06 - So Close to Operation Combination - Battle Gaia

Please be advised, these photos are from the Yahoo Japan Auction that closed yesterday for about 130000 yen. Not mine.

This listing came up online about 6 days ago and at first I just added it to my watch list and didn't give it much thought. A couple days ago however, I gave it another look and my eyes nearly popped half way out of my head.

At first glance, you see Overlord, Star Saber, Victory Leo and Ginrai, nothing too special. But when you start looking a little closer, you'll notice a few pieces of Liokaiser, with a Leozack and Hellbat at the bottom.

The real gem though if you look at the blue figure next to Siren is GREAT CANNON....aka Onslaught from the Battle Gaia set. If you look closely, you'll see that he already has his combiner head attached and cannons on the back.

After a short moment to re-align my eyes back into their sockets, my search began to locate the rest of the pieces in a sort of Where's Waldo search. After about 5 minutes of flipping my laptop to the side and upside down, I finally was able to locate the other 4 members of Battle Gaia. Can you see where they are?

Now the point to this post and my bit of advice for any auction hunters out there. Don't let enthusiasm take over common sense. Don't look at an auction and think what the maximum amount it could be worth, look at it for what's the minimum.

I didn't win it sadly, I set my limit to about 80000 yen. As much as I wanted to win this lot, the main reason for me was for Liokaiser and Battle Gaia. The thought crossed my mind to sell off the other pieces in the lot that I didn't need and so I began to determine a value for everything. 

After doing a lot of searching online to determine what fair market value was for the other pieces, I realized that there was a really big risk to this. Most of the figures here are just bodies, and based on these pictures alone, it's impossible to tell the condition they were in, especially my main target Battle Gaia. Secondly, it was stated that there was a box of accessories, great, but no pictures of what they were. 

Unfortunately, most of these figures without their accessories aren't worth a great deal, so the value of most of these was up in the air. For my targeted pieces, again, it was impossible to tell the condition of the figures and if they had any accessories, which meant that even if I won this, tracking down the accessories for them, especially Battle Gaia would be next to impossible. 

Lastly, shipping, this is a big lot and after factoring shipping to Canada, it would add an extra $150 atleast. So barring all that in mind, I set my limit, lost, and closed my browser, remembering one of my rules of never chasing a bid past my limit. 

Guess my Battle Gaia hunt continues....but then, that's part of the fun isn't it?

05 - Transformers Collector's Edition e-Hobby Road Rage MISB

I've had this guy in my collection since 2008 where I purchased it in Tokyo from one of the Mandarake's. Road Rage as many of you might know is a re-colored Tracks and was meant to look like a reissue of the Diaclone Corvette Stingray, sadly no Diaclone driver included.

When I was in Tokyo that year, I had set off to hunt down as many of these eHobby Diaclone style reissues as I could possibly find but this was the only one I could come across. This set in particular was extremely popular and finding one second hand back then was difficult. As much as I would have loved to acquire a true Diaclone version, this was the next best thing for me.

Sadly though, I've hit a point where I'm downsizing a number of my figures in favor of acquiring others so this guy will be gone from my collection within the next month or so as I already have a buyer lined up. That said, I thought I should give it a post of it's own as the story of me acquiring it is a memory of that trip.

We had just arrived in Akihabara after a day of sightseeing elsewhere in Tokyo, it was pouring rain and the Mrs was pretty hungry so we decided that we would only go into one store since it was close to closing time anyways. After entering Mandarake, I did a quick look through only to find disappointment. Just as I was about to leave a friendly associate came over and asked what I  was looking for, when I told him e-Hobby Transformers, he said they just received some new toys that day that weren't out yet. He quickly disappeared for a good 20 minutes, while in the meantime the store had pretty much emptied out. We weren't entirely sure what to do since he was gone for so long and we were just about to leave until he came back with Road Rage. I quickly paid for him, thanked him profusely since he looked out of breath and I could tell had pretty much run around the entire place looking for it. We went on to eat at a restaurant on the upper floor of Yodobashi, the Mrs happily eating and me happily admiring my figure.