Reply To: The Taproom

I was waiting for someone to talk about the MW and I had prepared an answer

the MW are prototypes and when Chris decided ‘on his own behalf’ to sell them, he chose an arbitrary price, but they had never been meant to be releases, these were test casting… A prototype always earn its rarity from the simple fact it is… a prototype…
Releasing officially a figurine with the desire to have only 30 of them… is completly different… Though in the end the rarity is the same for the collector, the cause of the rarity is totally different. For the MW, it could not be helped or foreseen as these were prototypes, as for MX, once the casting number has been decided, one can assume and perfectly know the average price/rarity this figurine could reach almost immediatly due to collectors craving for them. That’s what I call artificial.
In order to keep from this way of thinking, Chris Tubb decided to make a “buy it now” system with fixed price, in order to be fair towards everybody… I doubt this fairness could be shared in a bigger scale, when it comes to community projects. Some would want to have their investment back by doing auctions on ebay with scaling prices, one or two figurines at a time.. others would want to be fair and make a static price until there are no more to be sold…
But it is a community money that is shared… and what should we do then? Unless we, ourselves, fix rules we must all agree upon before launching a project, about how sharing the sponsoring, and sharing the benefits, and methods of saling would be done, once and for all…

In my database I have separated the “rarity” and the “availability” these are two criteria which can be linked or not.
The “unfindable” rarity for a “prototype” availabilty, is justified. The “extremely rare” for a “discontinued” (such as M16) can be justified but I have never seen a single “discontinued” figurine (even the M16) reach an “unfindable” rarity.
I have put “availabilities” tagged for “Limited” “Promotional/Gift”, “Prototypes” and together with the rarity tag, it can explain the average price which in the end, can be acceptable. MW are prototypes, they are now unfindable, and the price for them… is no more what it used to be when Chris was selling them but has reached HIGHER prices due to people like Dominique Beuret…. (drizztdourden) . Same for the MX when they were sold out. but in term of availability, MX are to be considered “Limited”… the fact it is limited to 1000, 100, or 40… is not taken into account, it was officially released in limited quantity. Salute Event, LOTRO figurine, or early christmas figurines are “promotional” because though their quantity may be huge, they never were sold, officially (well until now… they are selling Salute 2007 it seems now)…. and the MW,MS423A Galadriel, ME2, 54mm Saruman, “Theobald’s Dwar” is “prototype” because they were never released eitheir sold, or used for promotional ends (except maybe the ME2 but it is not very clear)

Also as a purist in collector, I dont like to “convert” minis they have to be original, so though ddaines project would be cool, it would not be original and not have the same value for me.

What surprises me the most is that I suggest the flight of Gandalf as a MS… but it seems some people here would like it done anyway, as a MX project shared between the members of the MMP … But well, some members of the MMP were against the flight of Ganfalf or it would have won this month’s vote, so how would they accept sharing the price of a MX they do not want?
and if they would still want it then why do a MX? we only need to resubmit it next open month vote and it may eventually win this time (if we consider that besides MMP, not a lot of people are voting, or have been voting , lately)
(not to mention that it would cost FAR MUCH less than doing a MX, to buy Mithril several GF account for a single person, to influencate the votes in his favor… which, I would not do so myself as I consider it unfair… but clearly less expensive after all, you don’t need to buy the requirements for this account , it would be erased in one year… but who cares? it would have served its purpose : adding voices for voting…)

well I for one, would wait until next open month, resubmit my Gandalf with quite some details when i submit the idea… and wait to see how the vote ends up, THEN and only then would I decide or not about MX project…