I saw this seller on ebay selling an Optimus Prime G1 AFA Graded 80NM for $1500.00. The seller States it's a 1 of a kind! Is this true? I have in my collection 4 optimus MISB and Never seen this version before. Mine has all grey borders where the 3 pictures are. Is this a variant? http://cgi.ebay.com/Optimus-Prime-T...6057694611QQcategoryZ4696QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Thanks for your help!
AFA - As far as being legit, I have no idea, I guess it's possible that it's a KO, AFA in all their wisdom has been known to grade KOs. I can't tell what they mean by "different border". As far as being worth it if it is real, I guess that's up to you. No way I'd pay that for a slightly different box.
Yeah, that's weird. It makes me think that question isn't legit, and just put there to garner interest, like a con game.
What is that yellow sticker on his bumper? I know he usually comes with two yellow headlight stickers but those are place where a license plate should be, and the one on the left has fontage on it. I don't know if all packages have that, just don't remember ever seeing it before.
Probably referring to the fact that it's the only graded 80NM Prime by AFA in existance, thus one of a kind.
I do not even SEE what he is talking about! It looks EXACTLY like mine! I guess I have a rare one of a kind too! Woohoo!!!
I see what they mean now, the three little pictures in a row on the front don't have a gray border like other originals do. Your's doesn't have the gray frames?
Legit! This guy is legit to my knowledge. I asked him for pictures of where the item was made. It says Made in Japan on it. If it was a KO, it wouldn't say that. As for the border, it's still a mystery how many were produced this way.
Are you sure a KO wouldn't say that? A KO could say "made on the moon" for all the makers care. If it IS a KO (I'm not saying it is), don't you think the producers would make it original as possible, including the "made in" part?
The thing that makes me think this is a knock-off is the bad cut of the window area on the front of the box. All legit boxes from G1 that I have seen have the top border of the cut right along one of the lines in the grid design, not through the middle of the boxes. I call shenanigans. Karl
That seller is an idiot. The auction ended, no bids, so what did they do? They put it back up with a Buy it Now of $1600. Good luck with that.
Karl, you're right. This is from the late 90's run that BBTS's "knockoff" Cyclonus was from (and from which we often see Ironhides, Beastboxes, and triggerbots). These are the ones with the character's name in Chinese on a very small sticker in the upper corner. Someone took the name sticker off this one, so it's harder to spot, but the black border on the boxes and the bad window cut are giveaways. According to the Variquest website, these were made by the same factory as the originals, but they were likely not authorized to produce them at the time. ( http://www.geocities.com/futuristgroup/vchina.html ) AFA typically just calls these "China" versions, apparently, and grades them anyway. They don't seem to be aware of the distinction between the late-80's/early-90's run and the mid-/late-90's run. Just going by the black border and the strange window cut you noticed, it's clearly the mid-/late-90's Chinese version. For example: mid-/late-90's Chinese version with the name sticker very obviously removed: http://auction1.taobao.com/auction/...-60c878158a859c7a5ad2442eee0e6452.jhtml?p=1-3 It has the same black borders and the same bad window cut. And another one with black borders that still has the name sticker (擎天柱) in the corner: http://auction1.taobao.com/auction/...3420a76177289204343bfd78b0bb02ad.jhtml?p=1-37 So, yeah, according to Variquest, it's a knockoff. I mean, they've never really offered concrete proof that the mid-/late-90's stuff wasn't licensed by Hasbro, but they seem to be the authority on a lot of this sort of stuff.
I sent him an email with a link to my post in this thread and it looks like he closed the auction shortly afterward.