1. This one is my own personal end game of Star Wars collecting. I have no kids, and the young ones in my family have no interest in Star Wars. I have original toys from when I started collecting in the '70s up to new releases, and want to enjoy them while I'm alive. My concern is if I leave them to a family member or friend, it'll end up on American Pickers being sold for pennies. It would be very time-consuming to sell the collection off piecemeal; however, were I to sell the whole thing as a lot I'd get flippers offering thousands less than what it's worth. Ideas?
--Chris

My not-a-joke joke answer is "leave it to me, I'll take good care of it!"

If you know someone who will respect your stuff, and will treat it as the treasure it is after you're gone? Leave it to that person. Maybe it's a local collector you haven't met yet, or a dealer who can sell it to his network of customers. But after you're gone, your stuff is going to be redistributed to the wind. It will only be a complete collection while you're here - then it will go to its next owner, and hopefully not Goodwill or the landfill. (No/some shade to thrift stores - they do not do a good job keeping items intact.)

I would recommend finding other collectors that might appreciate your stuff, or a collector who would rehome it. If someone has the patience to fix them up to sell on eBay, or to find collectors who want a piece, that is as much as I could hope for any of my stuff.

I've got a vague roadmap of how I plan to "wind down" as time goes on. I've downsized some non-Star Wars collections in the past decade, and my plan for retirement is to start unloading stuff in my mid to late 60s so a) I have something to do, b) I can bring in money, and c) whoever finds the body has a little less work to do. If you have stuff you know isn't worth hanging on to, maybe start the process early.

Unless you're famous, nobody will pay you what the complete collection is worth or keep it intact. If I had a chance to buy the Henry Rollins music collection in the future and install it so I can see it all, I would. Or Rancho Obi-Wan. Could I afford it? No. But, maybe you could see if Rancho Obi-Wan could use some of your stuff - and maybe include some sort of documentation of provenance or something.

Most collectors who have ever bought collections - myself included in a few very small cases - will generally pay a fraction of the value of the entire set. Then they'll keep the pieces they want, and find new homes for the rest. Even if you get someone to take the whole collection, the connection will not remain whole. I've bought (and been given) a few items here and there as a group, and I don't think any of those shipments is intact. The duplicates get sold, some items stick around, it's how the game goes. If you want any control of where it ends up, particularly a hopefully loving forever-home, it's probably going to be your responsibility to sell things off piece by piece while you're still here.

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2. Do you think collector focus has ruined The Vintage Collection? The packaging, the demand for maximum articulation as well as perfect sculpts and paint, the ridiculous prices Hasbro is asking. Looking at the new INT-4 and Imperial Warlord set - there's a certain irony in a ship based on a line of lower-priced products costing nearly 100 bucks. Not to mention endless reissues of the PowerFX X-Wing mould. How many collectors buy at these prices and how many wait for Ross or Ollie's? Is it time for Hasbro to look at the line and take a new approach?
--Charlie

Anyone saying they know what all collectors want - myself included - is lying. There are teenagers and 20somethings that only buy The Black Series. There are lifers that only want the very best 3 3/4-inch they can buy. There are lifers who want to go back to Retro because that's what brought them here. Some people want video game figures, some people want nothing but vehicles. And many need it all. Just defining what style collectors want is a challenge - Hasbro gave us too many options. And Disney quintupled down with more shows, new movies, and other stories where not every group can agree what is good. If you were in charge at Hasbro, you would probably alienate half the people with the best of intentions. We're in an era where some adults find "toys" off-putting.

The big problem now is you can't make the entire market happy. Hardcore collectors will never be happy or satisfied - especially online. We post quibbles in reviews not because they bother us, but we have to acknowledge we are aware of them lest the more pedantic mention it in the comments. We will always find a way to make a thing better, but we're less concerned about cost. My hunch is many collectors will buy "good enough" figures, but only a limited number of fans will buy "premium" figures - and Star Wars is currently a "premium" brand. $10-$15 is a fair bit of money, and when you see what Mattel offers for that price, you might say "who needs ankle joints?" Their lower-price Jurassic World and DC Comics figures fly off the shelves. The collector stuff, it varies.

I don't know if the INT-4 is "worth it" yet, but it does seem a bit pricier than the Landspeeder in terms of capacity and gear. I think you can see this as Hasbro trying to cater to Disney (new movie), the olds (mini-rig), very online collectors demanding highest-premium collectibles, and those who need screen accuracy. I'd be happy with a redeco of the 1980s ship with a Retro figure. The new pricing is what it is. The amount of money we've spent is kind of ridiculous, so at some point I'm sure a lot of fans are just looking for a reason to say "I gotta stop spending $30."

Toy companies need to make money on their old tooling to be profitable. Making a new mold is expensive, and sometimes you have some popular items that you can sell forever (Yahtzee) to subsidize stuff that may not be in market very long (Hasbro Street Fighter Movie.) The last few X-Wings have sold pretty well - Blue Leader's was outright hard to get. The Red 5 one from 2019 sold well and was recently rerun. It remains to be seen how the Kenner colors one will do... but I want it. I also doubt there's much opportunity to double-dip on the INT-4.

I kind of like what they did with the X-Wing. The PowerFX 1998 one was compared favorably to Icons Prop Replicas of its day, and the little improvements over time are largely pretty neat. I may be wrong but I don't recall seeing many of these marked down - ships tend to do well. I'm waiting to see if anyone gets the Epic one on sale. I bought one at regular price, it's wonderful.

Hasbro has no incentive to change what it does if it still sells. If fans suddenly stop buying something, things will change fast. Plastic-free packaging was something where fans saw it, said "NOPE" and Hasbro changed it back for future items. Hasbro has been doing pretty much the same thing for fans since 2020, so as far as product goes I have to believe it's doing well enough to stay on course.

We don't know how much is being blown out to Ollie's or Ross. Some, sure, but is it 5% of the run? 10%? Does it impact the bottom line, or is some of that baked-in to securing a bigger quantity discount from the factory? I have no idea, they don't tell me these things. I think Hasbro (mostly) knows what they're doing, and Disney has made some requests that are... well, you've seen them. All I can say is buy what you like at full price, and wait for a deal on the rest. Show your support the only way that matters - with cold, hard cash. If I made a toy that kept selling well enough to keep me in business, but some fans complained, why on Earth would I change direction?

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FIN

Hey! Listen! I need questions for September. Email me with Q&A in the subject line. So far I've got one.

I'm writing 5 toy reviews a week for 16bit.com, 2 (on rare occasions, more) most weeks for Galactic Hunter, and this Q&A column. Questions are slow, but I'll probably wind up writing 48 Q&A columns and close to 365 figure reviews. That's a lot of work! If you like any of it, I invite you to kick in $1 to my Patreon to cover hosting, domain name, and broken computer expenses. I hope what I do is useful for you and other collectors, and I'm not here to get rich off it - but if I can get help keeping things going, I'm happy to give you my time. (And hopefully, $1 is small enough that you won't feel a bite. If 5 or 10 more people can kick in another $1, that's going to help me over the year.)

I don't have any AI involved in making this stuff. Everything is photographed, written, and/or otherwise made by me at this point.

People have been asking when to expect more reveals. Soon! I hope. October should be good for it, as both New York Comic Con and Hasbro's presumably soon-to-be-ending 10/27 event. (Hasbro is located at 1027 Newport Ave., but will be moving next year.) They can also reveal things at any time. We're a little behind in The Vintage Collection pre-orders. Also, if Hasbro hopes to have anything on-shelf for the February 50th anniversary screenings of Star Wars, we'll probably see some pre-orders very soon. (No, I don't know when.)

While I'm sure this sounds depressing, I think it's consistent with our mutual obsession to keep expectations in check for just about anything - especially with the 2027 toy offering. Is it a good year, or a bad one? From a certain point of view, it's whatever you feel like. The Black Series went all-out on some prequel aliens and genuinely surprising versions of cartoon characters, such as a young Christopher Lee as Count Dooku or Droids cartoon figures. It was not a great year for new, original trilogy guys - but most years aren't. At least there were notable figures to be had, depending on your taste. The Vintage Collection was pretty much in the same boat, with a lot of success from the prequels and new media. It was great to get a wide release of Greedo and a new General Veers, but the classics were largely neglected. The Retro Collection was a mere six characters. One of the downsides of the franchise finding new fans and exploring new stories is that no year - not even next year - will have only your favorite scale, with only your favorite movie(s). That era is over, we have to share the pegs with the new people.

It doesn't mean you can't find cool things. It does mean that you just have to set reasonable expectations as to what you will/won't buy. I'm a fan of, well, a lot of toys. But I very rarely go for a complete collection because the cost to do so frequently means I'll be spending hundreds of dollars on repaints of toys (and shipping) that might not get me anything other than "complete set" bragging rights. That may not get us anywhere positive anymore. I'm sure we all have a few dozen? hundred? figures that live in our homes out of the goal of "collect them all!" which is probably impossible or not worthwhile for any new fan. With only 108 Retro figures, it's possible. With over 400 Vintage figures, plus unnumbered ones and HasLab rarities, it might add up unless you buy someone's collection on the cheap on eBay. I have bought incomplete collections over the years, but I assume absorbing someone's complete set is a pretty unrewarding experience. If you can just have everything immediately, what's the point unless you're going to play with it? But I digress.

I will occasionally dabble in other lines. Lately, it's usually small lines or specific slices of a line. Hasbro's Marvel Legends 375 Collection was short, robust enough for my needs, fun, and cheap - you could even start buying it today for peanuts. It's a great line to go out and track down because it won't cost you a lot. I found the same to be largely true of Mattel's Jurassic World Reimagined and Jurassic Park 93 lines recently. Many items are at (or below) SRP, and the entire thing takes up a couple of shelves. That's sort of what helped make Kenner's original Star Wars line fun to collect in the 1980s. You only had about 116 figures, and if you skipped foreign ones, or cartoon ones, you could probably amass a pretty nice stash of toys for an acceptable price until about 25 years ago. It does not behoove us to have everything anymore, especially if you're picking up things you don't want. I'm not saying to quit, but I am saying your future in this hobby will be improved if you can say "no" when you just know an item isn't going to do much other than occupy space in a corner. You'll want that room for some really, really good stuff that's coming down the road instead.

--Adam Pawlus

Got questions? Email me with Q&A in the subject line now! I'll answer your questions as soon as time (or facts) permit.

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