addemlit: Request valuation of Phoenix and Black Spiderman

addemlit

I got offered $250 for the exclusive San Diego Comic Con minifigs Jean Grey and Black suit Spider-Man. My question to you guys is it worth it?

CapnRex101

If you mean you are selling them for that price, I think that is a touch on the low side personally. I would expect closer to $350-$400 to be honest. The best person to answer this question though would be @samiam391.

BrickDancer

If the cards are included and excellent shape for all, then it's a bit under the going market price of $275-$300 shipped.

addemlit

No cards included. I'm not selling them I'm buying them

vwong19

I think that might be a little higher than the going rate without the cards. The Marvel seem to be less in demand than the DC counterparts as those are fetching almost 50% more.

samiam391

Thanks @CapnRex101.

@addemlit- I would definitely NOT buy them. If someone offered me that price, I'd snap them up in a heartbeat.

I could go into detail about the 2012 SDCC market, but I'd hate to bore you. Long story short, Venom/Phoenix are not as desirable as Shazam/Bizarro. The market played a strange trick last fall, and this is how the cards fell.

I sell quality figures, and have my prices on BL set even lower than $250 for both. If you want, let me know and I can get you a much better deal.

Even if you don't want to buy from me, there are better deals to be had and I'd be happy to help you find one if only to help a fellow bricksetter and save you some money.

addemlit

Yes I would love a better deal. How much are you selling them for?

Tevans333

@samiam391 hey Samuel, what's your BL store name?

Tevans333

@addemit does this mean you won't be paying for the auction you won from me?

yys4u

samiam391 said:

Thanks @CapnRex101.

@addemlit- I would definitely NOT buy them. If someone offered me that price, I'd snap them up in a heartbeat.

Sorry I'm a little confused. When you say "snap them up" do you mean you would sell your 2 figures for the price of 250? Because the way your statement is worded it sounds like your contradicting yourself.

samiam391 said:

Thanks @CapnRex101.


I could go into detail about the 2012 SDCC market, but I'd hate to bore you. Long story short, Venom/Phoenix are not as desirable as Shazam/Bizarro. The market played a strange trick last fall, and this is how the cards fell.

As for this part, I'm curious as to what "trick" your talking about. Cause I do remember at one point there was an influx of these 2 marvel figures available on ebay, with some sellers selling 30+ of them and the price dropped to about 40 bucks. I always felt they had to be really well done fakes, and the DC figures weren't faked because they had capes that were hard to replicate. But I could never prove this.

samiam391

yys4u said:

samiam391 said:

Thanks @CapnRex101.

@addemlit- I would definitely NOT buy them. If someone offered me that price, I'd snap them up in a heartbeat.

Sorry I'm a little confused. When you say "snap them up" do you mean you would sell your 2 figures for the price of 250? Because the way your statement is worded it sounds like your contradicting yourself.

samiam391 said:

Thanks @CapnRex101.


I could go into detail about the 2012 SDCC market, but I'd hate to bore you. Long story short, Venom/Phoenix are not as desirable as Shazam/Bizarro. The market played a strange trick last fall, and this is how the cards fell.

As for this part, I'm curious as to what "trick" your talking about. Cause I do remember at one point there was an influx of these 2 marvel figures available on ebay, with some sellers selling 30+ of them and the price dropped to about 40 bucks. I always felt they had to be really well done fakes, and the DC figures weren't faked because they had capes that were hard to replicate. But I could never prove this.

@yys4u- You got me... I completely and rather embarrassingly, contradicted myself. The first sentence is the correct one, in that I would not pay that much, although I'm a "deal-seeker".

The second one was, well... me being tired? In my defense it has been a long day, but otherwise I can't give an explanation. Obviously I didn't do any proofreading, did I? ;o) Completely wrong statement.

As far as the market trick, the market for SDCC figures were interesting. Since you've asked for an explanation, I guess I'll launch into the long story.

When they first started popping up on the bay, the night before they were officially released (perhaps a few fell out of the box, or some LEGO employees got their hands on a few), there was a scattering of which figure there was. Prices were of course absurd.

Eventually, prices started lowering as the market got flooded. There seemed to be a decent amount of equality in the amount of each character being distributed and sold on eBay.

However, that didn't last long, and Shazam and Bizarro quickly took over. I wasn't at SDCC, so I don't know why, but there were barely any venoms (black spidey)/Phoenix listed, but a heap of Shazam and Bizarro. The scales of prices quickly tipped, with Bizarro/Shazam on the low end, and Venom/Phoenix on the other. I couldn't explain it, but I went along with it perhaps contemplating Phoenix/Venom were more sought after and were thus not being sold on eBay as frequently.

After a few days, the prices flip flopped. The people that hadn't listed Venom/Phoenix all suddenly did. Bizarro/Shazam become less frequent and commanded higher prices than Venom/Phoenix (after a few days).

However, as opposed to ever increasing, Phoenix/Venom just kept on going down, and haven't increased much in their aftermarket. The sellers kept listing, and listing as you already mentioned. Some were customs listed as customs, and presumably (considering that this world ain't honest), some listed as real were customs. You are also correct in the fact that Venom/Phoenix are easier to be made customs.

Fact is, custom or not, collectors had already purchased their fair share of Venom/Phoenix (perhaps even when they were high priced and "scarce"), and after buying them at cheap prices, just weren't interested in them as much. Myself included.

One can also launch into the characters themselves. Bizarro/Shazam look twice as "cool" as Phoenix/Venom.

I won't pretend to be a comic book expert, but I do know that Bizarro, at least, is also quite relevant to a lot of collector's as an important villain.

Shazam, not so much, however he is honestly my favorite of all the SDCC characters, and I presume the same of many others.

Venom/black spidey, was practically re-released in a set just a few months later. Why pay $100+ when you can buy practically the same item in a set for say $30?

Phoenix, while a nice figure, just doesn't have the same appeal as Shazam/Bizarro, in my opinion. In addition, she was heavily, heavily made a custom. It's a shame, but that's what happened.

Hopefully that helps you out @yys4u.

Even after typing up all that, I'm still embarrassed about my two contradictory sentences. ;o)

samiam391

Tevans333 said:

@samiam391 hey Samuel, what's your BL store name?

@Tevans333- Bricks-A-Billion.

Brickset members get a discount on all my prices listed in store :o)

yys4u

@samiam391 haha that's alright, I was just wondering if there was something I missed and was wondering if I was just interpreting it wrong because I didn't understand why it didn't make sense to me but no one else mentioned it lol.

Thanks for explaining that to me, as a proud :) owner of all 4 of those figures, I also followed the market for a bit and remembered that odd period when the figures dropped in price, and I didn't understand why. Although I knew Black Spidey would drop significantly since his torso was identical to Venom's as you mentioned.

Pitfall69

Just to let you know there are no dashes in @samiam391 s store name