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Re: Masterpiece Optimus Primal

Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2016 1:19 pm
by Sparky Prime
Shockwave wrote:I dunno, for me, looking at ~$120.00, I'm comparing that to the US TRU retail price for MP-10 and... yeah, I think MP-10 is more toy for the price. I don't see Primal having $120 worth of value. But then, I could probably say that for most of the MP figures, which is probably why I have so few of them.
Well if you're talking TRU prices... The Hasbro release is generally going to be cheaper than importing the Takara-Tomy version. I mean, on BBTS the Hasbro MP-10 (with a Vector Sigma gift set) is about $160, while by comparison, the Takara-Tomy MP-10 at $190 (or $206 with the collectors coin). So of course you'd be getting a better deal if you're looking at the Hasbro release of MP-10 compared to the Takara-Tomy MP Primal.

Re: Masterpiece Optimus Primal

Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2016 2:52 pm
by Shockwave
Sparky Prime wrote:BBTS the Hasbro MP-10 (with a Vector Sigma gift set) is about $160,
Yeah that's the one that I got. I had a preorder for the 189.99 version, but I didn't see any difference so I got the cheaper one. But, I'm still annoyed at not having just got one from TRU. I mean, I have three of them (Toys R Uses) within driving distance, there's damned reason I should have missed out on that. But, that's just how it goes with MP figures here. They either never get them in, or there's so few of them that they get scalped immediately. I'm also annoyed at missing out on Soundwave and the cassettes. I doubt I'll be as lucky to find him for only a $40 mark up like I did Prime.

Re: Masterpiece Optimus Primal

Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2016 3:34 pm
by Sparky Prime
Shockwave wrote:Yeah that's the one that I got. I had a preorder for the 189.99 version, but I didn't see any difference so I got the cheaper one.
The only difference is the cheaper one is a Hasbro release, while the other is the Takara-Tomy release.
But, I'm still annoyed at not having just got one from TRU. I mean, I have three of them (Toys R Uses) within driving distance, there's damned reason I should have missed out on that. But, that's just how it goes with MP figures here. They either never get them in, or there's so few of them that they get scalped immediately. I'm also annoyed at missing out on Soundwave and the cassettes. I doubt I'll be as lucky to find him for only a $40 mark up like I did Prime.
Yeah, I hear you. I've had the same problems with finding MP figures at TRU. I was only able to get Soundwave because my local TRU had two hidden at the customer service desk (I assume to prevent scalpers from getting them), and one of the employees asked me if I was looking for something. I never saw MP-10 or Rodimus/Hot Rod though.

Re: Masterpiece Optimus Primal

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2016 10:05 am
by Shockwave
Sparky Prime wrote:
Shockwave wrote:Yeah that's the one that I got. I had a preorder for the 189.99 version, but I didn't see any difference so I got the cheaper one.
The only difference is the cheaper one is a Hasbro release, while the other is the Takara-Tomy release.
But, I'm still annoyed at not having just got one from TRU. I mean, I have three of them (Toys R Uses) within driving distance, there's damned reason I should have missed out on that. But, that's just how it goes with MP figures here. They either never get them in, or there's so few of them that they get scalped immediately. I'm also annoyed at missing out on Soundwave and the cassettes. I doubt I'll be as lucky to find him for only a $40 mark up like I did Prime.
Yeah, I hear you. I've had the same problems with finding MP figures at TRU. I was only able to get Soundwave because my local TRU had two hidden at the customer service desk (I assume to prevent scalpers from getting them), and one of the employees asked me if I was looking for something. I never saw MP-10 or Rodimus/Hot Rod though.
Oh my God, that same thing happened to me for Grimlock! I did see plenty of Acid Storms though. Man, that thing actually shelfwarmed here.

Re: Masterpiece Optimus Primal

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2016 1:42 pm
by JediTricks
Sparky Prime wrote:
JediTricks wrote:I am looking at list prices on Anime-Export and HLJ, and doing so in Yen. List price is the MSRP.
So would that be the prices for them in Japan, without the cost of importing to the United States included? Because, again, other sites that are US based have the prices set higher than that.
Of course that's the case, that's why they're "list price" as previously mentioned. Discussing aftermarket prices that are affected by sources outside the initial item cost would only obfuscate the factual portion of the conversation. Demand in a foreign market, time from release window, retailer discount, other factors like that all cloud the things we can quantify. Takaratomy's MSRP list prices for these sorts of things clears all that out of the way to set a baseline from which to judge.

If you preorder them to ship to the US from HLJ, Anime-Export, Hobby Search, AmiAmi, or sites like that, you can pay less than Japanese list price even after shipping; if you wait until after it comes out then you usually pay more. After Hasbro released their first MP car and it cost more to get it through TRU than the original from Japan, it opened my eyes to a lot of this stuff -- even if my Sideswipe was a KO (the auction didn't say it was, but at the incredibly cheap price, I suspected it would be).
Shockwave wrote:I dunno, for me, looking at ~$120.00, I'm comparing that to the US TRU retail price for MP-10 and... yeah, I think MP-10 is more toy for the price. I don't see Primal having $120 worth of value. But then, I could probably say that for most of the MP figures, which is probably why I have so few of them.
Good point, the lights don't make up that gulf between values of the two.
Shockwave wrote:Oh my God, that same thing happened to me for Grimlock! I did see plenty of Acid Storms though. Man, that thing actually shelfwarmed here.
I only saw Grimlock once on shelves. I suspect TRU is happy to get rid of a significant bulk of their MP exclusives through Entertainment Earth at SDCC ahead of time rather than put up with collectors who can't make it to the show. I don't know that I've seen any Soundwaves, but I did see a lot of Ass Storms, and MP Bluestreak seems to be sticking around long enough to have earned himself a surprising $10 discount to $50 around here.

Re: Masterpiece Optimus Primal

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2016 4:01 pm
by Sparky Prime
JediTricks wrote:Of course that's the case, that's why they're "list price" as previously mentioned. Discussing aftermarket prices that are affected by sources outside the initial item cost would only obfuscate the factual portion of the conversation.
I'd have to say leaving out a little detail like importing costs is obscuring the factual portion of the conversation, not to mention making this a conversation about "list price" which is really beside the point here. Because either way, you're still going to be paying more than the MSRP to actually get the item from another country. Maybe it might be a bit cheaper overall to get it from a store in Japan, but we're still talking about it costing roughly in the $70-100 USD range for these figures. Even comparing the prices of Optimus Primal and the Autobot cars on anime-export... Primal is listed at $75 USD where as Tracks is $61, Ironhide is $70, Ratchet is $63... Some of those are only about $20 cheaper than BBTS's prices. Add in cost of importing them from the Japanese stores, and it's really not that big of a difference. And also, Primal's still not that significantly more expensive than the Autobot cars, being close to the same price range as them, which if you might recall, that was simply the point I was making in the first place.
Shockwave wrote:Oh my God, that same thing happened to me for Grimlock! I did see plenty of Acid Storms though. Man, that thing actually shelfwarmed here.
I got lucky with Grimlock. Someone posted a sighting on TFW2005 and I happened to see it right away, so I was able to get one. Good thing too, because I never saw another Grimlock on the shelves after that. Acid Wing I remember shelf warming here too. The Autobot cars Hasbro has released thus far haven't exactly been the most popular either. I've seen plenty of Prowl and Bluestreak.

Re: Masterpiece Optimus Primal

Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2016 1:07 pm
by JediTricks
Sparky Prime wrote:
JediTricks wrote:Of course that's the case, that's why they're "list price" as previously mentioned. Discussing aftermarket prices that are affected by sources outside the initial item cost would only obfuscate the factual portion of the conversation.
I'd have to say leaving out a little detail like importing costs is obscuring the factual portion of the conversation, not to mention making this a conversation about "list price" which is really beside the point here. Because either way, you're still going to be paying more than the MSRP to actually get the item from another country. Maybe it might be a bit cheaper overall to get it from a store in Japan, but we're still talking about it costing roughly in the $70-100 USD range for these figures. Even comparing the prices of Optimus Primal and the Autobot cars on anime-export... Primal is listed at $75 USD where as Tracks is $61, Ironhide is $70, Ratchet is $63... Some of those are only about $20 cheaper than BBTS's prices. Add in cost of importing them from the Japanese stores, and it's really not that big of a difference. And also, Primal's still not that significantly more expensive than the Autobot cars, being close to the same price range as them, which if you might recall, that was simply the point I was making in the first place.
Using list price negates all factors even when importing as they all have equal shipping costs based on weight/size, that's also why I factored the prices in Japanese yen since that would negate international currency exchange fluctuations. Your metric doesn't work as well because there are too many outside factors at play to judge it, you're comparing prices that were affected by exchange rates different from today, you're using a pre-order price against a post-release-window value, and then the prices you cited are each gauged by outside secondary market factors (Ironhide pricing has gone down below pre-order price on some retailers). Using the list prices in their local value clears the board of every single variable factor.

I haven't paid MSRP or above for any of the Masterpieces I've gotten from Japan:
- Wheeljack, list price 6500 yen, AE price 4550 yen, I paid 1090 yen shipping, 5640 yen total ($44.69 + $10.31, $55 total at the time, now it'd be $53.03 due to fluctuations)
- Tracks, list price 7500 yen, AE price 5250 yen, I paid 1860 yen for shipping (I splurged on faster shipping), 7110 yen total ($44.45 + $15.50, $59.95 total at the time, now it'd be $66.85 due to fluctuations)
- Hot Rod, list price 8000 yen, HLJ price 6440 yen, and split shipping with Shockwave so we'll tally it half at 1330 yen, 7770 yen total ($57.73 + $12.065, total after shipping is $69.80 rounded up, now it'd be $73.06 due to fluctuations)
- Shockwave, list price 16800 yen, HLJ price 13440 yen, and split shipping with Hot Rod so cost 1330 yen, 14770 yen total ($121.89 + $12.065, $133.96 total rounded up, now it'd be $138.87 due to fluctuations).

So as you can see, even with HLJ's higher price (which I justify as insurance on those purchases as HLJ is known to stand by purchases and I thought those 2 might need it - both were fine), I still spent less after shipping than MSRP would have had before local taxes. If I hadn't wussed out and just stuck with Anime-Export, Hot Rod was 5600 yen ($7.90 less than I paid) and Shockwave was 11760 ($15.80 less than I paid), but I would have probably paid at least $5 more in shipping between the 2.

Re: Masterpiece Optimus Primal

Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2016 3:29 pm
by Sparky Prime
JediTricks wrote:I haven't paid MSRP or above for any of the Masterpieces I've gotten from Japan:
Good for you. But again, everything you're saying is completely beside the point here. If it'd been necessary to give exact numbers I'd have done so in the first place, but that's not at all what I was talking about. The simple fact here is that Primal isn't that much more expensive than the Autobot cars, regardless of where you're shopping for them. Now prices vary depending on where you're shopping for them, but that doesn't change my point in the least.

Re: Masterpiece Optimus Primal

Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2016 8:07 pm
by JediTricks
Sparky Prime wrote:Good for you. But again, everything you're saying is completely beside the point here. If it'd been necessary to give exact numbers I'd have done so in the first place, but that's not at all what I was talking about. The simple fact here is that Primal isn't that much more expensive than the Autobot cars, regardless of where you're shopping for them. Now prices vary depending on where you're shopping for them, but that doesn't change my point in the least.
Yes he is that much more expensive than them. Their list price tells the whole story. You are comparing the jacked-up, post-release secondary-market pricing to a preorder price which is always lower. 12k yen is nearly double of Wheeljack's 6,500, that's the only thing that matters, the rest is apples and oranges because preorders don't cost the same as post-release orders. Anime-Export asked 8400 for their Optimus Primal preorder, 3600 yen less than list, $112.83 vs $78.98, a $33.85 difference; yet that preorder window is over, so now the prices start going up.

Re: Masterpiece Optimus Primal

Posted: Mon May 02, 2016 7:29 am
by Sparky Prime
JediTricks wrote:Yes he is that much more expensive than them. Their list price tells the whole story. You are comparing the jacked-up, post-release secondary-market pricing to a preorder price which is always lower. 12k yen is nearly double of Wheeljack's 6,500, that's the only thing that matters, the rest is apples and oranges because preorders don't cost the same as post-release orders. Anime-Export asked 8400 for their Optimus Primal preorder, 3600 yen less than list, $112.83 vs $78.98, a $33.85 difference; yet that preorder window is over, so now the prices start going up.
I love how you only point out Wheeljack as an example here, who currently has the lowest price of any of the MP Autobot cars on anime-export. But yet if we look at say, Ironhide, Primal is only $5 more. The listings for the Autobot cars on anime-export that I see ranges anywhere between $41 to $115 USD, yet here you are seemingly trying to spin that lowest price as the standard when that is not at all the average cost of the MP Autobot cars on that site, which is probably closer to $60. It isn't that big of a gap between Primal's price as you're trying to make it out to be. And once again, list price is irrelevant to the point I was making, so jacked-up secondary-market prices or not, my point remains the same. Regardless of where you are shopping for them, Primal is not that much more expensive than the cost of the Autobot cars, on average. What you're arguing is more of a technicality between different stores having different prices, but yet that doesn't change that on average Primal isn't that much more expensive than the average cost of the MP Autobot cars. And pre-order prices most certainly are not always lower.