HardlyNever

The all black box is definitely a let down.  I know the aesthetic they are going for there but... no.  They aren't pulling it off.  You usually need some kind of silver accents or something to really nail that "premium" feeling.

I'm guessing the PF sdf-1 is going to get the same treatment, and I'm already a little disappointed (not that the regular box design is anything special).

Decide for yourself.

That price does seem a tad high, especially for a pre-order price.

Well... I hope you have some deep pockets.

When I was a grad student I was broke AF most of the time.  Grats on the collection, though.  You might be disappointed with the Toynami's.

The DX chogokin 1/60 scale (Bandai) Lill Draken and Missile pod set.

11 hours ago, MacrossMania said:

So I hate to say it, but you answered your own questions!  So yea, the fact that you put one safely in storage so that it can never ever see the skein of sunlight that will slowly destroy it over time and mitigate that feeling of beauty when you first take it out of the box and gaze upon it with all of its furious glory - yea, that feeling.  That's the feeling we MISB collectors all try to preserve.  The feeling of perfection right up to the point of opening a toy and taking it out to play with.  There's something about preserving that feeling that we're all chasing after, and well all do in our own way I guess.  I just happen to do it (as a lot of others do) by keeping it pristine and untouched in the original box.  

And of course you have to understand we are talking about a 34 year old toy in basically pristine condition.  A few condition issues on the corners, but for all intents and purposes perfect.  Do you know how hard that is to find, and to be one of the lucky few in the world to get your hands on a piece like that?  And you want to destroy that with your meddlesome, common hands that don't have the taste to understand what you're holding?  It would be like Judas taking a drink out of the holy grail or taking communion.  Or Macbeth throwing up his hands in vain to god, because he doesn't have it in himself to repent.  What's the point? 

To put it plainly, I'm not just driven by avarice.  I don't collect to make money, I collect to preserve and to marvel, to dream. But the thrill of the hunt is not only achieving the pinnacle of beauty by finding the perfect toy and the perfect display, but also in preserving it.  And therein lies a collector's pride.  His joy he takes in finding the piece nobody else could find.  His pride he takes in doing what legions of collectors will do before and after him, long after he is dead and gone, preserving it for future generations to come.  And to find one in this condition, with that amount of artwork, and to be able one day to pass the mantle to other collectors who will do the same, is to keep the daisy chain going.

This probably belongs more in the why do you collect MISB thread (but I think you've posted in there as well).  Like I said in that thread, if that is how you enjoy the hobby, more power to you, I'm not here to judge. 

What does seem to always baffle me with any MISB/AFA 100/ PSA 10, whatever version of "purist" collector is that they don't seem aware, (or more likely, want to acknowledge), that no matter what you do, things still degrade, especially paper and plastic.  No matter how you store it, no matter what plastic/metal tomb you create for that plastic collectible, paper card, or whatever it is, it is still degrading.  Right now, as you read this, your collection is degrading, too.  Literally nothing can escape the wear of time.  In some cases, the mint box isn't even the best storage option for some of the plastic toys.  

Will these safely kept toys last longer than opened versions?  Sure, almost definitely.  Will they last the lifetime of the collector?  Probably, but you might be surprised how much some of the toys from the 80s have degraded just sitting in their box (then again, I'm sure you've seen the carded GI Joes that are falling apart in their blister).

It sort of seems futile to me.  I say enjoy it while it lasts.  Nothing lasts forever. 

But then again, maybe the goal of the "mint" collector is just have the collectible last their life-time.  Or have the most pristine versions available (even if they aren't as pristine as they were 20 years ago).

I'll grab one in case Arcadia never re-issues these (like I did with the VE-1).  Can't hurt to have an HMR one as a fall-back.

Hopefully Arcadia will get the go-ahead to make the ve-1 and vt-1 after Bandai has had their chance, but if not, these will have to do.

IIRC, some of the production team that worked on Orguss also worked on SDF Macross, and they put one of the mecha in SDFM as a sort of cameo/easter egg.  

So, yes, it appears(briefly), but it isn't really canon/offical.  It is more of an inside joke.

1 hour ago, Lolicon said:

Hmmm not really digging the green arrow. There's the weird brownie/Kakizaki hybrid that floats by the park window near the end just to get blown up, but that's just another skull unit.

I guess I'll just take something from real world aircraft. 

@sh9000 asked basically the same thing in the HMR thread, I believe, so you could check there.  There are some video game insignias that aren't official canon but look pretty good.

If you dig through my comment history you might be able to find them.  I could probably find it if you really want.

3 hours ago, Lolicon said:

Who likes magic brownies?

BTW, anyone know what insignias the CF units are supposed to have?

There is this, not sure if it is the only one.

2 hours ago, Lolicon said:

The other outer hardpoint was completely sized incorrectly. No matter how much force I used or however I twisted and turned, I couldn't get the missiles to attach properly. I swapped missiles and had the same problem. On visual inspection the hardpoint looked identical to the others but clearly was off by enough to keep it from working correctly. I tried shaving some of the plastic off the inside of the circle, and was able to kinda get the missile on, but still only half attached.

I have a similar issue with my Arcadia DYRL Super Roy.  There is one hardpoint that has slightly thinner notches/ledges, whatever you want to call them, for the hard point locking mechanism.  What this meant was that reaction missiles would stay on fine, the missile pods were mostly ok, but a little loose, and the TV-style missiles would fall off from the slightest bump.  There was only one hardpoint like this.  What I ended up doing was thickening up one of the TV style missiles (with nail polish) to use on that hardpoint when I wanted TV missiles there.

I think the hardpoints are generally a point of weakness in the design, regardless of the manufacturer, where even a slight variation in production can result in a flawed hardpoint.  I think the whole "locking mechanism" is probably more trouble than it is worth.

I'm guessing those parts of the armor are going to need extra support in battroid mode, long term.  Probably those little tamashii stands with claws, or maybe a custom support piece that secures it to another part of the valk (maybe the weapon pod?).  

I still won't mind, it is going to look great on display.  Might be a bit of a pain to handle, though.

The confirmation bias in this thread is overwhelming.  QC problems happen, no company is immune to it.  A few people reporting a problem isn't nearly enough evidence to declare something like "the mold is degraded, RIP Arcadia vf-1s."  

Sure, mold degradation is a thing.  It could even be a real thing that is happening, but drawing that conclusion from so little evidence is ridiculous.  It could also just mean that the failure rate for the mold is going to increase from something like 1% to 3% (I'm totally making these numbers up, but you get the idea).  

Now we could argue forever about how the increased cost should be accompanied by an increase in quality control, and that horse has been beaten to death in more than one thread (and nearly everyone can agree to that).  But it is what it is at this point; I think buying either Yamato or Arcadia valks is a bit of a gamble at this point, for different reasons, so it is up to you which you feel more comfortable gambling on. 

Looking to buy the lil draken accessory kit for the sv-262.  I'm fine with opened/gently used.

I might be interested just the sword, shield and missile pods, if that helps out any.  

3 hours ago, TrickyCustomer said:

When my sv262 "finally arrives" (NY didn't process it and ship it for a whole week for starters!) i will see what the transformation difficulty is like. I have very little experience in transforming valks, only three to be precise. I will be able to say as a novice "transformer" just how tough it really is compared to the vf-31a i am eagerly awaiting.

I just got mine yesterday, pretty similar experience (I've only done 4-5 different valk types).  This one is definitely tough, it honestly took me almost an hour to go from fighter to gerwalk.  Had to look at several videos, haven't even done battroid yet.  The good news is, I think you can skip the hardest part of gerwalk (connecting two pegs into a bracket) if you only want to go to battroid.

The vf-31 looks significantly easier, but I won't get to try that until the Arad version is out.

26 minutes ago, SuperSenpai said:

I can't get past that... appendage.  

That's what she said? (couldn't resist)

It does seem odd they aren't taking advantage of the removable nose cone, though.

7 hours ago, Slave IV said:

Do you own a 3D printer? If not, that's part of the problem. We need to support the things we want to succeed. 

As for the hard point issue...non existent in any of my Arcadia Valks. They all work fine with no stress marks. 

Damn... I didn't know I was the one holding this whole thing back...  Let me go buy 5 and kickstart this whole thing so we can all be 3D printing this stuff next year... Get serious, man (but I am considering buying a 3D printer for our workplace).  Maybe I'll buy an oculus rift, and a vive while I'm at it, because me not buying that is definitely holding back VR. 

Back to the hardpoints, is this simply a bad QC issue?  Not to beat a dead horse, but me and 3-4 other people had part of their backpack break on the super Focker release, and no one was calling the mold dead then, it was just bad luck.  This looks to be a similar situation to my eye, only this is getting more attention because the people speaking up are being more vocal about it.

Right, I guess what I'm saying is, we were "supposed" to be at this point already, if you were to believe some of the proponents of 3D printing.  It was supposed to be super cheap, super accessible, and nearly ubiquitous at this point.  I know we can (and in some cases do) make replacement parts, but the cost is still pretty high, and thus limited either to a really common problem (like the v2 shoulder), or someone who already has access to the rather expensive tech.

There really isn't an answer, I guess we just have to lump it in with flying cars and jetpacks.  It just seems like 3D printing was going to become more accessible a lot faster, but I guess not.

25 minutes ago, Sanity is Optional said:

3D printing will never surpass injection-molding when it comes to cost at production volumes.

What 3D printing will do is let you create parts which are more complex, or create parts in smaller batches without forking out hundreds of thousands of dollars in up-front mold costs.

3D printing has a higher cost per unit, due to the increased complexity of the manufacturing machinery and longer time to produce. Injection molding has a staggering up-front cost in the molds, but the actual process is quite simple and quick.

To give you an idea of the up-front costs, I quoted out injection molding 3 relatively simple parts (largest was under 18"x6"x6") as part of my job, the mold costs were $57,000. I imagine the cost of a set of molds for a 1/60 Valkyrie are hundreds of thousands.

[edit] The true place of 3D printing is in prototyping the parts which will later be injection molded. Tossing $57k of molds isn't something anyone wants to do, so you 3D print the parts and check fit and function, doing your iterative design with 3D prints before finalizing the design and buying molds.

Yeah, that's what I figured, 3D printing will probably never realistically match mass producing from molds once you hit a certain production number.  Thanks for the insight.  Kinda shows that the "experts" that predicted we'd be 3D printing everything we own by now didn't really know what they were talking about.

That said, I'm still surprised we can't 3d print our own replacement hard points or even wings.  I guess the v2 shoulder breaking was such a common occurrence that it was worth someone going through the trouble and scuplting(?) one (digitally, ofc).  I'm a bit surprised no one has 3D scanned all the major parts of the v2 by now, though. 

Not to derail the thread too much, but since we're on the subject of rising cost: wasn't 3D printing supposed to "save" us from all this?  Shouldn't this hobby, as we know it, be radically different?  Shouldn't we be buying blueprints/designs and 3D printing and assembling all this stuff ourselves by now?  What happened?

I know there are people 3D printing home-made kits and designs, but those tend to be very high in cost.  It's also nice to have 3D printing to replace broken parts here and there (like v2 shoulders), but we were supposed to be 3D printing cars by now (by some estimates).  3D printing has been the "hot new thing" for 15-20 years now, and it still hasn't radically changed what should have been one of the very first industries it killed (plastic toy manufacturing).

It seems like it still can't keep up with the economy of scale of mass producing specific molds and having (relatively) cheap labor put everything together.  Is there something else going on?

Also, to keep it a little more on topic, why can't we just 3d print replacement hard points?  Or replacement wings even?  It was supposed to be so cheap and easy by now.

7 minutes ago, locidm said:

I guess I haven't thought about it this way before, so do the Zentradi just keep manufacturing new soldiers? They obviously don't reproduce naturally. If they don't manufacture more over time they'll just die off one by one either naturally or through battles. I have a hard time picturing Zentradis taking care of Zentradi babies. It doesn't work without culture. So in my mind Zentradis are likely manufactured as adults ready for battle.

 

11 hours ago, jenius said:

Are the Zentraedi (before Micron tampering) also "born" as adults? 

 

When Milia "weaponizes" their child, the shock of seeing an infant causes the Zentradi to run.  I imagine they are all made as adults, or if there are Zentran children, it would be a very specialized/isolated part of their "culture" that raises them.  I think them just creating full grown Zentraedi makes more sense.

1 hour ago, VF-Zer0S said:

I remember them being mostly clones no? 

I think they are more "test tube babies," rather than true clones, as you see a lot of diversity, even among the rank and file (different faces, skin color, hair color, etc.).

10 minutes ago, easnoddy said:

Doesn't look like much difference on the ARMD's except the glow paint.  But I suck at painting and the red lines on the cannon booms are the main thing I'm glad are painted.  That and it's already paid for.

I believe some of those red lines are available as stickers in the regular release. 

I do think people are under-valuing how much some of those tiny paint apps really make the mold pop.  And that kinda stuff is pretty time consuming, at least for novice modelers/customizers.  I'm panel-lining one of my HMR valks, and that is going to end up taking well over two hours (but I'm new at it, and still pretty bad).  Overall, I'm pretty happy with how it is looking, maybe not $150 happy, but it is kind of hard to tell without actually getting it in hand.  But right now, I'm feeling confident about going with the PF version, and I skipped the PF versions of all the valks.

People complain about the paint job, but I think it is looking pretty good in toy-form.  

I wonder why they aren't showing it with reaction missiles.  This release does come with the missiles, doesn't it?

7 minutes ago, no3Ljm said:

Well, he did start the bidding with 1 yen so I'm sure there's no hidden minimum price whatsoever. And it's the seller's right if he wants to start the bid lower. The lower the starting bid the more bidders will join. There's no restriction nor guidelines on how much a seller want to start the price. Remember there's some people who wants to sell the Valk with astronomical prices. More than what's out there if I might add. Or probably he just doesn't mind how much it would sell in the end.

 

Just want to add that the same seller also have Arcadia YF-19 on bidding. Right now, it's Y13500. Bid ends at Mar 6, 10:48pm (JST). That's in 5 hours.

 

 

Well, it will be interesting to see how much it goes for.

And I saw that yf-19.  I was even tempted for a bit, but the looming PF sdf-1 release is just a budget-blower.  I'm also hoping that yf-19 advance (with all the ordnance) from Bandai that got teased gets released, so I'm going to have to pass. 

What am I missing here?

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/c656825302

I know the sv-262 is tanking in price (I just picked one up well below MSRP), but this low?  Is there some sort of hidden minimum price I'm not aware of(I've only used buyee once before)?  Is there something wrong with this particular one that I'm missing?

This is super dirt cheap.  I might grab a second one if it goes anywhere near this price, but it might hit close to "real" market value in the last few hours.

Edit: This seller seems to be doing a number of auctions starting at 1 yen, and they are staying pretty low.  I wonder if there is a hidden minimum set on these.