

I think you can definitely make a little money right now if you bought a lot of stuff when 21C crashed and prices were slashed and we all got Monkey fever. I was buying 1/32 at $7-$14 a pop and those are now around $35-$60. 1/18 was crazy cheap in my opinion to begin with for the size and accuracy you got, but I feel like it goes easily for 3-4 times what WalMart sold it for.

I feel, though, that like most collector hobbies this one will have a 20-year cycle when interest renews and people go hunting again and owners see how far they can get away with. Plus, things will get lost or damaged thus increasing their scarcity, which is pretty good to begin with.

When I began playing Magic the Gathering in 1996, I had only missed the first release by just over 2 years. Due to a limited initial run, and repeatedly underestimate set of reprints the game was in its fourth edition when I got to it. In order it ran, Alpha - Beta (corrected omissions in Alpha) - Unlimited - Revised - Fourth. Five sets of essentially the same cards but still produced in relatively few numbers. A set was generally 232 cards of various rarity but Alpha was sold in an amount that would really only let about 20,000 people have a complete set.

Only 20,000 in the world. Twenty years later there are millions of Magic players worldwide who would love to have those early cards to add to their collections; that's part of being a collector, obviously. I was fortunate enough to piece together a set of Revised, which lack features of Alpha and Beta that marked them as first edition items, but still had value in the tournament viability of certain cards.

When I lost my job a few years back in the econ-fart we had, I sold my full sets of Magic cards and kept only my gaming decks. I sold that set of Revised for $450. Within the set were 10 land cards that were especially valuable and since I had three extra full sets (The game allows the inclusion of a maximum of 4 of a specific card so I had four of each of these lands.) I sold them as well, for roughly $300 a set. So, you see where the bulk of that $450 went.

Now, to buy back a set of Revised, I would need to spend anywhere from $850-$1500. And those sets of lands would run me way more than I am comfortable paying for playing cards.

Revised sets

Oh yeah, and that Beta set - which is preferred because the Alpha has rounded corners that make them stand out from all the other cards in the game, thus making them marked - contains a single card which I nearly had the chance to buy, but it was heavily dimpled as if someone had pressed a hairbrush against it.

In May of 1995 this card, the Beta Black Lotus, traded hands at $160 all day long and it could be had in a $3 pack the previous year. They go for significantly more now:

Black Lotus

"It's also been a while since we saw a release of prototypes and really rare stuff - mostly from that one ebay lady from California."

I've often thought about what happened to these 21st one-offs, and of course I missed these auctions. Does anyone have photos or links of what these items were? I'd really, really like to see what items were.

Slade is making me feel old.

And giving me an urge to play magic.

This is drifting off topic but since Slade mentioned it here I thought I'd post what I searched just for the heck of it. I know nothing about it but there's a bunch of the stuff (4 screens worth) on ShopGoodwill.com:

Magic the Gathering:

http://www.shopgoodwill.com/search/Sear ... wthumbs=on