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Need Help with Arii and Imai kits


Mister Tawny

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I was going through my boxes from my con days and ran across some kits I have sat on (it seems like) since time began. I have a 1/72 Imai VF-1S with DYRL Macross '84 summer sticker (not printed). This is the kit that can be built as any of the Valks.

I also have a complete set of all 6 Mikimoto DYRL 1/100 scale kits.

Finally I have a pair of Arii 1/100 VF-1S and VF-1J (kit #'s A.861 and A.862).

All show some shelf (actually hiding and being moved in a box) wear, but still display nicely. I just have no need for them and am thinking about selling them. I can't find any decent price (or for that matter barely any) references to them at all. ANY help would be greatly appreciated. I have kept them this long, and I don't have to move them, but it's prolly time to let them go.

Edited by Mister Tawny
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I'm guessing its these?

http://www.macrossworld.com/macross/models...ii_mikimoto.htm

I don't know what it may fetch, maybe someone who regularly peruses yahoo japan can maybe tell you.

That is definitely them, I also have the

http://www.macrossworld.com/macross/models...i/imai_orig.htm

Scroll down to kit B-1438, the all 4 conversion Battroid, and it's the other more important one. I wish I knew how to use Yahoo Japan. I can't find a decent translation site, and my Kanji is useless....

Edited by Mister Tawny
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I am a bit confused here though. Now granted it's been 10 years or longer, but the Mikimoto DYRL kits carried a stiff price tag for the box art, not the kits. Is it not that way now? Sorry for being a n00b, but it has been a while.

I just did a quick search on Yahoo Japan and unfortunately I couldn't find any of those. As a limited edition kit, it's safe to say that it's worth more than its generic counterpart, but how much more is anyone's guess. No doubt these were valuable kits 10 years ago, but Hasegawa's entrance to modeling scene has shaken up the marketplace quite a bit.

Click on this link to search Yahoo Japan.

http://search.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/sear...=0jp&acc=jp

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The regular Arii kits sell for just under the $10 mark typically. Keeping the Mikimoto boxart in mind, it might be worth selling them as a complete set, ideally to a collector?

As they're very unusual, eBay will probably fare better than the for sale section here. That said, advertising here is free and doesn't have a time limit; eBay just has better global exposure (imo).

HTH

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  • 2 months later...
  • 5 weeks later...

Member Tripmywire offered some for sale a few weeks ago among a large number of other Macross kits she was offering for sale. I don't believe she sold any of the Mikimoto editions.

Honestly, it doesn't seem that the box art is enough to attract more than an average $10 per kit. Probably because the kits inside the box are so common and - by most standards, I think - pretty poorly designed and outdated (even coming from an old-school Macross fan like me).

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Member Tripmywire offered some for sale a few weeks ago among a large number of other Macross kits she was offering for sale. I don't believe she sold any of the Mikimoto editions.

Honestly, it doesn't seem that the box art is enough to attract more than an average $10 per kit. Probably because the kits inside the box are so common and - by most standards, I think - pretty poorly designed and outdated (even coming from an old-school Macross fan like me).

I can see this attitude, but when I see some of the really crappy old Aurora, Bullmark and Popy pieces going for outrageous sums, I still think, why? I remember selling my Super Ostrich and SDF at San Diego a few years back and I had put prices on them to guarantee they wouldn't sell (or so I thought). I am prolly going to go the Yahoo Japan route. My friend just picked up a bootleg for $25, but is part of the reason I started looking in the first place just to get pricing.

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I can see this attitude, but when I see some of the really crappy old Aurora, Bullmark and Popy pieces going for outrageous sums, I still think, why? I remember selling my Super Ostrich and SDF at San Diego a few years back and I had put prices on them to guarantee they wouldn't sell (or so I thought). I am prolly going to go the Yahoo Japan route. My friend just picked up a bootleg for $25, but is part of the reason I started looking in the first place just to get pricing.

Well, as a collector of Aurora kits (Prehistoric Scenes, some monsters), they're much, much higher quality items in terms of both tooling and rendering of their subjects than Arii's old 1/100 Valk kits. Many of Aurora's kits were sculpted by Bill Lemmon, who is still considered one of the masters of the trade today. (I have a hardcopy of one of his Prehistoric Scene sculpts, and for something hand-sculpted in acetate it easily rivals the detail, anatomy and textures of any McFarlane or Sideshow piece.) Bullmark & Popy - yeah, I often really have to wonder why they're so popular - but their quantities are much smaller and their genuinely childish renderings are more popular for nostalgia, art objects or genuine antique interests today.

A massive, rare toy also doesn't make a good comparison.

It seems that you're kind of upset that the Mikimoto boxes aren't worth much in collectible terms, but keep in mind that the box was really the only unique selling point for a very common, overproduced product, which was re-released yet again a few years later, as well as being re-rendered into pre-assembled, prepainted form as action figure not long after that. I remember when these came out, and the big selling point to them was the box art. When myself and friends bought a few for that reason, we were ultimately pretty disappointed that we'd been sold on the same kits we'd built a dozen times before, with box art that was nice, but ultimately not particularly displayable.

Edited by AcroRay
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I'm inclined to agree with AcroRay. The VF-1D kit is on Yahoo JP right now at a starting bid of 1,000円 (approx. $10) with 3 days left and no bids.

http://page11.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/n62974153

Also, last month I saw four of these on a single Yahoo JP auction at a starting bid of 3,000円 (approx. $30) and I don't believe it got a single bid either. The link to that auction is dead, otherwise I would post it.

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Yeah, the prices for those are about $10-15 dollars at most.

I watched an entire set of them go for around $15 shipped each about a month ago on ebay...

I don't think even half of them were bid on.

I thought about buying one, but compared to what you can get elsewhere for only a little more the kits simply aren't worth it.

The art is good. The kits are decent. But most people simply don't have the space, cash, or time.

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