LORD KUNGFU

I just turned 34, and I have the largest collection of anything I've ever had in Macross now. And I will never sell them. I think it's all about attitude and necessity... A lot of people my age don't really understand my facination with these toys, but then again, I don't really understand some people's facination with stamps, or naval lint, or bottle caps, coasters, match books, and the like... So.. to each his/her own..

As for the off topic real estate discussion.... I wouldn't plan to see property values come down any time real soon. They still on the rise with really no end in sight... When the economy stabalizes a bit more, and the feds up the interest rates is when you will see the market stabalize, and the equity increase begin to slow... Some places may drop in value, but it won't be much. I don't see property in SoCal coming down much if any... Values may just stop climbing for a while...

yeah, what is it with naval lint and boogers. My roommate in the army would collect his snot. Seriously, besides leaving a dirt outline of his body on the sheets, I just happend to look at the rail of his be one day, the closest to the wall, and there was a huge mound of dried up snot. And you could tell its been growing, cuz the bottom part was all dry, and the top part was still moist. Looked like a green and brown volcano. I should have took a picture. Damn!

yeah, true dat. The real estate bubble will burst. But it wont drop so fast like the stock market(overnight), so you would be able to sell out before things get to bad. Also, I dont think it will drop to drastically. I mean, up in the desert just north of L.A., there is such a large boom in buisness, that once quite town of palmdale is becoming like L.A. IF these large buisnesses are investing so much in this expansion, there got to be a reason. The large corporations have much more research power, and there not buying up the city because its all going to drop one day. I dont claim to be a real estate expert, I just know what I see, and what I hear from my family. I think a lot of it is simply overcrowding in l.a., and theres a big push now to move to the smaller less populated desert communities. NOt to mention that I saw a 1 bedroom 800 sq. ft. house in l.a. going for $600,000k. WTF!

I will hold my house for now, since I have a lot of equity in it, then when the market starts to slow, I will sell it, take my profits, and move the hell out of the damn state of CA. and buy a house in another state, straight up cash. And I will have to rent a tractor trailer to bring my macross stuff with me.

Ok, here we go. Real estate overall is the best investment. Here in cali, house values are going up about 10k a month. No joke, my family is in real estate. So I speak no lies or heresay, but what is true or what actually works for me. We have clients that are buying houses now, and dont even live in them or rent them out. You figure if there spending $2,500 a month on a mortage, but the value of there house increases $10k every month, they are gaining equity of $7,500 amonth with out doing anyting but paying the mortage. I would do real estate investing, but I just cant come up with a large enough sum of money for a down payment on houses going for $400,000k. And I have unstated income, and banks dont like that. So on with the toys.

Yes you can put your money elsware, bonds or stocks. I personally prefer to enjoy my investmet every once in a while. I like to pull my valkyries off the shelf once in a while and goof with them, or mod them. I can spend hours just staring at box art work and look at catalogs, and they even inspire me. Never have I once drove to the bank so I can stare at my bond certificate, and fly it around and paint panel lines on it. The main issue with collecting toys as an investment or just collecting would be the space factor. My fiance is not to happy with my collecting, UMMM, I mean investing. Since we cant use our garage ect....of course spending money on storage is out of the question.

Now living proof......I jumped in on the hot stock market back in 2000 or so. I was investing money in options, so I could invest as little as possible and make the most back. I really sucked at options and los tall my money. Mostly because all my info was coming from CNBC and they suck and totally lie. I think stock options are good, but you got to know your sh*t. Anyhow, at the same time, I was buying tons of toys, just because I like toys, and for investing too, and I just simply had the expendable income. I bought godaikins, transformers, anything I could get a bulk deal on. Especially on ebay, where I would find lots at good prices. Believe it or not. SIde not, one thing I like about collecting in mass, is that you totally forget what you have. And a few years later your digging through you mountains of boxes because your curious whats in them, and its like Christmas again, finding that mint in box diecast voltron you bought on clearance at toys r us 4 years ago. All my coworkers were buying new cars, stereos, clothes. All the trendy stuff that aint worth jack once its out of style(beanie babies). They thought it was funny though when I would come to work to show off my box of old transformers that I just bought at the swap meet for $10. Little did they realize that stuff in the box was worth $500. A few weeks later they started to get jealouse, cuz my paypal account was getting huge, while these guys were broke every month. And of course what happens next, we all get laid off. Everyone in I.T. gets laid off. Everyone was so sad, but I was happy as hell. I didnt like the job and I sick of driving in Los Angeles traffic. Anyway, I banked up about $15k in paypal in a matter of months. Also, managed to accumalate sever thousand dollars worth of toys. NOw I didnt spent several thousand to get the toys, but that was the street value. I believe I got laid off around 2001, so I was able to live off my toys until now. I havent worked since. I did get a good chunk of change for severance too though. My fiance and her dont like the fact that I dont work, and have not worked for some years. Its just funny. My neighbors always wondering what the hell I do for aliving. I can actually live quite comfortable of what I accumalted in that short time span. So I would be able to not hold a job for a few more years. Actually, I have worked, but I always quit. It nice to know at your job that you can quit when you want and dont have to take anybody sh*t. NOw, I dont live like a king, but IM happy, and what really funny is when you dont need a job or money, it just comes to you. Funny how that works.

My point is that what investment can you make where you can take $10 and turn if around for $500. None. Now I admit a lot of that was luck. I have spent several days finding nothing. There just something about the treasure hunt. All my investing was not in vintage, or good scores at the swap meet. I bought new toys too. Just buy them when they are on clearance. How many times have you said to yourself you wish you bought something at $50, because now it going for $80 and you want it. And then it goes for $100 just a week later. It happens all the time, I cant tell you how many times I see that on this forum. And whats flooding the market now and nobody wants, well, trust me when they cant have it, they will want it. So like the macross stuff now is cheaper, but once toynami goes out of buisness or slow down, all of a sudden, everyone genna want those bandai reissues. I like being able to walk into stores and throw down a grand at one time on power rangers. It just kills, the look on the check out persons face when you roll up with three carts full of toys and you pay cash. Word of advice, dont buy using credit. The interest kills. At least if you pay cash, and you have to sit on your investment for a while, your not paying inerest. But most of all, I invest in toys this way.....if i were to buy something, but it was not worth it moneywise, would I till want it. So if you buy something, and it was not a good score, it would still be cool for me to own, and have it take up space in my house. I found that when I buy stuff just because its cool, or I am interested in it, it seems to be worth a lot of money to someone else. I dont even want to go into all the vintage macross stuff i have found over the years. When I buy large collections of macross, I try and keep the collection together, and I dont sell it. Its just so cool when you find somebody that collected and enjoyed macross too, just like you, to amass such a large collection and for some reason have to sell it. Mostly the parents fault. I have found collections with love letters to minmey, poetry, drawings, amongst the toys. Great stuff. And I keep it all together. Who knows, you may run into the original owner and he may see that you have his stuff. My biggest score so far was a huge Robotech(macross, southern cross, mopeada) lot. I mean huge. I noticed that the boxes had New Jersey address on them. Old labels. And the story the guy told me, kind of long to tell here, but its a small world. Unfortunalty, the guy had sold the stuff already to somebody, talk about that sinking feeling in your stomach. Let me put it this way, this guy had so much stuff, that the person that bought the stuff has to drive his suv into the swap meet and back it into the sellers spot just to load the stuff in. Funny, because I asked the guy who bought the stuff to sell it to me right now. He didnt even know what he had. I offered him a measly $200 and he said hed think about it. Were talking about $3000 worth of vintage robotech. Anyway, I ended going to the buyers house where he had displayed everything on the tables, floors, anywhere here could find room,, cuz there was just so much. He told me that his buddies said that these were worth a lot of money. Ok, so I said how much, Im thinking he going to say $1500 or so. He says $300. Im like hell yeah. I actually brought $500in my pocket, so I would have a down payment if he gave me the $1500 price. Needless to say, I was happy as hell, and it took me 3 trips in my vw golf just to get the stuff to my house.

Anywho, people, invest in something. Be it toys, houses, it should be something youlike. Just like a job, do something you like.

I agree. My collection has value monetarywise, but more value to me personally. Im 31 and recently have slow down collecting, they are just coming out with to much to fast. (Burn Out). I still have everytoy I sacraficed so hard for as a kid, and no way in hell will I sell out. I remember have to starve myself for months just to save up enough lunch money to buy my legioss, or orguss. And I dont care what you put in front of me now, be it a ferrari, or something else, it will not give me that deep excitement that I had when I was a kid when I finally had the $25 it took for me to buy that legioss or cyclone at the swap meet no less. Just like anything, the no matter what it is, the harder you work for something, the more it means to you, even if its just a junky toy to somebody else. I have the money now and can buy cars at my convenience, but no car will every have that power that I had when I bought my first rust bucket 1978 honda accord. That was some serious freedom.

Maybe they're growing up and abandoning this childish thing of collecting toys! Maybe they're actually investing they're money in something so foolish as stocks, bonds, and a house.

collecting toys is a good investment monetary wise. But just like stocks, you have to find the right items to collect. My neighbor has a collections of dolls, and other stuff, but mostly dolls are the value. Anyway, the last I heard, was that her collcetion was valued at $300,000 plus. And over the years, she spent less than 20k to accumalate that stuff. Not a bad invesment. Actually, believe it or not, the house she bought went down to half of the value after she bought it. But with the real estate market as it is now, her how has now over doubled in value.

what happens is the nostalgia wears off. Its like, before ebay , it was hard to find any macross items, so when you did find them, it was like gold. wether is was a beat up old jetfire, or an aplha with broken legs, it was the greatest. Good luck finding any takatoku back then or at least a cheap takatoku. Well anyway, you just get burnt out. YOu can find anything if you got the money now, thanks to the internet, and with all the reissues of macross, and transformers, all the old stuff just takes a dive. I mean, can remember when a takatoku valk was worth a lot, but then bandai did the reissues, and they went down.

I heard of allelectronics. I will try them.

wow, I went to buy some blue l.e.d. and some watch batteries. they are expensive. Almost $10 just for 2 l.e.d.s. Anybody know a place a little cheaper to get electronics.

man, this is like office space. You get 20 people telling you about your tps reports. Im mean , yeah, it was bad that I messed around like that, but at least I didnt string you guys along the whole time. I could have said nothing and kept you bowing at my feet for my awesome work and giving out really bad model building advice. I just didnt think anybody would take it serious that a guy with one post would actually be the person that did the work.

ok, so who next, gonna say,

"hey man, thats not nice man, were super serious model builders man. Seriously, man. I have 3 models models man, that I built man, really seriously. I have 3 cans of testors model paint and a hobby knife man. Just shows how serious I am man".

oh yeah, I wasnt the only one rolling. Some of the other guys in the studio with me were rollin too. Yeah, I actually work in the film industry where I get paid to do my models, and if any of you got good skills(of course we know about John already), I can probably get you a job. If your in southern California of course. Oh, i think disney has some openings too for scale builders.

Dude, Zoids rock, and you rock. I thought about doing up some zoids with the technics I learned here. after seeing your work, I will have to do it now. Nice change of pace. Beautiful job. Got any other zoids that you have completed?

dude, Zoids rock, and you rock. I thought of doing some zoids up with all the techniks I leared here. I will have to do it for sure now. Have you done any other zoids?

sweet! Cant wait to see it when its done.

yeeeeeahhhhhh, ummmm, yeahhhhh, sorry, but I was just kidding guys. Not my work.

Almost attempting to take credit for someone else's work?...Not the best way to introduce one's self to the MW forums

Yeah was that supposed to be funny or what?

It wasnt as funny as office space, but I was rollin........he he he

yeeeeeahhhhhh, ummmm, yeahhhhh, sorry, but I was just kidding guys. Not my work.

YEah, they prbably also asked disney why he was doing more.... when what he had was working. Im all up for a sweet mod, even on an already great toy. You just have to do it. Maybe it will suck and you will regret it, or maybe it will come out better than expected. If I had 20 or 1/48, I would definatly do one up. Do thay have any bootleg 1/48?

I think the lights look great. if you did do this to a 1/48, it would look cool, just do it right though. I think the same guy on ebay, or somebody else had one with a cock dash that was lit up, and it looked sweet. I cant find a picture of that one though. I can just imagine this spinning on my rotating display stand with all the lights in the house turned off and just the glow of the valks lights peeking through the darkness. BTW, I live in so. cal. and I dont know of a t.c.s. design, does anybody know who they are. I have some of these knock off booster, and I will try to see if I can get batteries to fit somehow.

I SAW THIS ON EBAY. ANYBODY KNOW HOW I CAN DO THAT TOO. IT WAS MADE USING SOME FAKE VALKYRIES KNOCK OFFS.

THANKS FOR THE COMPIMENTS ON MY MODEL. TOOK ME 2 MONTHS TO DO IT.

SO HOW MUCH YOU SELLIN IT FOR?

YOU NEED TO DO IT AGAIN