I know about the Autobot Dino cassettes, the white headmaster heads and an unbroken 100% complete Black Zarak.

But what others could be considered especially rare in these G1 Japanese exclusives?

 

Black Zarak or Dinoking maybe?

 

An original Stepper & Artfire. Trading a kidney may be the only way you might be able to grab a hold of them.  

 

I'm thinking Black Zarak

 

alot of them you can find quite cheap now, id say a colored shuffler is still one of the rarest

 

Yeah, and I'm also thinking of an original white Astrotrain as well.

 

Black Shadow & Blue Bacchus .... I hardly ever see them for sale... I see Black Zarak alot more often then them.... a few other Hard ones but Easy compared to some ....are Metrotitan ,Grand Maximus , Galaxy Shuttle (I haven't seen as much now as I used too.) as well as the Trainbots/ Raiden.....not to mention the Heads from Headmasters and the White versions of them.

 

Original Artfire or Stepper?

 

Artfire is a particularly rare one so I understand.

 

Yeah, THIS... pretty much whats been said... although i always get the feeling that the Japanese Decepticons are the most pain in the A$$ toys to obtian.. which include both Bluebacchus and Black Shadow...Metrotitan, Black Zarak, DinoKing, the list goes on... sigh... those are for seriously mega rich/ people who can afford to loose a limb, or maybe TWO kidneys for!!      

 

The Dino-Casettes seem to be among the rarist g1 Japanese TFs. I dont have any Japan-only TFs in my collection, so I'm not sure if the casettes are THEE rarist, but I know they are very hard to find. Curt at TFSource used to have some of his MIB/MISB collection on his site, and the packaging on the Dino-casettes are fantastic. Plus the fact that they are combiners, pure win.

 

junior grand max is the last g1 japanese figure i need. have only seen one in the last couple of years. the others listed previously are rare, but show up enough. i dont put reissues in my collection, so all my jap stuff is g1 original. took me about 2/3rds of a year to hunt it all down. the white astrotrain is kinda hard to find also. i got lucky with that one and got it from a coworker 7 years before they reissued it. i hate all these reissues lol.

 

Yes, if you're a vintage collector it must be a nightmare especially when the reissues start turning up loose and you've no idea if they're original or not!

 

artfire was mentioned a couple of times, but i think you need to prefix that it with 'non-yellow' to make him super rare!

that guy loves to yellow, most of the ones i've seen make even the ropiest jetfires look minty.

 

I know the toughest Japanese things for me to find were a non-yellowed Artfire, non-yellowed Galaxy Shuttle, and the white headmasters (one of which I'm still missing).

I've gotten a little out of the loop in the last 3-4 years because I've got everything at this point so I'm not looking for any of them... but I'd imagine there's a pretty consistent list of 10-15 items (most of which have been mentioned in this thread) that will be the rarest of the rare for many years to come.

 

A lot of people mentioned the hard to find figures but there's always some random cheap figures that takes a while to find. Took me a good amount of time to find guzzle and javil. And for the price per weight, you would think t hey were like the headmasters. Finding a super white galaxy shuttle is a bitch.

 

Off the top of my head, Grandus, Road Fire, Sky Garry, Battle Gaia, and Guard City, to name a few.

 

Here is a list of some recent case finds that really affected the availability.
Sky garry- no longer rare in any way
Artfire- still rare but there are plenty of bone white sealed and graded ones now.
grandus-There was a case find concurrent w/ sky garry

 

that's why I'm glad I bought most of my Vintage Japanese stuff over 9 years ago.