What are your monster toys and collectibles really worth?

[Hepcat]

Anyway, I tried to explain this to the seller, but they told me they knew how much the comic was worth and that I was wrong.  Three years later the comic was still there, lol.

Did you casually inquire three years later whether he'd observed any fluctuations in the market for the Image comic?

[skully]

A great example of actual value vs perceived value is the current listing of an original sealed Aurora Creature kit currently on e-bay for 10,000 dollars.  In the description the seller admits it's a "little" high priced, but you can e-mail him to discuss.  I honestly don't know if the seller actually intends to sell this for that money or is willing to negotiate price,  however at that price he will still own it for a long time.

[BigShadow]

Did you casually inquire three years later whether he'd observed any fluctuations in the market for the Image comic?

I did not.  Just shook my head as I walked by.  My pet peeve is when something is in VG condition and the seller says it's Mint.   

[Hepcat]

About fifteen years ago I saw a picture of a set of Golden Book Encyclopedias on Ebay with very obvious wear. Yet the description listed them as being in "Mint" condition. When I inquired, the seller replied that they were in mint condition because there were no pages missing! Talk about setting a low bar for oneself.

[Hepcat]

You go by what thing has sold for, not by the guy who "wouldn't take a million buck for" his.

I have serious underlying problems with the statement that "any item is worth only whatever someone will pay". My reservation/difficulty is that such a concept of "worth" implicitly involves making a universal value judgement and that involves getting into everyone else's head. But this is impossible. I can't tell anybody else how much a certain item "should" be worth to them. What I can say about the "value" of any collectible is the price at which these are listed in various guides, the prices at which they've been trading and the price (if any) that I'd be willing to pay myself. I'm not willing to go into anyone else's head and make a judgement about how much an item might be "worth" to that other fellow though.

Therefore I resent my collectibles being effectively devalued by their being subjected to someone else's yardstick of value, i.e. what someone else is willing to pay. If I'm not out to sell my items, other people's assessment of their worth doesn't come into play. If my items were not worth a lot more to me than what someone else was willing to pay, well logically I would have sold them by now and they would not be in my possession currently. The fact that I own them is a clear indication that they're worth more to me than whatever somebody else is willing to pay.

If of course I've put an item up for sale, then everyone else's subjective assessment of worth would come into play. But only then.

I also flatly disagree with the statements "It's just paper." or "It's just a piece of plastic. It's not gold." First of all those statements imply that objects have no value over and above that which they provide for strictly utilitarian survival purposes. Excuse me but we could all get by living in a tent on a diet of brown bread, beans and water. To say that something is just paper or plastic is like saying Rembrandt's paintings are just coloured paper and should therefore be valued accordingly.

[Allhallowsday]

I sold a monster item for 2k and the buyer subsequently listed it on eBay and sold it for over 4300... you never know. 

[Hepcat]

I sold a monster item for 2k and the buyer subsequently listed it on eBay and sold it for over 4300....

Hopefully it wasn't to a fellow UMA member who implied that the Pop-Top Horror set was one of his holy grail items that he'd been trying to track down for many years.

[Allhallowsday]

Hopefully it wasn't to a fellow UMA member who implied that the Pop-Top Horror set was one of his holy grail items that he'd been trying to track down for many years.

No.  However, it was sold to a UMA member who paid my price.  I have no complaint.