I just finished completing one full set of 9 figures by winning an unpainted rocket Fett on YJA for 19,500 Yen- which by the way I think is a steal for a 1/96 chase in this set. I cannot believe how expensive this series was to complete. These definitely aren't your father's Star Wars kubricks. I would not be surprised to see prices for sets, unopened boxes, and chases to settle at over twice the cost of prices we've seen in the past. Seriously, what a pain in the ass.
I was talking with another boardmember whom I hooked up with a basic set of 6 plus one chase yesterday and thought I'd relay my impressions of this whole fiasco here:
1.) First, for some reason Medicom more than doubled the wholesale price per box of 12 on this release.
2.) Second, Robby. jp (the wholesale company that most non-Japanese collectors used in the past) has gone out of business.
3.) Next, though the Project 1/6 store (the Medicom flagship) still has scores of every figure from series 10 for sale, two of the six figures from the Fett collection were sold out in two days (Both Mcquarries 1/12 ratio). The release seems to be very popular in Japan and overall feels really small compared to others in the past! (Though the chases seem to be packed completely randomly in the Master Cases this time which is a nice change of pace.)
4.) And finally, the Yen is so strong versus the dollar right now- 95Y:1$ versus 114Y:1$ on the previous OT set releases (series1-7).
I paid over 15 US bucks per figure at the Parco show in Tokyo, and over 500 US bucks total to secure just 2 total regular sets, and 4 total chases (2 Vintage and 2 J-slot rockets). And this was after I found out which character boxes had the chases! For a complete set in the past, I could purchase two master cases (equal to 8 boxes of 12 figures) for around 500 bucks total (or 62 bucks per box of 12 after shipping) from Robby and have a complete set (including 2 of the 1/96 chases) with extra basic sets to spare to help recoup most of my cash. Now it would cost me over 1200 bucks to do the same thing.
Unbelievable!