Toywiz Clearance Sale 3rd & 4th Jan 2009: Post-mortem report thru the eyes of a rebel collector!


Well, I'm sure every collector in town (Klang Valley area) was looking forward to this much-hyped toys/collectibles mega sale given all the exposure and publicity it gained prior to the event. Yours truly was excited as well, having braved through the sleepy Saturday morning to force my hesitant eyes to wake up and instruct my body to take a shower in the wee hours of a weekend! My darling wife was ever so supportive, getting ready early as well as getting our baby son (who was already wide awake since 5.30 am in the morning!) all prepped up for the event. The picture to the left shows how the 'crime-scene' looked like at 10.55 am when we arrived. Yup, 10.55 am!! They started early.....none of the Toywiz staffs were available to explain this anomaly...heheh.


11.00-11.15 am: Anyway, it took only about another 10-15 minutes after that moment to get the small hall, where the arcade used to be, to be filled with hopeful toy collectors. The empty space (as shown in the 1st picture above) is now full with excited toy-collectors and curious passer bys. Yours truly had began to weasel himself through the posessed crowd amidst being pushed and stepped on.

11.15-11.30 am: At this point, I had already made my preliminary rounds, (without my wife who waited anxiously outside with our son!) and discovered that the 'hot items' were placed upfront i.e. The Transformers (TF) table/booth was set up at the right front side of the hall (picture to the right) and people were just pushing each other to find out what was on sale and what was insanely low-priced. They had some great items on sale. There were several MP-07's on sale as well (Masterpiece Thundercracker to those in the dark) as some TF G1 Encores figures. Several other figures from various TF genres were there on sale as well but the highlight of the TF booth was definitely the low-priced Encore Skylynx and Omega Supreme which were both priced at RM120 and RM230 each! I was already holding the double-pack Thundrcracker/Skywarp Encore box, going for RM150, in my hands a couple of times. Yours truly was tempted many many times, but managed to resist in view of expected purchases of Henkei figures and Sideshow Darth Vader in the near future....gotta save for those! Heheh.......talk about will power.
11.30-12.00 pm: Immediately next to the TF booth was where they put several 12" figures and maquettes/statues for sale. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get any pictures of those to be posted here. Figures from Sideshow (Star Wars in particular) and Hot Toys' The Dark Knight was the main highlight at the booth. The SW figures well fairly-priced as I witnessed a lot of collectors purchasing Anakin Skywalker (the red/yellow-eyed Sith version) as it was priced at RM150. They had Qui Gonn, both Anakin (regular & Sith), Darth Maul (stocks snapped up real fast even at RM250!), Leia in Boushh Disguise, Han Solo (Bespin version) and Luke Skywalker (ceremonial version). Several The Dark Knight figure was going at RM550 per piece, and my guess was that these were kept in stock specially to cater for the event...and true enough, even at those premium price, they were gone in 60 seconds. Okay, I am exaggerating...but they were all snapped up by the time I made my second rounds to the booth. Several statues of Iron Man and some other Marvel characters were able to find new homes to go back to, gosh...even those were selling like hot cakes at prices above RM1K!
Across the 12" figure booths was the Star Wars booth, where basic 3.75' figures and some vehicles were on sale. *Sigh*, wished I had captured some pictures here, but all the shoving made it impossible at that point. The Malay chap who manned the booth was friendly enough to strike a conversation while he happily opened the larger boxes which housed the figures. The hot items from this booth were the A-Wing fighter, went for RM70; and the Commemorative SW coin album which came with a Darth Vader figure...which went for RM25!!! Further inside the hall, one can clearly see other random figures from McFarlane's line i.e. some military figures, some Hannah-Barbara cartoon lines, some from the Dragons line. Figures from the movie 300 was on sale too, with King Leonidas being the hot item, selling for RM45. Given its rarerity, RM45 is quite a steal. Again, I was tempted to purchase yet another Leonidas (maybe for opening and display purposes) but I refused to bow down to my inner-demons and marched on further to the other stalls.
Some old Marvel Legends sets were going for about RM220 each, if I can recall properly, the MODOK and MOJO sets were the only ones for sale (which I already own). They even had some random figures from the Planet Hulk series....but i wasn't interested in Hasbro's ML line, so I moved on to the next booth. Next up, I found an abundance of Hot Wheels' vehicles on sale. They must be pretty cheap as I saw a lot of collectors buying in busloads! Heheh....othe random figures which I encountered were some HALO figures, some Batman 5" figures from Mattel and figures from The Simpsons cartoon.
12.00-12.30 pm: Then my turn came when I had to stay outside and let my wife do her bidding/buying. By this time, the crowd had subsided a bit allowing her to gracefully make her way to the Barbie section located across the TF booth. The picture to the right shows where the Barbie booth was. She wasted no time at all by snapping up several limited edition Barbie dolls from the Grease movie which she had been eyeing for quite some time...at insanely low prices!!! All that plus a zodiak (Sagittarius) Barbie made her haul very impressive indeed for someone who didn't expect to find any gem at the sale! Well, at least one of us had some fun, heheh.
12.30-1.00pm: Starting to feel a bit frustrated for not finding some of the Sideshow figures that I was looking for, I marched right back inside after my wife had finished with her rounds. This time I went straight to the SW booth as I had been wanting to get a few of the figures which were going well below the cost price...some were even RM10/RM15!!! The results were quite astonishing as I came out with 5 items, despite reassuring myself that I didn't want anything from the booth before!! Who could resist SW items which were going at an average of less than RM20 each?! The picture to the right shows my relatively 'small' haul at the Star Wars booth. Heheheh.....my damages were below RM100....the catch of the day was definitely the commemorative coin album which was bought for RM25!!!

So, collectively both my wife and I spent wayyy below what we envisioned. Which is definitely NOT a bad thing! Our haul together is as the picture to the right. Again, I was a bit dissapointed that they didn't put up some Sideshow figures which I had intend to get. Another drawback was that some figures were not priced as 'low' as most of the crowd was expecting......at least that was what I gathered from the people who stopped by and chat in the middle of the hall!! Heheh...eaves-dropping! Managed to find a fellow collector along the way but nevertheless failed to find others. But all in all, a joyous event to say the least.
For the record, we went back to the 'scene of the crime' briefly the next day on Sunday (on the 2nd day of the sale), as I had been tipped-off by a Toywiz informant that they might be re-stocking their 12" figures with the ones not on sale on Saturday. I was excited as I had come to the sale to find several specific Sideshow figures! Sadly, when I arrived, the same stock were on sale...and to compound my misery, I was told that no new stock would be brought in. *Sigh!*
Side story - In the wake of my frustrations with the lack of new Sideshow figures at the Toywiz sale

This was when I decided to hit the flea market throughout Amcorp Mall just to look see what might be on sale to console myself. I finally found a booth where the seller was selling a Hasbro 12" Count Dooku. Mighty impressive for a mass-market figure which was produced way back in 2002! I had no 2nd thoughts when the seller uttered the word "RM30 only!!". Until Sideshow produces a Count Dooku figure, this shall serve as my primary 12" separatist leader for the interim!! Heheh...

Comments

Shaun said…
IMHO, your last score of the days is definitely the coolest.
Armand said…
Yup yup! The Dooku figure is definitely a mighty fine score my friend.

Some dude posted pictures of him D.I.Ying his very own Count Dooku on onesixthwarrior.com using the exact figure you have taking the head and some of the wardrobe and bashing it with a medicom body( or was it a sideshow one).
The Rebel said…
Heheh, thanks Shaun & Armand...I thought so myself...the best catch of the day didn't come from the 'actual' sale itself!! :p
Mat`amiT said…
cantik menarik trtarik kau mmg da bomb