I just bought myself a New In Box MP2 Ultra Magnus for a very good price (which is kind of hard to find nowadays especially new - correct me if I'm wrong).

I'm undecided whether to take it out of the box and put it on display next to my other Transformers, OR just keep it in the sealed box so it can increase value over time. What to do?!

 

Open it or sell it. A sealed box is just a box, and you're just making it harder for someone who actually wants it.

 

I'd have to keep it MISB. Not as much for the value to increase but Id be bummed to discover it's a factory misassembly or if it has another flaw and it being way past the time I could get any kind of replacement.

 

That's how I feel. Unless you open it, it's just a fancy box. And opening it won't make it suddenly less rare in terms of production numbers.

 

You have competing goals. You really have three options:

1. Display it and enjoy it.
2. Display it with the intent of possibly selling it in the future but knowing that you've lowered its market value and being okay with it.
3. Keep it MISB with the purpose of selling it in the future.

Just pick one. You will lower the value of the figure if you open it. But if you are okay with that, then just minimize as much damage to the box and figure.

 

what you have is a "rare" figure IE one that while was mass produced it is hard to find at retail and has a likey an artificially inflated secondary market.
price.

To me a truly rare figure is one that was either made is small numbers or that few have survived the years since it came out.

 

Did you specifically buy it so you could sell it later? If not, open that sumbitch up.

 

Lots of Transformers display very well in unopened boxes. If you're torn, leave it sealed, display it like that till you come home from a party one day, drunk, rip the box in half and wake up regretting it

 

Dude, I opened my cw devy, reluctantly, and found it was missing a cab piece, luckily bbts was cool and sent me a replacement but I thought how pissed someone would be if I sold it 15 yrs later for alot of $$$ and they open it only to find a missing part. I would be furious lol

Oh jesus, I'm glad I quit drinking before I started collecting tf again. Lol, I would have totally opened everything.  As a matter of fact collecting tfs is what replaced my drinking. It fulfills my addictive personality and gives me something to spend all that $$$ I saved from going to bars and L stores.

 

Open it if you:

• Have never handled MP-1 or MP-4, because it's a really great toy
• Have an appreciation for the "white Prime" aspect of Magnus

Don't open it if you:

• Want to get the maximum resale value
• Prefer the traditional appearance of Magnus

 

Exactly why I collect too man haha. No drugs, I only drink socially and when I do it's a beer or 2. Same thing with addictive personality. So I scratch the itch with this. It's family friendly

 

This.

I open everything I buy. I can't appreciate something fully that is in a box. While most of the things look nice in a box, you can't do shit with it.

 

First I open it, stuff fireworks into the box and then set it off. I then take a sledgehammer to the remains until all that's left is shattered burnt fragments of plastic.

Afterward I post a video to youtube for the lulz.[/Sid]

 

I take a different approach to different eras.

G1 and Diaclone/MC stuff I like to have it boxed and mint, but I never have been able to own sealed G1 because it's hard for me to appreciate and justify. I love mint toys that I can take out, photograph, research, document and then place back in the box for display, storage etc. I also have a healthy loose mint G1 collection dream I am pursuing, but I love to have the boxes for those figures for reference and for documentation and completeness, also heavy dose of nostalgia.

I have got pre-TF stuff that's so rare and precious that I do keep it in the packaging, in fact the packaging was the main reason I started collecting that particular variety of toy, so it's a major part of the purchase and display.

With newer toys like Masterpiece, I keep the packaging because I love the uniformity and keeping the set as one, but I have started to dispose of a lot of Titans Return and 3rd Party packaging. I am keeping the TF Legends packages because I love how they display the Headmaster separately, similar to 1987 G1 boxes.

With Animated and other recent era stuff I always throw the packaging away unless it;s a particularly beautiful set, and for my favourite deluxes of all time I keep one sealed specimen for display and as a tribute.

Also, you'll have to kill me before I let you throw away my Diaclone V2 boxes  

All the best
Maz

 

I don't open toys that are more than about five years old. If I needed a new one that badly, I would've made the effort in those five years. With so many used copies and reissues out there for giveaway prices, it's foolish to spend good money for a sealed copy just to open it.

But it _will_ make it more rare for people who appreciate MISB figures. That's the point that I hope he was getting at. Sometimes collecting isn't just about personal wants.

 

My rule of thumb with rare-ish figures is that if it's a repaint of something I already own, I keep it sealed. If I've never handled the toy before I open it.

 

But in this case, you can't even see the toy. Why not just buy the box and sell off the figure at that point?

 

I open almost everything. Rare/hard to find or not. If I find something that I know I don't want to open for that reason; I'll save up for another.
I have 2 Botcon 2016 Megatrons for that very reason.
But then there's some stuff I won't buy a double; like Black Big Convoy... I didn't want to open it; but l did because that's the only way I knew I could enjoy it.

 

I was going to buy a car once. When I went to pop the trunk, the dealer stepped in. "Hold up, son!" he said. "You don't sit in the trunk, do you? Why does it matter what's in there?" he continued. This made sense so I let it go.

Three months later, the car started smelling really bad. Sometimes I'd get itchy just from sitting in it. Well I scoured the inside of the car because I remembered what the dealer told me and came up with nothing.

So one day it was distracting enough that I hit a pothole and wrecked the car. Out of the now mangled trunk fell a halfway decomposed body covered in ants. Turns out the dealer was a serial killer and hid those dead hookers in the cars he sold.

 

Keep it in the box because a white Prime isn't Ultra Magnus anyhow...