I am certainly enjoying this new part of the hobby since I've quit buying most stuff. Really down to Hallmark ornaments, books and comics, retro collection, and these types of custom vintage stuff. I have bought a few vintage pieces in the past year, but not sure how much more I will pick up due to cost. I'm really considering ditching Hallmark as well due to the cost and the fact they go on the tree for one year then get packed away.
For his upcoming stuff, I pre-ordered Holiday Fett, RFT and Bantha from the UK site. I think going forward I will just wait for the US site to get stock in to save on the shipping. I think I'm down to the new jawa and slave leia for what I don't have that are still available. I have also passed on any remakes of Hasbro figures thinking I might some day fill the last 17 holes in my collection.
As for the man himself, I don't know why he continues. He posts rants every two or three days. I can understand being mad seeing ~$40 items being listed on ebay for 5 to 10x, but you can't control what people will do. I never liked the scalper mentality myself. I have never bought any SW item with intent to quickly flip it. Currently, I have an extra Oola and Girindan because I ordered those two and my gf also bought them for me as birthday gifts when I thought everything would sell out when the astromechs were getting all sold. I haven't bothered trying to sell the extras at this point. In the past four years, I have sold a bunch of my collection and still have a bunch to sell. I'm certainly trying to sell for as much as I can get. Granted, all my items are generally older, but still, I'm not going to sell say a MR saber hilt for the ~$300 MSRP if I can get five to ten times that amount now. Essentially it comes down to having different priorities, bills to pay, and a different focus in my collection. In an ideal world, I would sell stuff I don't want and convert it to stuff I do. One of the bigger attractions to vintage besides the nostalgia, is that it is finite. There are just so many vehicles and figures. Even hunting down the few variants isn't as bad as all the modern Hasbro craziness.
As for the custom stuff, I think I may just stick to SS from now on. I have the Bantha and wave of 13 on "preorder" from TFSB. If I could go back, I think I would have just went with SS from the beginning, but TFSB is who I found first. I can't see myself doing a preorder from them again even if I receive everything from them. The Bantha excuses are pretty thin, but the fact they have only sent two of the 13 other figures is nonsense at this point considering how quickly SS gets stuff out. For SS, I preordered the Bantha from the second batch 2/15 and the RFT 3/17. Both are getting ready to ship soon, so we are talking about three and two months for custom made stuff. By contrast, I was really late to TFSB Bantha, but I preordered that on 1/15/22, and I know people preordered much earlier than I did and still don't have it. I preordered the wave of 13 on 12/30/21 and have received Thrawn and ST Han. It has taken way too long. I just hope to get everything and just move on. No way I can go with another wave, no mattter what it is.
