Gentle Giant Mini-Busts

[Rob]

Against my better judgement, I pre-ordered.  I'm not happy about the price, and I don't care about the tin box. 

[drewlam]

Hmm, just looked into the premier guild, and it's a possibility I suppose.  If I can wait until the Fett is available and then use the $30 for him then it's more appealing.  Otherwise the $80 is pretty pricey to add to the $150.  Any canadian guild members out there - any idea what GG uses for shipping?  Just wondering if I'm likely to get hit with a bunch of customs fees.

If there's anyone out there who has the membership but doesn't want the Fett (and is willing to order it for me), let me know.

[Nicklab]

Hmm, a new Boba Fett mini-bust.  Has anyone else noticed that with some of the recent character choices, that Gentle Giant has been revisiting some of the hottest characters/pieces in the history of their Star Wars license?

-Boba Fett mini-bust
-Snowbunny Padme statue (this time it's movie-realistic and not animated)
-Blue Clone Trooper (statue instead of mini-bust)

[Morgbug]

Hmm, just looked into the premier guild, and it's a possibility I suppose.  If I can wait until the Fett is available and then use the $30 for him then it's more appealing.  Otherwise the $80 is pretty pricey to add to the $150.  Any canadian guild members out there - any idea what GG uses for shipping?  Just wondering if I'm likely to get hit with a bunch of customs fees.

If there's anyone out there who has the membership but doesn't want the Fett (and is willing to order it for me), let me know.

Retired member, yes.  I think JesseVader is still a current member. 

Shipping - more expensive yes, don't recall the amounts though as I usually bypassed by going to Minnesota for delivery. 

Customs fees - yes, they don't use USPS, usually FedEx or another courier type so it's not really customs fees at that point, it's brokerage fees - customs and more 

What you can do though is gamble on the exclusives solely for reselling on ebay down the road to recoup your losses.  Perhaps not the most noble approach but it does work. 

When I bailed on the PGM club they were mostly putting out crap or at the least I felt that between regular prices for busts being at $80 and shipping + brokerage fees, ebay was pretty much cheaper.  There also didn't seem to be a lot of product/exclusives that I was interested in paying for at that point either, so I failed to renew.  I think if I'd decided I wanted the jumbo vintage, I'd have stayed in but 90 odd figures at $100 each?  That my friend is what we call a motorcycle.     I do think that the recent offerings of the club, between statues, busts and jumbo vintage figures make the club well worthwhile, but my collecting has all but stopped of late. 

[drewlam]

I hear you Brent - collecting has slowed to a trickle for me as well.  With the GG busts, I have a few "core" groups that I wanted.  Vader, and the assorted stormtrooper variants, the main characters in their classic looks, and then the bounty hunters from ESB (plus a few other cool looking characters like hammerhead and admiral ackbar).  I wrapped that up a few years ago, but was missing Boba and a classic farmboy luke.  When the finally released farmboy look I wasn't crazy about the pose, so I recently picked up X-wing luke.  He's pretty well done so he fills in nicely.  Now it's just the Boba.  I was actually really disappointed when they announced that he was the SDCC exclusive, because I knew that would make him tougher to get (and more expensive).  Maybe I'll just watch ebay and see what happens.  Might regret it, but I've been missing Boba for years anyhow.

[Rob]

Hmm, just looked into the premier guild, and it's a possibility I suppose.  If I can wait until the Fett is available and then use the $30 for him then it's more appealing.  Otherwise the $80 is pretty pricey to add to the $150. 

Brent pretty much already said this, but in fairness to GG, that $80 also gets you your choice of Holo Vader or Mace Windu Mini-Busts (or a large scale vintage Rocket Firing Fett).  Last year it was the RFT, that (for me at least) I'd have bought anyway. 

And you get access to other goodies throughout the year.

So I don't think it's entirely fair to consider that $80 part of the cost of the Fett.  You could very easily get the Windu or what not and get most, if not all, of that $80 back.

[drewlam]

So I broke down and got the membership - used the free gift on the Marvel War Machine bust and then took $10 off the Boba.  Man, that shipping is a killer - $46 to get Boba shipped!!!  Ah well, he's the last of the ESB bounty hunters that I needed.  I'll keep telling myself that.

[Dave]

Bah!  I just got the Ree-Yees bust and am a little annoyed.

First, the sculpt is great and I love OT aliens.  That is pretty much all I get.

Its also nice that they provide interchangeable arms (one with a blaster in hand and one with nothing in hand).  Unfortunately the other hand has a drink in it that isn't removable.  So if you put the blaster in one hand you still have a drink in the other, which looks pretty goofy in my opinion - it looks like he's defending his blue beverage.

It would have been nice to provide a removeable drink/hand/arm.

Oh well, I guess the blaster arm gets shoved back in the box and Ree-Yees can chill without his blaster next to Lando, Boushh, Droopy McCool and gang on my shelf.

[Dave]

Anybody still collect these?

I collected about 40 of these in the first ten years of this line, but with rising costs and a little less interest I haven't bought more than a couple select ones in the past few years. 

You used to be able to get these for about $60 apiece, and if you were patient you could get some of the less interesting ones for $35 on eBay.  These days I think they all are over $120 and some of the more interesting ones require their Guild Membership, which is a bit of a scam unless you're serious about the line.

When you're talking about $120+ I think I'm more interested in getting select figures from Sideshow vs. Gentle Giant busts.

I've got a whole Billy cabinet full of these and am thinking about selling them off as I'm tired of the Billy cabinet stuck in a corner.  Thoughts on what other collectors have done with theirs?

[Rob]

I do.  I have probably 220 of them now?  I just bought a tenth Detolf cabinet and need to rearrange everything to space them out.  I’ll probably have to switch this up at some point though to OT only or something slightly less than what I’ve been doing.  Even in the new house with the basement I only have so much room.

[Dave]

Wow.  That's an impressive collection of Detolf cabinets 

[Rob]

Not sure if anyone here still cares, but the speculation and reporting is that Gentle Giant has been shuttered as part of Diamond being closed.  I don't think there's official word, but they seem to have gone silent and there are a few articles on collecting sites saying that's the expectation.

[GrandMoffNick]

I have some of the Jumbo Vintage figs pre ordered. That would be disappointing not to get those.

[Jeff]

I have seen some speculation that maybe the Diamond/Gentle Giant stuff could be processed through NECA since the group that bought Diamond in bankruptcy also owns NECA, but others are speculating that with the tariffs, it might be easier/cheaper for the new guys to just walk away and cancel any orders in-process.

Tough break for all of the folks involved though.

[Rob]

Yeah on one hand I've been collecting these nearly 20 years and am going to be sad that it's over.  On the other, my detolfs are all full and I don't have room for another one and I was spending $2000 to $3000 a year on them.  So I'm really okay with it.

The real issue is that I'm owed a Force Awakens Han that I paid for, and I bought the club membership so I'm also expecting a Floppy Hat Luke next year that is paid for.

The only announced one that I'll be very sad if it doesn't get finished is Bom Vimdin.