So, What's It Worth?

Every now and again, my wife, an in law or friend will look at my collection and ask "What's your collection worth?". My wife asks because she's after me to get the collection insured. She's also eager to sell them in the unfortunate event that I die. I've already told her that my collection gets buried with me, even if I die at age 90.

I've never felt comfortable putting a value on my collection. To me, they're priceless. There's also the fact that most of my collection is from my childhood, which renders them near worthless in today's market. I'll explain.

There were two days of the year I looked forward to and dreaded the most: Christmas and my birthday. Both days meant loads of new toys. Both days also meant my dad pulled out the engraver.

Oh, the engraver! I hated seeing my dad pull that thing out of it's box! If I get a new figure now and close my eyes, I can hear the sound of that damn thing turning on. You just don't know how much I hated that thing.

This is how it usually went: I'd unwrap my gift, see what I got, open it and play with it for a bit. Then my dad would take it and turn the damnable machine on and butcher my precious, precious gifts. Any toy I got between 1983-1988 got engraved. Usually, it was just my initials. If there was room, my full name went on it. Same thing for my brother's toys. It didn't matter if it was a Star Wars figure, vehicle, Hot Wheels car, Master of The Universe, Transformer or any other toy, it got engraved. Even my bikes got the treatment!

Behold!  No one can ever deny that this was mine!

What my parents told me, each and every time they did this, was that it was to prevent theft. What does an eight year old care about theft? I was told that if someone took my toys from me, I could easily identify as mine. Like I cared. My toys were getting ruined!

Even Ramjet's missiles weren't exempt!

But what do you know? It actually worked! One day a neighbor kid tried to steal my Huffer. My mom went next door, talked to his mom, and his mom made him bring out Huffer, claiming that her son wouldn't steal. Lo and behold, my freaking initials were on it! Huzzah!

It's like Primus tattooed them

A few years later, another kid tried to steal my Protectobots. I had the limbs at the time, but not Hotspot. That was contentious. The kid claimed that he didn't have them, so I had to enlist another kid to verify that they were in his room. Once it was verified, I dropped the hammer and got my Protectobots back. Don't steal my stuff.

I guess if your name started with an "A" you could.

I finally convinced my parents to stop marking my toys when I was in the fifth grade. That was good timing as I got Powermaster Optimus Prime, Scorponk and Fortress Maximus that year. The trade off was that I couldn't take my toys out of the house. Any toy I bought was off limits from engraving and the no outside rule, which I didn't have a problem with.

If the engraver wasn't handy, there was always the laundry marker

So whenever someone asks me what my collection is worth, I usually just smile and say "a lot." I never point out that if I lost any of my childhood toys, it'd cost me an arm and a leg to replace them. Still, even if the idea to replace them entered my head, I wouldn't. After all, I've had some of them since I was 7 and that's what's important.

It's So Hard to Tell Them Apart!

I've been on a roll with my acquisitions!  Just Monday, I won an auction for the Decepticon Clones, Pounce and Wingspan.  I received them Wednesday.  Clones!  Even better, more Decepticons!  Man, I need more Decepticons.

When did Pumas evolve cannons on their shoulders?

He looks mean

I'm really impressed with the condition that these two are in.  I wouldn't go so far as to call them flawless, but they're really close.  Pounce, who's pictured above is pretty nice.  He has arm articulation, and that's about it in robot mode.  What I like about him is his alt-mode.  It's not a great looking alt-mode, but it really stands out.  The blend of colors just looks fantastic.

That's just, yeah

That's better

Wingspan, on the other hand, has a horrible, horrible alt-mode.  His tech spec states that it's an eagle, but to me it looks like a Decepticon who bent his knees and grew wings.  I just find it odd that the designers couldn't be bothered to find somewhere for his arms to go in alt-mode.  Just odd.

Two down, 39 left to go.

My Name is Chase...

Ah, the Throttlebots.  Little Autobots with no articulation whatsoever, but with kinetic motors.  They're, well, they're around.  And they found a cure for Scraplets! Which segues into me getting Chase.  I'm good.

I'm a Ferrari!  Really?

I'm not even sure why I'm making a post about Chase.  I guess because he adds to my total?  I don't know.  Here's a picture of him on robot mode.

Poor Chase, no legs, huge feet, short arms.

Another one down, 41 left to go.

I'm From Another Universe, You Don't Know Me

I've gotten really indecisive over what to buy.  I really want to get the rest of the Dinobots, but I'm so freaking worried that I'm going to get a knockoff.  One day, one day.  Anyway, while looking for my latest purchase, I just said to hell with it, and bought Camshaft.

This ever happen to anyone else?

As a kid, I used to fantasize about owning multiples of each Transformer I owned.  One for each mode.  I recently achieved this with Wildrider once I bought my Menasor.  I have one for alt-mode, one for robot mode, and one for Menasor mode.  More recently, I achieved this with Afterburner, but I wasn't looking to do that with him.  I kind of had to.  I'll explain.

My original Afterburner, which I got for my tenth birthday with all of the other Technobots, was old and out of shape, but he was mine.  One day when I was 13 or 14, he broke.  Not so much broke, as a crack occurred in his midsection.

Ugly, isn't it?

I tried to repair him by melting the plastic where the crack occurred.  It didn't work out so well.  I kept him because I didn't have access to a replacement and I don't just get rid of Transformers.  Never have, never will.

Cut to 2000, and my discovery of eBay.  I couldn't believe that you could buy G1 figures!  Awesome.  My first purchase on eBay was another Afterburner.  I paid $7 for an incomplete one, because all I needed was the figure.  That worked out well, I had one for vehicle mode and another for robot and Computron.  Life was good.

Two months ago, I was changing out my display, taking everyone out of alt-mode and into robot mode.  As soon as I flipped Afterburner's legs out, I felt something weird happen with him.  I looked, and sure enough, this Afterburner developed a fracture in the same place as the old one!  Dang it!

Is this something that happens to Afterburner a lot?

So that's awesome.  Once that happened, I went on eBay to buy another one.  I located quite a few.  Then, I didn't do anything.  For two months, I just decided to have two broken Afterburners.  I know, the horror.  What kind of collector was I?  For reasons I can't explain, I decided to just not replace him.  That is until last month.

New and improved!  Without fractures!

The original Afterburner stays in alt-mode, the first eBay purchase is permanently Computron's arm, and the new one is constantly is robot mode.  I figure that staying in each mode would lessen the chance of further breakage.

I think my counterpart is nearby....

Man, life has been crazy in the month since my last post.  I've been sick and working crazy hours the last month, so posting hasn't happened.  I've had all sorts of posts in my head, but they never materialized.  I'm feeling well now and work has settled down, so posting can resume!  Which is good, because I've quite a few new acquisitions.

Duocons, Merge For The Kill!

One thing that's bothered me over the years is the lack of later period Transformers in fiction.  Sure, you have your season three characters, Headmasters, Targetmasters and the odd Pretender, but they've been pretty much shoehorned in or used as a cameo to satisfy diehard fans.  Or to please Hasbro and display the newest toy out there.  Is it really necessary to always focus on the same 15-20 characters all of the time?

Two great characters that I feel have never been used are the Duocons, Flywheels and Battletrap.  Sure, they were apparently used in the Headmasters cartoon in Japan, but I didn't even know that existed until the advent of the Internet.  Battletrap kinda appeared in the Marvel Transformers comic, but that was nothing more than a nonspeaking role.  Flywheels showed up for two seconds during the opening credits for "The Rebirth", so there's that, I suppose.

C'mon!  Why would you not flesh these guys out?  They're both psychotic!

Like the caption says, they're both psychotic.  Battletrap likes to trap his victims between his to alt-modes, and bat them around!  Flywheels' two alt-modes are jealous of each other!  The jet hates the tank!  The tank hate the jet!  There's gold in there somehow!  I mean, am I just an idiot, or are there others who'd like to see Battletrap's jeep plow into Sunstreaker, knock him into the air and then the helicopter knock him back down onto the jeep's roof over and over again?  Do we really need more stories about Optimus Prime being whiny?