HardlyNever

Also finally got an NY shipping notice for the armor.

We can see the current stock-count in the API at various sites. It is an interesting discussion in itself, and how they are different. but it seems like HLJ and AmiAmi have around 100-200 (like you said). NY, of course, plays a different game were they seem to never have their stock go down, because they do the thing where they secure it from other vendors/sources, at a mark-up. Basically all those places have per-customer limits of 1 or 2, so you'd have to send a wave of bots all at once (with different accounts ofc), and all try to get in and secure more orders.

So... I am actually a web developer, but I don't do much automation scripting. I've absolutely considered making a bot to get out of this, but ultimately, imo, it isn't worth it. Let me preface this with saying I'm not saying to NOT do it. If fact, I still might. Also, I'm not an expert on scripting bots in particular, so you might find someone that is more willing and knowledgeable to give it a try. But here are some things you need to consider: 1) The new website architecture at AmiAmi and HLJ make botting those particular sites very hard. You'd basically have to get the page before the pre-order opens (which they stopped doing) and change your bot to fit that specific page. This itself could possibly automated, but you'd lose precious few seconds having a script self-correct. 2) NY, in true NY fashion, isn't really more "bot resistant," as much as it is just plain stupid and anti-user, because they use an insane ticketing system that seems nearly random. So you could run your bots on that site, increasing your odds and saving you the headache of doing it your self, but you'll just be put in the random queue with everyone else. 3) Some of the older sites are absolutely "bottable" and those are the ones I would target. The problem here is latency. Most of the botters (it is theorized) are operating out of China or somewhere else in that area. So they are closer the vendor servers than you are. So unless you find a VPN or some other remote solution that is willing to run your bot from that location, you'll be at a disadvantage still. So you can run bots on it, but you still might come up empty-handed, because their bots have a latency advantage. It still might be worth trying, though. 4) Most of the scalpers that use bots do this "professionally." In other words, they scalp a lot more than Macross products, so they have the resources like server farms to allocate to botting whatever it is that they are targeting at that time. Basically you'll be a small fish in a big pond of botting. Of course we already are, when we do it manually. Having "Macross World bots," imo, is fantasy land. You'd still be lucky to score more than 3 or 4 releases using a number of bots, so you'd still have way less supply than demand. You're honestly just better off botting for yourself. Then there is the moral question and all that, but, that is different kettle of fish.

It's entirely possible/likely scalpers are using bots, although the newer websites from HLJ and AmiAmi are what I would call "bot resistant." But they are still "bot-able." Older websites are fodder for bots. On a real pre-order madness night™ you should have any and all available vendors you're willing to use open in multiple tabs. You'll be very lucky to score one, when it comes to the DX VF-1 valks (out of 6-8 vendors). The Focker release might break the internetz. If you still have your sanity after a pre-order madness night, you're doing it wrong. People are not exaggerating this, it is that bad. Many of us question continuing with this hobby if it continues to be this bad. You're basically recreated the discussion that happens after every pre-order madness. I know you're new, so it's fine. Just be aware this entire discussion (scalpers, bots, what we can/should do, quitting the hobby) repeats after every pre-order madness night. Come hang out with us in the DX threads next pre-order, and you'll see it in real-time.

For the DX Hikaru VF-1S, yes you payed a mark-up. The pre-order price for that valk at NY was 15k yen. Very, very few people got it for this (myself and several others had it in our cart at that price on pre-order night, only to lose it and have it replaced with a marked-up one. Sneaky NY). This is a tactic NY in particular does with the super-high demand stuff like the DX vf-1. I got a Hikaru VF-1S from HLJ on pre-order night for about $180, before shipping, as a point of reference. You probably didn't pay a mark-up on the SS parts, as they are still in pre-order (the benefit of web exclusive stuff vs regular release stuff).

This is an age-old discussion on collectible forums/communities of all kinds. The reality is there is a huge spectrum of people who collect and buy, and for various reasons. On one end you've got the guy who only collects what they want for their own enjoyment and doesn't care about the value of the item on the secondary market at all (long or short term). On the other you've got basically the pure scalper who only buys things to resell, either in the short or long term. And there are tons of people in the middle who do some version of both. There is no right answer; ultimately, it is what you are comfortable with and what you enjoy doing. Scalpers who buy multiples of an item only to immediately re-post the the item for a mark-up draw a lot of ire (and probably deservedly so). While someone who buys 5 of every release, only to sell 2-3 of them later, unopened (whether it be months or years) at a mark-up seem to get a pass by the community in general. While I'm certainly not defending scalpers, my core issue with this entire conversation is that it results in other people deciding what is the "appropriate" way for other people to handle their money and property, which I'm fundamentally against. People start drawing arbitrary lines in the sand that define "acceptable" collecting behavior on one side, and "predatory" on the other. And everyone draws that line in a different spot, and whatever their behavior is is always conveniently on the right side of the line. Imo, the scalping issue can only really be resolved at the production level (and maybe mitigated somewhat at the retail level). So enjoy the hobby however you want, just be advised that if people see you engaging in "scalper-like" behavior (again, a subjective opinion) you might draw the ire of some community members.

Yeah, I think he did a "cel-shaded" SDF-1 with the Arcadia re-release as well. I think this looks better, though. Looks more like the source.

Also preparation in progress from NY on the armor parts. Seems like they just sent out a mass notice to everyone that pre-ordered there, so I dunno how helpful that is. Kind of disappointed it's not a shipping notification at this point.

If you're not that picky about pilot/color, the TV Max VF-1A is due out Sept 21. Based on current secondary market (pre-order) prices, this should be the easiest/cheapest one to get. Other than that, yeah it's just a waiting game. And try to score a pre-order on the next announcement (we don't know what/when yet).

Yes, you need a separate Amazon account for Amazon Japan (you can't use your US one). They are the same company, but separate entities. Which also means you won't have Amazon Prime (unless you pay for that on your Japanese account). One thing to look out for when buying from Amazon Japan is if they ship internationally. On some items they do, some they don't (I think it depends on who is actually doing the fulfillment). This thread has a good list if you're just getting importing Macross stuff. Another thing to consider is Yahoo Japan auctions (it is like Japanese ebay). You'll have to pay a middle-man fee (there are several middle-man companies, like Buyee), but even after that you can sometimes get pretty good deals there.

As long as you know what you're getting in to, that's fine. I just didn't want you to pay that price expecting something super-high end based on the price, then being surprised when you get a ~1/100 scale valk sent to you. Seems like you do have a lot of Fockers, so I can see wanting a 1/100 scale one. Still, I'd personally put that kind of cash towards a Focker VF-0S, but that is me.

This may come too late but... that is a pretty absurd price to pay for any HMR valk. That isn't out of line in terms of pricing for that particular figure; but it is still a lot of money for any HMR valk. You can get the 1/60 Focker from Arcadia for basically the same price. I would recommend that over the HMR one. Unless you are trying to complete the entire HMR line, or are some sort of Focker completionist and want one in multiple scales, I would spend your money on a different Focker iteration. Or even just wait for the DX chokogin one, even if you have to pay the scalper mark up.

Same plan here. A 15-20% mark down might be enough for me to bite. I'm not a big enough fan of the SV-51 to buy at the current price.

Yeah, NY has the listed "release date" for the armor as Aug 23rd. Not too worried yet. And honestly, I have some issues with NY in general, but I have always gotten what I've ordered from them eventually, even the TWE stuff.

The Matrix is one of, if not my favorite movie of all time. The sequels... are not. While I don't hate them as much as most people seem to, (they seemed to make more sense to me than most), I still wouldn't call them great movies. So as a fan of the franchise... I don't really care about this. And that has got to be a problem for the success of this movie. I'll probably see it eventually, but probably not in theaters, unless it looks a lot better than I expect. The first matrix is one of those movies that should have just been left alone. But Hollywood has gotta Hollywood.

De nada. Hay una seccion en espanol aquí. We generally stick to English on this part of the forum, but I don't think it is a hard and fast rule. Anyhow, to answer to your question, the DX Chogokin uses high quality ABS plastic, and is definitely a quality piece. That said, in my personal opinion the plastic on the Arcadia products feels slightly higher quality. This might be personal preference rather than something objective about the material itself, but I prefer the feel of the plastic Arcadia uses over Bandai's. But they are both good quality ABS, and you won't be disappointed with the plastic quality on the DX chogokin line, imo.

But it isn't a screenshot lol. It's the actual html from the translator (you can interact with it in real time). So... yeah, I dunno. I originally thought it was a bot, and it might still be. But if not, that is an impressive... thing to do. Edit: Probably not a bot, just posted again. @Elkan_013 No copie todo el traductor. Solo copia el texto.

Anymoon has a list that is updated fairly regularly. The thing with pre-ordering the Bandai stuff (especially the DX line) is that it is generally a pretty short window between announcement and pre-order (for the standard releases). An announcement will be made, and the pre-order will go up like a week to 2 weeks after that (and pre-ordering standard DX Chogokin stuff is insane, hence "pre-order madness.") So you need to be pretty on-top of the announcements in order to know when the pre-order date is. The HMR stuff works in a similar fashion, but the preorder night usually isn't as crazy, and you can generally get a preorder in within the first week or so of it going up. If you're interesting collecting the Bandai stuff, you really have to check this forum every day or 2, or you might miss the pre-order window. That's just the most effective way of keeping up with that information, unless someone wants to start compiling that info in a single place. But the window between announcement and pre-order is pretty short, so they would really have to be on top of things. The Tamashii web exclusive stuff (aka "p-bandai"), in theory, is open for pre-order for much longer, but we've seen some exceptions (the DX strike parts needed a second wave, for example). Pre-ordering the Arcadia releases is generally much easier, where you have months to pre-order between the date pre-orders open and the actual release. You can often pre-order pretty close up to the release date, and they are generally readily available at or near MSRP when they come out. So to answer your question, no, not really. There are some lists that are kind of what you are looking for, but they generally aren't updated often enough to be used as a real-time tool to know when you need to pre-order. You just have to keep checking places like these forums.

NY has their release date for the armor parts as Aug 23rd. I don't think I've seen any place have Aug 16th as the release date. Do you have a vendor saying that?

Glad you found this, as I kept hearing things like this but couldn't find any good sources. So yeah, there are people out there who are reversing yellowing by only putting it out in the sun. Nothing else. No retrobrite, or salon care products (which generally involve leaving it out in the sun for a while, see a trend?). Literally just the sun light. Which is supposed to be the entire reason this stuff is yellowing to begin with, right? The amount of misinformation and conflicting information regarding this topic is absolutely absurd. I guess that is all I want to say at this point. I won't pretend to have the answers, but I think the takeaway here is that there is no single culprit or solution to the issue. I think the last 3 minutes or so of that guy's video has a decent explanation of what might be going on (years of exposure to indirect sunlight and non-UV light, vs direct exposure). So that might be why sunlight seems to be both the cause and "solution" to the problem. Does it make the plastic more brittle? I have no idea, but plastic will always degrade over time, regardless of light exposure. So it might be the correlation of older plastic being brittle and yellowed, so when people try to reverse the yellowing, they notice it is more brittle, because it is older.

I think it is exactly the same mold as the earlier yamato/arcadia vf-4 releases. Only the pilot is a new/different mold.

Well, it happened. And it didn't take too long: Lil Draken set (12k yen) SV-262 (12k yen) Obviously, condition is a factor here. But that is still pretty insane.

I can't speak much for Toysource or Bandai direct, as I don't really use them. But with regards to BBTS versus just using the usual import retailers, it is often cheaper to just use the import retailers, especially if you don't mind slower shipping. Compare the Mafex Wolverine from AmiAmi or HLJ, vs BBTS. The cheapest you could get it form BBTS is $99 shipped. While it is ~$70 UDS, before shipping, at the import places. So as long as you're ok with shipping that costs less than $30 (i.e. slower shipping), you're going to get it for $5 to $10 cheaper, maybe just a little later. And ordering from BBTS you're going to have to wait for them to get it from Japan, then ship it out to you, then local shipping to get it to you, so it really isn't much faster. You can make this comparison with a bunch of import stuff that is allowed to be sold in the US (mafex, figma, other bandai stuff), and the result is the same. I'm not trying to here, but this idea seems to persist, when we have tons of examples that show otherwise. The "domestic" retailers are just serving as another middle man, in most cases. I think it also speaks to how efficient international shipping and trade has gotten, at least for some country combinations. Now Bandai Direct might be an exception, since we could pay less of a middleman fee. Unfortunately, it looks like we'll never find out for sure.

I got a set for 11k yen late last year. If you don't care about box condition (mine wasn't bad, just a little worn), there are some good prices that pop up every now and then on Manda. Will we every hit a point where the Lil Draken set and the sv-262 itself are at the same secondary market price? It seems like it could happen.

They could be left overs from the "second wave" that never came for that game, but they look more detailed than the minis the game comes with. I would assume they are just a separate figures made for whatever reason. "For table top games," even though there is no currently active Robotech or Macross table top game, that I'm aware of. I guess you can just use them for any old table top wargaming. They look decent, all things considered.