Posted 23 February 2009 - 03:46 PM
Too many people are trying to sell their old Playmates figures presumably to make room for their current AA/DST figures, or for their new Playmates Star Trek XI movie figures. Throw in a bad economy (entertainment is the first thing to be cut from people's budgets,) and an oversaturated eBay and you have a pretty good understanding of why those Trek figures aren't selling. Buyer's can't afford the figures at dirt cheap prices and sellers can't turn a profit on them; in essence, this is reflective of the entire economic crisis.
Of course, then there are eBay sellers who are totally insane, and unfortunately I don't mean "insane," in the sense of hand them "Psycho Toyz for Krazy Kidz" insane, but rather "how much can I list this toy for" insane. I'd call these people "scalpers," but to be a scalper, you actually have to know the value of the item you're scalping, and I truly think that these sellers are ignorant in regards to pricing.
For example, in the past week I've seen multiple $150+ dollar "First Contact" Playmates Enterprise-E listings on eBay. After the AA/DST ship was released, the demand for, and subsequent value of the Playmates ship dropped greatly. The most collectors seem to be willing to pay for that toy now is $50.00 if they're desperate. Some collectors might be willing to pay you $20 just to take the thing off of their hands. ($5 to buy it, $5 to ship it, and $5 to blow it up and post the video on YouTube.) Simply put, the Playmates Enterprise-E is an unpopular item with a ridiculous ($150 dollar) price tag. Meanwhile, the AA/DST Enterprise-E can still be had with some searching, and if AA/DST ever updates their Enterprise-E (play cover for battery compartment/LED lighting for fully lit warp nacelles,) you can pretty much bet that the demand for the Playmates ship will decrease even further.
Then there's the U.S.S. Voyager NCC-74656. If you can find one, expect the accepted form of payment to be one of your limbs, even in this economy Voyager is a rare item and commands a good deal of money. I admittedly am looking for a MISB Playmates Voyager, but I simply cannot justify paying over $200 for a ship that originally cost me $45--not when the proportioning is wrong, the detail is off, and the economy is this bad. Nevertheless, scalpers continue to profit off of this ship because its rare.
The "1701" figures that brought the Playmates line to its knees also still command money as do the Voyager figures, presumably because those are harder to find than most others.
So to sum things up, if an item is rare, it's probably going to sell, even in this market, but if an item was fairly common (TNG figures and an Enterprise-E anyone?) or unpopular, it's going to sit on ebay--even if the price is decent. This is just what I've observed though.
