"3,500 GB pounds for Airfix figs anyone?" Topic

Latest ebay craziness!
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Real value £200?

collectors pay prices for things they want that the rest of us would just scoff at. thats what keeps the antique and fine art markets going.

Wow, were these the special edition figures molded out of 14K gold?

Quick, quick! Remortgage the house!

possibly max of 1000 euros ,, maybe they take the euro in zimbabwe ??

Wow, that brings back a lot of good memories!

Well, there are no bids…

Well he DID take the time to list them all out. That must be worth something. Right?

The world of the plastic figure collector is a a strange twilight one…..not like the perfectly understandable and rational universe of the wargamer. Oh no…nothing like it…….nothing like it at all.

This must be some collector's retirement plan. All of us better take heed and keep buying lottery tickets.

Perhaps I should sell all my old Airfix figs? I know that the 1/32 range goes for a lot more money! And Airfix are re-releasing a lot of the 1/72 and 1/32 figs…

Pretty standard I would think for 30 year old toys complete with original box in "unplayed with" condition.

Hornby railways, Dinky and Matchbox cars, Star Wars toys etc…

They all seem to have stupid resale values to collectors but there again I have seen some eye watering prices on e-bay for now hard to get old figures, Hinton Hunt and Spencer Smiths for example..

Exactly. Collectors are paying for the old box more than the soldiers.

Nice to see the old box covers, again, after all these years.

Simon

I certainly get very nostalgic looking at those box covers. As a kid I used to drool over the catalogue for hours.

It is the boxes that are worth money – not the figures inside. Look at BigRedBat and Lord Hill getting all nostalgic about the old packaging. Collectors are just more obsessed!

At 30 quid + a box for mint condition doesn't seem too bad in the world of collectors , however he only has 1 or 2 boxes of each range--so for megolamaniac gamers who like huge battles a bit useless….

I like the guy's statement about what he is selling:

I HAVE COLLECTED THESE FIGURES ALL FROM SELLERS ON EBAY OVER THE LAST 3 YEARS AND I AM SELLING THEM IN THE CONDITION I RECEIVED THEM IN. I DO NOT WANT TO TAKE THEM FROM THE BOXES TO SEE IF THEY ARE ALL ON THE SPRUE AS I CHECKED THEM 3 MONTHS AGO AND THEY ARE STILL THE SAME.

Which sounds to me like he doesn't want to vouch for the condition of the figures in the boxes. Plus he wants £116.39 GBP for postage?

Not that I'm interested in these at all, but if someone put a statement like that on a product that I wanted I would be instantly turned-off. It's vague enough to indicate that they're all on the sprue whilst covering his backside if they're not.

Anyone who would bid on that should be locked up, before he hurts hiself.

I'm sure that item's been listed before and has been relisted.

I have a little experience with buying and selling Airfix figures on the 'bay. My Dad found some of my old 1/32 ones in the loft and I started buying replacements for the ones that were missing.

Eventually I ended with about 350 of the damn things, so I got real and got rid of all but those I "needed" to complete the original sets.

The lessons from this were as follows.

When buying, buy job lots. The postage is more economical and collectors don't want job lots or whole collections, they want to fill the gaps in their own.

Don't overpay. There are literally millions of these figures out there. At present there are 200 eBay auctions running that feature used Airfix 1/32. If the average auction is for 20 figures, that's 4,000 for sale every week, a million every five years.

When selling, break up and sell individual batches.

There've been various eBay collection sales flagged up here. I recall someone wanting £15,000 for their 15mm armies. Didn't sell.

Almost on par with the current price per figure of Foundry 25/28mm figures yes?
VR
James Mattes

On this topic, did anyone ever buy that huge Gettysburg diorama?

money laundering……

These are hardly rare at all.

Not even the 1st boxes.

Pah ! We've all got these in the cupboard.

Although mine are off the sprue. 'Cos I'm not a collector.

And he doesn't even have a wire rotating shop stand.

Or a delivery carton (cardboard box with airfix stamped on it)

If I can be bothered I'll find the link to the collector web page where the chap couldn't believe his luck when he found those 2 items at the back of a closing down model shop! His excitement was a little bit frightening, and a little bit understandable (which was very very frightening !!!)

I might add that those are not the original boxes but a third or fourth printing. I still have a few of the original boxes from the late 60s and 70s for some of these. They are not for sale but should go to file 13 either way.
VR
James Mattes

Mind you it is nice to see all the boxes together -just like it used to be in Woolworths.
I expect you could get a Woolworth s on EBay now too

Hey if my Mother didn't throw away all those figures 40 years ago I would be a millionaire!!! US that is but on the other hand in the next ten years the million will be worth about $4,000 Euros.

Well, if my inheritance from that long-lost relative in Nigeria comes thru …

"Mind you it is nice to see all the boxes together -just like it used to be in Woolworths.
I expect you could get a Woolworth s on EBay now too"

and it would be cheaper!

Sometimes I think the conversation goes like this"
Wife: Honey, you have way to much X. The closet's starting to overflow…
Husband: No problem, I'll put some of them on Ebay tonight.
(Husband puts some stuff on ebay at a ridiculous price)
(Weeks later)
Wife: I thought you were going to clean out your closet?
Husband: Well, I tried to sell some of my stuff but it didn't move. I'll try again when the market picks up.

Mmmm, I will try that line next time, thank you Murvihill.

I seem to recall the ones I bought in the 60's had a clear plastic window in the box to give you a tempting look at their contents.

yes… good idea Murvihill!

@ Vaughan,,
I remember the plastic window too – they probably stopped that marketing idea so you couldn't see how mangled and distorted the sprues became after a few years in production. I seem to remember the British Hussar horses, looking as if they'd been melted in a fire!

22hours and no bids, hmmm imagine that.

That's 35 quid a box – one pound a figure?

I don't think so. May have to make do with metal.

"As I checked them 3 months ago"

So the boxes have been opened? That usually destroys the collector value.

The old Airfix figure boxes weren't sealed in the shop.

I don't think he'll be getting a tenth of that figure.

0 bids.

No harm in being an optimist though. He's quite entitled to ask a million quid for them.

It is the daft collectors bug. A friend and I collect various ranges and when the last of a range we need comes up we will pay silly (ish, I'm not that well off!) prices. Same thing listed a couple more times will then go for a lot less as the muppets amongst us have already bid and bought :(

0 bids, auction ended.

Has anyone noticed that most of the Airfix plastics that were produced in the 1970s and 80s often becomes brittle…so any idiot willing to pay that much money might end up with a box of plastic bits (LOL). Buyer beware!

Theres about 56 blue boxes or so in this lot with 33 boxes of the earlier type(the most collectable)so probarbly late 60s, the other 23 blue boxes are no later then 1973 or possibly 74…
The remainder is made up of mostly white boxes which dont have the same value for the most part all 73-74 to 1980….. with the other boxes being 80-81….

Whether or not you consider this to be over priced would depend on how much money you have in your pockets to throw at it they are after all vintage now…..
recent mouldings are showing their age….

As their all on sprue I would estimate value at 1,200-1,800 Euros he may well have paid more but I dought it, with earlier boxes bieng the higher priced… individually maybe more but probarbly less, for this though I would expect very good to mint condition with no sign of brittleness…

I think hes asking for very very expensive dealers rates….

Arkoudaki not most just some…..

Cheers

You could buy an entire miniatures range for that, from greens to production molds!

For metal thats probarbly true the overall manufacturing costs are low, one reason why its allways been popular with small manufacturers… plastic injection moulding is however very expensive something like 15-20 times the cost. maybe you could manage the mould for a single set but not of 15 to 20 poses with 48 pieces in the mould…these days most plastic sets are made from smaller sprues with fewer poses to counter the high cost, multipose plastic sets counter this to some extent by having body parts rather then poses….
You could say why buy old figures.. well theres a simple answer to that Nostalgia, whats it worth to you….

Cheers

Out of interest though lose Airfix figures in boxes or without boxes are not worth the same money…
This is all to some extent age and condition related, boxes dont sell for very much seperatly either..
The collectors goal is Mint original sprue in mint original box or as close as is possible which is getting rare…..
100 boxes would probarbly cost what 500quid if they were brand new and direct from the airfix online shop…..
This isnt to say I would buy this lot as I agree with some of the posters here in that theres something a little dodgy about it….lack of decent photos is one indicator after all how do you know its real…

Cheers

Anyway, he's relisted them….
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