Major Focker

this might be your best bet: http://ekizo.mandarake.co.jp/shop/en/item_s-638925.html been watching yahoo auctions and it rarely goes below this price, and if you go through a bid service the fees can easily add another Y2-3k. i think mandarake charges just Y500 handling and ships internationally. i was (maybe)lucky to win an auction for Y15k but that was because the box was damaged. but in nearly a month of monitoring yahoo auctions i have yet to spot the black kimono version (see my earlier post) or the version 2 color variants seen here: http://www.1kuji.com/maf-2nd maybe i'm using the wrong search terms. has anyone spotted these variants? appreciate any info. thanks

thanks for the info on Ap Lui St. i fly in this Sunday noon, will PM you my contact details. regarding Ma.K, i'm looking for resin kits like those sold in Wonderfest. i heard G-Systems has a shop in HK but don't know where. want to stock up on their thrusters and other metal bits.

m0ns5t3r/graham, thanks for the info. this valk is not high on my want list, but that's a good price. just have to see it in person if i can tolerate the paint job, not so much the glossiness but the yellow bits, particularly the air intakes which i hope comes off.

going to HK next week and hoping to stuff my bags with model kits and supplies. i'm quite familiar with the toy shops there, but i haven't been back in 4 years and except for UML, never really found shops that were geared more towards models than toys. appreciate if someone can recommended some shops, which hopefully are also open on sundays. here's what i'm looking for: - 1/72 YF-25 Prophecy - Regult Scout and Missile Carrier - Ma.K stuff - cheap 1/700 ships for greeblies - HO scale (or smaller) train parts and diorama stuff - a lot of small LED lights, fiber optics, blinkers, miniature motors and other electrical stuff (or maybe someone knows where i can buy these in bulk in singapore) thanks

curious if these are already in HK shops and for how much. heading there next week for a short business trip. also need to know if toy shops in HK are open on sundays (specifically those in mongkok, since i'll be hitting sugar street on a weekday given it's close enough to the office) and if any new shops have popped up in the past 4 years. thanks

she was indeed stunning in that dress. that just edged her ahead of claudine auguer from thunderball. both dalton films rank pretty well on my list. something my friends could never understand

lol you could say it's a tit for tat conversation

wasn't that sarah sporting dreads?

now in stock at hlj. just got shipping notification

you sir, just made my day

is it just me, or is the hlj website down? been trying to access it all day

the VF-19 one was also reprinted. that and the VF-1 Space Wing restock are basically just sitting at kinokuniya after the first printing basically flew off the shelves. VF-25 book just arrived from HLJ. really happy with it. i wish though that they showed pics in a maintenance environment.

that alodia is a hottie. fortunately, she seems to come to singapore often enough dang, i was hoping it would be more like her last gig at anime expo where the staff saw me shooting but basically just told me not to use flash.

is photography allowed? no flash of course

if i may ask, where did you pre-order?

actually, i'm surprised the VA-3 is that small. all along i imagined it to be closer to the VB-6

seriously? it's not yet on their website though. i'll definitely pre-order.

i'll be all over the valks and destroids. if they are 3D printed, they can readily be made in different scales. ARMD is 450m so 64cm/25in in 1/700. quite big, but as you said, a very popular scale for ships, including those from anime

1/700 would make it in scale with the Valhalla from VF-X and the neat fighters that came with it. that size likely would make it prohibitively expensive for most, but i would buy one though. 1/1000 would make it roughly in scale with the Macross Quarter DX

it's torture waiting for the BD release...

i wouldn't be too sure. their inventory system is not real time so some items might get overbooked before it reflects as backordered, and from what i've read, it's not necessarily first-come first-served when they fill these orders. i've had some items dropped from my order that way even those that were ordered while the item/s was in stock (green). usually this is when there's a sale going on. what i found out that helps is if you send a follow up email. perhaps because it prompts them to prioritize one on the processing queue. another thing is to immediately trigger "ship if available" as soon as your order is acknowledged and appears in your account. it's supposed to be automatically triggered if all items are in stock for the current order, but won't trigger if you have an unavailable item from a previous order, and sometimes it just doesn't trigger at all unless you do so manually. really can't understand why after they've done quite a few improvements of their webshop functionality, they skipped on improving this core part. it's rather annoying (and sometimes stressful) not knowing if you got a hot-selling item or not, so you can try to source from elsewhere if necessary. and it's very inconvenient not being able to split or combine orders to avoid import tax limits. for these reasons they have lost more than half of my business to amiami and hobbysearch. sorry for the rant. anyway, happy to report i just got an email from hlj that my entire order (VF-11C and a bunch of books ) has been processed, paid, and now awaiting shipping. i would've also ordered the VB-6 SP ver if they allowed shipment splitting post-ordering. by the time they were able to process my shipping request (so that i can now place a new order that'll be shipped separately) the VB-6 was already off the sale list.

oh, and i think this is the first book where i've seen the fast pack for the Vf-27 (looks cool) and the VF-25 boosters on the YF-19. also, it seems there are at least 3 MQ's? (#'s 17,23,25)

guess i'm lucky for picking up this book when i did. was just browsing at kinokoniya here in singapore looking for the VF-25 masterfile and an Ma.K book when i spotted this. i hesitated initially since i haven't heard anything about this book and not seen any previews. ended up buying it just to console myself for not finding the books i was looking for. turns out, it's an excellent book, and probably the thickest of all the MF books released thus far.

haven't watched DVDs for more than a year, so it was an unpleasant surprise when i found my samsung BD-P1500 now refuses to play any DVDs, even after i've updated the firmware. strangely, it still plays BDs just fine. i've googled for solutions but found none. anyone got any ideas? in any case, i'm looking at the possibility of replacing it. this time, i'm hoping to get a BD player that also plays DVDs from all regions (my considerable DVD collection is nearly split between region 1 and 3, with a sprinkling of region 2). appreciate any recommendations. p.s. are there players with built-in web browsers?

thanks for the tips. tokyo-hunter though hasn't listed this figure, unlike the black bunny. so i suppose it has to be requested specifically? perhaps i'm using the wrong search terms, but i still haven't seen any auctions for the black kimono version. has anyone spotted it? also wondering why this latest batch isn't as widely available (relatively) as the previous rounds. before, there were a number of webshops who put up pre-orders, and others who bought entire sets wholesale and then retailed the items individually. so did banpresto not do any wholesale this time? is this batch a more limited run?