This seems to be a trend lately, but it seems that the after market prices on 3rd party items seems to be tanking. Which is sort of crazy, there are many many figures that sell for much less than the original purchase price from online vendors.

I remember when I got into the 3rd party game, if you wanted the older releases of the Fansproject stuff you were going to have to crack open the piggy bank. But now I have seen on these boards the Fansproject Burticus with all add ons for $100 and it was sitting for sale for weeks with no one buying it. I have seen Hercules being practically given away for asking prices around $150-$175. Even Maketoys Giant I have seen sub $200, which is crazy.

I am trying to understand why this his happening, I was thinking it was the older stuff that was having the issue. But even newer 3rd party items are doing the same thing. Lots of FansToys items are falling in price and even I have seen great prices on Feral Rex and other combiners. It almost makes you want to wait for someone to get sick of something and get it for cheap.

Is the bottom starting fall out of 3rd party items?

 

I can only speak for myself, but for me it's always been a case of:

OFFICIAL > 3rd Party

Even if the "official" is slightly "less good". lol

I dumped my Herc off soon as I saw the CW Devy announced.
I will most likely be selling off my Quakewave and MP TRU Roddy too once they drop.

(so keep an eye out, my prices are good)  

 

I'm the opposite actually. I prefer non hallow and cheap looking stuff. Soon as the CW devy was announced and pictures released; I ran for the hills and purchased Herc + RoH + Shapways parts. He is absolutely stunning.

Aftermarket will always be sorta crazy. It's due to so many people being unsure/"confused" on what belongs with what in their collections. I do not buy any figure fan-"intended" to go with certain things. You are surely to get burned by doing so. Like all the confused people who bought Warbotrons stuff and now feel as if they don't quite fit with their MPs and are too large for their tiny classics/MT/FP collections.

I still see people going wild in the TW Devy thread, wondering why this or that isn't G1 enough for them.. News flash: they may be MP scaled, but the project is based off Studio-Ox.. Not Sunbow. Now as soon as a more accurate sunbow version comes out, you'll see them all scrambling again.

 

A lot of it I think is that better versions of the same character comes out making the older figures drop in value. Quakewave tanked when Takara's came along. And Feral Rex for example there's some KO's going on for way cheapo so demand for it dropped. Brawny and Backland however are still way up there since there's no alternative.

 

Yeah I think alot of people see 3rd party = Placeholder and then the official or a BETTER 3rd party comes out and people bail on the original just to recoup some of the money....even if it's at a loss.

 

I'm of the Opposite I almost always prefer the 3P to Hastakomy, almost all of my dark counsel has been 3P with MT Nemesis replacing Hasbro RiD Scourge, Xerxes replacing Nemesis Breaker, and I'll prob be replacing Prime Nemesis with Orinville if I ever stop being lazy, CW Brut is prob the only Brut that is 95% perfect for me and that's bcuz of the girth of the CW style compared to the orginal movie type skinny style they were going with back then, but both require 3rd party add ons to be awesome. As for CW Devy, I think it's horrible mostly because it's just huge making it gaudy for my taste so Giant stays my Devy, as for prices falling this easily noticeable on FP Ninseticons, they were a prm on the 3rd market but have darn near dropped to retail now even for legit ones

 

If you mean Official > 3rd Party regarding prices, then you're correct. There is no questioning Official's overall affordability vs. that of the majority of 3P's prices. However, in most cases (and I am aware the above is just your opinion), official tends to be much lower in quality, design, and engineering than "slightly less good" over that of 3P.

As for aftermarket pricing drop on 3p figs. Demand for them is lower. Either a newer version was released at an attractive price, an official one did, or stores are running many specials to get rid of much older or overstock. There could be another set of reasons we may not be aware of ...

 

Maybe because of the super high crasy markup that BBTS / TFSource is imposing on the market for NA for 3rd party vs the cheap overall cost (and declining costs now due to higher value of USD vs rest), and the other etailer following, that the aftermarket can go lower without sweating and worrying about BBTS / TFSource and still making a lot of profit.

 

Don't forget increased competition. When you have multiple companies taking on the same character, and sometimes going head to head with official figures, it tends to help with prices.

 

Right.....but all that goes against the formula of:

Official > 3rd Party

I was a fan of Transformers loooooooooong before I was ever a fan of FansProject, BadCube, MMC, etc etc...

But again, just my personal choice.

 

Meh. That's your opinion. For me, mainly 3P > Takara.

But really depends.

I'm a Transformers fan. Not a Hasbro/Takara fan. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's probably ....  

 

Gotta support the brand, or else...

 

Aftermarket prices are down because stuff doesn't sell out anymore. Why that is would be a whole different analysis.

 

IDK. Yeah, maybe prices for 3P versions of a character drop a bit as soon as an official version is announced. But I think so far we can only say that for sure about 3P CHUGs. At the same time prices for official CHUGs also went downhill in the past years due to the MP hype. And have we seen an official MP figure competing against an unofficial one yet? Quakewave does not count. Prices already went down from 300 to 100 $ when the reissues and Quakeblast were announced. (And by the way, I have the feeling that some people won't replace their Quakewave with TT Laserwave.) The iGear Coneheads are still quite expensive even after the announcement of MP Ramjet - and I doubt someone really paid 1500 $ for them before on Ebay. Carry is a real alternative to MP Rodimus and the price for both is similar...

I doubt that every official product will make an already existing 3P figure obsolete in the future and cause its price to drop because there are quite a few premium products which many fans love.

 

greater supply.


supply is outpacing demand.. more company's.. more choices of the same character... more units produced in runs


is it a correction or bubble?

 

the "Brand" barely supports us, horrible movie designs, sometimes decent cartoons and other times complete garbage cartoons, and sometimes decent figures mixed in with a bunch of crap, there should be absolutely no need for PE add-ons on the CW/UW but Hastakomy took they're greatest combiner creations and gave them some of them g1 hands and feet plates, updated articulation great colors, great designs and size and said by the way take these updates with some classic g1 feet and hands, Hastakomy sometimes isn't good until 3P fixes them

 

Not really. The brand is established. If Hasbro decided to stop production, there would probably be enough fans still looking for a fix to keep 3p going for awhile.

Hasbro isn't getting my hard earned money for their shit product anymore just because they own a trademark.

It's all opinion anyway.

 

But anywya, back to the topic at hand. For me, I just dropped a few figures because I either purchased them and then didn't feel they met my standards, or I had multiples.

In terms of after market prices, I just wanted some quick cash and didn't feel like waiting for weeks or months for the price I wanted.

It's not always that way though.. A few months ago I parted with an extra Leo Dux I owned for almost double what I paid.

Ebb and flow I guess..

 

Alot of factors in play here. Multiple companies doing same character. Even TT/Hasbro doing more characters to compete (ie headmasters and combiners). 3P more confident about their products and about demand (based on the pasts aftermarket prices) that they are producing more than usual. One of the first product by FP was the CJ kit for chug CJ. It went as high ad $300 for a fricken upgrade kit. But FP only made like 300 or so kits.

 

It's not TT > 3P or 3P > TT.

It's about alternatives. Characters that are popular enough will get many alternatives and that will cause the older dated versions to drop in price like Herc.