MarketWatch: 2020 Prop Store Toys, Comic Art & Collectibles Auction

Pete writes:

 Well, with a new year comes the second iteration of the Prop Store Toys, Comic Art & Collectibles Auction out of their Los Angeles office. Like last year we were treated to a full color catalog featuring a plethora of items from the Star Wars Saga, including vintage and modern, as well as cast and crew pieces. In short, they ran the gamut with the assortment that was brought to market for this event.


The layout of the catalog was augmented slightly, but still offered a range of information not just on bidding and the auctions, but the items themselves and where some of the more niche pieces fit into the bigger picture of Star Wars and movie collectibles and toys.

The presence of more items from the Howard Kazanjian collection was a nice addition to the already robust catalog. These cast and crew items mixed with the occasional toy or lunch box are an extremely important part of the Star Wars movie ethos. Howard being the producer of Return of the Jedi and working hand in hand on so many key details of the production brought another level of validation for the auction and helped separate it from many of the other large scale auctions taking place these days.  

The online interface for the event was good overall. All live auctions have some delay, but this was pretty good both performance-wise and functionally. The test lot is a great idea and shows that no matter how mainstream online auctions are, auction houses still use a lot of tactics to keep people engaged, as the ringing of the bell was fun to watch.

Brandon Alinger, the proprietor of the Los Angeles office, gave a good kick off and overview and the hand off to the auctioneer was good. He brought great energy to a long day. In fact, some of the last 100 lots were some of the most interesting of the day to watch.

Enough with that though. Let’s look through a sampling of some of the cool vintage Star Wars pieces to show up in this auction.

JAWA COLLECTION

We’re going to kick off with all things Jawa. One of the if not the most special part of this auction was the sale of the vintage Jawa collection. From the 6:1 and other coin related items to the EP and first shot, there were some special pieces. In fact there was enough to start 2-3 strong focuses just in this auction alone. Let’s look at the highlights. For ease of pulling this together I am listing everything in hammer prices, thus these prices do not include the 25% buyers premium that was added onto final hammer prices.

In the world of coins this was truly a cool experience. The ability to find all of these pieces together will never be duplicated. All of the 6:1 pieces did well, and by that I mean that even in a slightly down market, items like these were obtainable by a large chunk of collectors -- although the supply is very limited. We won’t cover all parts of the coin set, but it’s worth mentioning having a nice internal QC copy of the coin artwork with several spots of live ink/stamps was a nice touch, not discounting the die sets themselves which really rounded out the collection. In this situation we’re keeping it to the big four.

-        6:1 Coin Hardcopy Stage 1 - $6,000

-        6:1 Coin Hardcopy Tooling Master Stage 2 - $6,000

-        6:1 Soft Copy - $6,000

-        Etching Plates - $6,500

Moving past the coins we have a great variety of 2D and 3D preproduction items. The simple but rarer Land of the Jawas box flat was one of those pieces that you didn’t need in there, but just fit so well with the rest of the items.   

Looking at figures, there were a good selection of MOCs from around the world, but the piece that stands out the most is the Vinyl Cape Jawa Engineering Pilot. This was by far one of the most surprising pieces of the day and saw an incredible final price.    

In addition to just Jawas, we got a great selection of the Jawa Limo itself: the Sandcrawler. Both the EP and artwork were incredible pieces to see, but the highlight of the whole Jawa set has to be the first shot Sandcrawler. Whether it’s the details it was lacking or the sweet blue door that it had, the first shot Sandcrawler was the king of the Jawa auctions and brought an incredible price for a unique and exceptional piece of vintage Star Wars history.

-        Land of Jawas Boxflat - $1,700

-        VCJ EP - $10,500

-        3-Pack Backdrop Concept - $6,500

-        Sandcrawler EP - $5,250

-        Sandcrawler First Shot - $17,000

ROCKET FIRING BOBA FETT

Like other auction houses such as Hakes, this round Prop Store found themselves with a Rocket Firing Boba Fett, and in all honesty it was the first “mainstream” example to come to one of these large scale auctions over the past few years. Thus, this wasn’t as much about seeing Prop Store’s presentation on the item but more about how much it was going for and how aggressive people went after it.

Comparing this piece to the Hake’s sale last November is like comparing an apple to a watermelon, but alas that’s what seems to be the mindset among a lot of collectors. There may be some price adjusting going on in the lower and middle ends, but this really bucks that trend. If anything impacted this piece negatively it was the fact that it was being sold within a week of the DOW having record losses and a potential global pandemic with the COVID-19 virus, as that’s the stuff that people that buy these pieces are looking at: the former more than the latter.  

Nonetheless this was a great auction for a great piece, and appropriately ended with a price point of $75,000 ($93,750 w/BP). Not breaking the 6 figure number, but still a hell of a showing for a non-painted, non-AFA90 example of the L-Slot Rocket Fett.

Rocket Firing - L-SLot Boba Fett First Shot AFA 85 - $75,000

A FEW OTHER PIECES TO NOTE

There were several other noteworthy auctions and here are a few of my personal favorites. Starting out was one of the most fun to watch auctions of the day: the R2-D2 Playdoh Dynacast hardcopy.   Measuring under 2 inches tall, he was one of the smallest of the day, but with the buyers premium cracked the $1,000 mark.

R2-D2 Playdoh Dyancast Figure - $900

Revenge of the Jedi proofs have been all over the board the last 5 years, with Fetts pulling in $8,500 in the last 12 months. Thus it was disappointing to see an AFA90 example of Fett not move. On the flip side we saw a great example of Ben Kenobi sell for a healthy sum in this auction. 

Ben Kenobi Revenge of the Jedi Proof - $2,000

It should have its own section, but given it didn’t sell it’s hard to give it too much of the limelight, but it goes without saying that it was very cool to see the 12” Lando come up for auction. Falling short of its reserve like many auctions of the day, this was a special piece and just didn’t have the right buyer this day. 

Lando ESB Unreleased 12” Action Figure (Headless)

For the full review on prices realized visit their site.

With another successful auction in the books, this hopefully cements this as an annual or even better bi-annual event for the Los Angeles location.

--Pete

MarketWatch: It's Raining First Shots

Pete writes:

Hello Space Freaks -- with a plethora of 3D vintage pre-production hitting the market, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss the influx of first shot figures that have come to market over the past few months. 

The back half of 2019 was a period that saw the second iteration of the IC Nashville event along with the evergreen shows such as Kane County, Cincinnati, and Columbus -- all of which had record attendance this past fall. It was also a period of time where the post Celebration woes finally wore off, and the hobby was back in its normal swing of things.  

This month we’re doing a special overview on first shots and their widespread availability through eBay, power brokers, and auction houses. It’s a unique opportunity to look at several types of first shots. From complete painted pieces to head and torso pulls, there has been a lot pre-production plastic on the market in the past six months.  

I felt it was a good time to talk about the topic given the overall growth of this segment in the past 4 years, as it’s had an arc/growth trajectory that surpasses even the general growth trend we’ve seen with other areas of the hobby. After a bit of a tumultuous turn through the Hake’s auction earlier this fall, I felt it was also the time to discuss this segment in terms of its viability and long term value, as it’s one of the few that’s had some significant fall off in a relatively short amount of time, resetting a new norm that some other areas of the hobby haven’t seen. The biggest things to remember on first shots and their performance in the market are:

1. Production like first shots are not as desirable as they were the last 24 months, especially with characters that have high numbers in their known population (Cantina Aliens being one example). They are still commanding good prices for good condition, but loose and rough condition items have really suffered.

2     2. Unpainted and unique first shots are still appreciating in value, gaining in popularity and still seeing some growth year over year in the hobby. Where one area is contradicting, another is gaining steam.

If you’re new to the hobby or just need a refresher, here’s a quick overview:

What is a first shot?

To quote one of the Holy Trinity of the Star Wars collecting world, “First shots are among the very first plastic figures to come from the steel molds” -- this has always served as the base to the core of this question, as the true place of a first shot in the production process is the biggest point of misconception in the hobby today. They can come in many forms, painted, unpainted, partially painted, or even in an early stage with some small variances needed, including alterations to the mold. This is part of the appeal to many collectors, especially character focus collectors, as many strive to show the progression of the toy line and production process.    

Unlike hardcopies, these are built with the final joints in place vs. pinned in place, in fact to the untrained eye a painted first shot figure may not look all that dissimilar from its production counterpart being produced in the same material. Thus, sometimes the lack of copyright info is the only way to identify a potential first shot figure with the naked eye.

In general, finding a first shot for your collection is an obtainable milestone for most vintage Star Wars collectors. This coupled with the reasons above have led to first shot figures gaining in popularity in the past few years, and with growth in popularity usually comes price appreciation. For the official Archive Lexicon entry on first shots click here.

First Shots by the Numbers:

Although they are among the oldest, some of the characters from Star Wars are the most plentiful of any first shots to hit the market. Looking strictly at characters, Boba Fett (roughly 100) and the Cantina Creatures (40+) represent nearly 15% of all first shots ever found (see below), explaining why we see such a large population of SW characters vs. the later lines which were more robust in character count. With SW the rarity comes in the other characters, with Death Star Droid and R5-D4 funnily being a couple of the rarest. 

As we get into later lines, variation increases and populations become more sporadic, especially with the ESB and ROTJ releases. Turning the corner, the last 15 POTF (Paploo and Lumat are counted with ROTJ) have varying degrees. Truly the next significantly large population on a per figure basis comes from the Ewoks and Droids series, and oddly enough more so with unproduced characters than some of the production figures from the line. 

As with any numbers that I post there is a margin of error. This aggregation is based on multiple sources, known examples, graded databases, and sold examples from the past several years. With that background covered and the quantities reviewed, let’s look at some of the great pieces to come to the market in the past months.

SW First Shots

Regardless of high quantities of a few, some of the other figures in the First 21 are the most difficult to track down of any series. Characters like R5-D4 and Death Star Droid are naturally rare, but the desirability of the First 12 drives the demand up on the entire gallery of figures.  

Cantina Aliens Set of 4 (with Blue Snaggletooth) - $32,750 Listed - eBay Listing

In addition to the set of four, individual examples of these figures have come up for sale through multiple channels over the latter part of the year, including Facebook and Hake’s Auction House. To keep things simple, we’ve just covered the Hake’s results below. Any other sale of the items previously mentioned sold below the following in terms of overall price.

Greedo - AFA 60 - $2,596 - Hake's Fall 2019 Listing

85 or better estimated $5K+or better by this measure.

Walrusman - AFA 85 - $2,758 - Hake's Fall 2019 Listing

Hammerhead - AFA 85 - $3,540 - Hake's Fall 2019 Listing

Blue Snaggletooth - AFA 75 - $4,130 - Hake's Fall 2019 Listing

85 or better estimated $8K+ by this measure.

Given that we are talking about first shots, it would be a miss not to mention the item below, a nice variant making it one of the few rare RF Fetts out there.

Rocket Firing Boba Fett - $185,850 

Hake's Fall 2019 Listing

ESB First Shots

The First Shots that have been found for the ESB series include some of the more sought after pieces in the pantheon of preproduction items, the series expanded upon what was built in ANH, and because of that many new facets of the hobby were created in the ESB line, which has lead to some very unique pieces.

Luke Skywalker Hoth - AFA 80 - $12,500 Listed Price eBay Listing

Luke Skywalker Hoth (Unpainted) - AFA 85+ - $9,750 - eBay Listing

AT-AT Commander (Unpainted) - AFA 85 - $5,500 - eBay Listing

ROTJ First Shots

Although one of the later series, first shots from the ROTJ toy line tend to be few and far between. More common examples like the AT-ST Driver, Lando Skiff, and Admiral Ackbar are exceptions to the rule.

AT-ST Driver - AFA 80 - $5,500 Listed Price - eBay Listing

Boushh (Tan and Brown) - AFA 80 - $7,750 Listed - eBay Listing

Boushh (Tan with Tan Crotch) - AFA 75 - $7,750 - eBay Listing

Prune Face (Alt Dark Cape with Grey Gun) - $7,750 -  eBay Listing

Rebel Commando AFA85 - $7,750 Listed - eBay Listing

Lando Skiff Torso Pull - AFA 90 - $2,500 - eBay Listing

Admiral Ackbar - AFA 90 - Clear Torso Pull - $1,550 Listed - eBay Listing

POTF First Shots

With hands getting heavy at Kenner towards the end of the Vintage era, several examples of most POTF figures have made it into the collecting market, including favorites like the Charcoal Anakin Skywalker and the below takes on the color pallets used in some of the Ewoks.

Warok Dark Brown - AFA 75+ - $7,750 Listed Price - eBay Listing

Romba Dark Brown - $7,750 - eBay Listing

Amanaman AFA 85 - $7,950 - eBay Listing

Ewoks and Droids

Some of the most sought after first shots in any toy line are the unproduced 2^nd Series of the Droids and Ewoks figures. Great sculpting along with limited availability of some key characters have led to this being a very strong segment of the hobby. The examples that we’re seeing here are interesting as they're early unpainted examples which tend to be rarer than their finished counterparts.

Logray Ewoks Unpainted First Shot - $1,800 - Cantina Collectibles

Jord Dusat First Shot - AFA Q80 - $7,500 - eBay Listing

Chief Chirpa Unpainted UDE - $4,900 - Cantina Collectibles

Jann Tosh Unpainted First Shot - $5,000 - AFA 85 - eBay Listing

So as it can be seen the market for first shots is very healthy even after some larger discoveries and an increase in availability over the past few years. There are only so many pieces out there and they remain a hot segment of the hobby. Future growth potential will depend on a lot of factors (more so with the franchise as a whole, vs. this specific segment) however that might be the category continues to see strong demand and relatively short shelf lives when paired with the appropriate pricing and audience.

Until next time...Wampa Wampa,
Pete

Summer 2019 MarketWatch

Pete writes:

 Hello Space Freaks!

 As we melt our way through Summer let’s take a look back at how the market has been shaping up since the end of the Spring and into the season of collecting.



The Celebration Effect:

As with every year of a Celebration, the surrounding months were very light in terms of major market activity. Average prices dropped, availability dropped, and this is to be expected. When you take 100,000 Star Wars fans and drop them together in a giant convention center, some sales are going to happen and budgets are going to be blown. This year I think the effect was even greater than in years past, in part due to the lack of things to do at the convention center. There was no time spent line queuing overnight, and a lottery system that basically left a large part of the audience with no access to stages led to more time on the convention floor.

The market has finally picked up following this typical slump. Recent auction house sales along with some treats that hit the market in May, June, and July led to a good rebound from the lull taking place post Celebration Chicago. Here are some of the highlights.

EBAY:

Ben Kenobi Meccano MOC - $1,800 - eBay listing

One of the more common of the Meccano figures, here we have a great example of Ben with a decent price overall given its condition. 

Radio Controlled R2-D2 AFA 80 - $2,200 - eBay listing

A great piece and tough to find in good condition, the RC R2-D2 is one of the truly great one-off toys in the vintage Star Wars toy line. A strong price on a piece that doesn’t come up as often as they did historically, showing condition is everything these days.

Loose Set of 77 Complete - $2,225 - eBay listing

We don’t cover loose pieces that often on the MarketWatch unless they're of unique origins. When full sets turn up I try to pop them in here just to keep track of where the market has been. In this case, the market still seems to be creeping up on loose figures, as with no rarities or POTF figures this was a bit of a high point at an average of nearly $30 per figure.

ESB Red Six Pack Set MIB - $3,170 - eBay listing

This was a very good price for what was an overall strong piece. Like almost all boxed multi-packs the box itself was where the majority of condition issues came in with one large tear, but overall solid condition structurally.   

Darth Vader 12 Back AFA 95 - $6,100 - eBay listing

Like some of the Hake’s auctions last year we have a crazy price being realized for a one of the nicest MOCs out there. Getting the grade of 90 or higher is not an easy task with the vintage Star Wars line and thus these mint condition items will always bring a premium. This is one case where we do see some depreciation from the item's sale at Hake’s last year.

Death Star AFA 85 - $6,855 - eBay listing

One of the holy grails for collectors of sealed items, the Death Star Playset is always a favorite among collectors. Here we have an immaculate example of this beast of a playset. Given the size and rarity of sealed examples it’s hard to say that this is over-priced. Rather, I think it’s about right, but like many things is seeing a bit of a premium.

First 21 on Star Wars Cardbacks - $12,600 

Finding a nice set of the first 21 on Star Wars cardbacks is one of the most common runs collectors seek. And for good reason -- they were some of the most heavily produced toys in the vintage line.   Even with that information in mind it was nice to see what was still a very palatable selling price on a nice set with an average of $600 per figure.

HAKE'S

Rocket-Firing Boba Fett L-Slot Prototype AFA 85 - $112,926 - auction listing
First off, I won’t infer that people were on some type of substance while bidding on this auction, as there are always outliers. I’m always excited to see things reach new heights as it means things are healthy in the hobby, but there was something almost off-putting about how the Rocket-Firing Fett auction ended, as unlike the last auction this was the more common unpainted L-Slot.

Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter MISB AFA 85 - $19,989 - auction listing
Another piece of noteworthiness was an original DV Tie Fighter, which came just shy of breaking $20K!

Both high grade examples went for well beyond estimates and stood out against the rest of the gallery of items.

On the inverse we did see a few good deals that night as well.

Anakin Skywalker Charcoal First Shot AFA 85 - $4,802 - auction listing
Although high end estimates on this piece were in the 5-figure range, this example of a Charcoal First Shot Anakin Skywalker failed to break the $5K mark with a modest selling price of $4,802. Anyone looking for a great deal on a first shot, well you just missed an opportunity…  Given $7K+ selling prices for the more common first shots in the past year, it’s difficult to see why this example didn’t pull in a better price.

That’s it for this time, but we’ll have more updates on the market and other topics coming soon.

Wampa Wampa,

Pete