So i am interested in some of the vintage bullmark toys!
I am wondering if ebay is the only/best place to get figures like this?...
Please someone help.
Looking for figures like...
GORO
SASOGIRAS
GHOSTRON
etc...what should i be paying for figurs like this? On e-bay they are starting @ 50 with 12-20 dollar shipping!
any help is a big help thanks

BRD

I think pricing for real vintage Bullmarks on eBay is out of whack, especially the Toho ones. There are hundreds of figures, so there's no set price. Obviously some are in higher demand than others, especially the Hawaii paint variants. I think you're better off searching for them on Yahoo Japan.

what do u mean by out of whack?...they are just kinda random or they are too high or low?

I think they get too high. Too few of them being sold, and too many people bidding on them. Even with auction fees and international shipping, I think you're better off bidding on Yahoo Japan for them.

Of course, flying over to Japan and buying them yourself is even better. ;p

Actually....
They are WAY too low.
It's a buyers market right now.
You're not going to do much better on Yahoo Japan as the sellers there know what they're selling and have the market, by the time you've factored in the middleman fee and the postage fees..... $50 for a "vintage" Bullmark is insanely, ridiculously cheap.
$50-65 for a brand new Bandai B-club reissue of an original Bullmark is the going rate.
GORO
GHOSTRON
SASOGIRAS

Have all been reissued by Bandai B-Club in variants and they can be had for 45-85 on a good day. Sasogiras is harder to come by than the Ultra Kaiju.
An original Orange Sasogiras will cost you 150 + (on a good day)

an original Goro will kill your bank account, I don't want to dissuade you, but it starts at a minimum of $1000-1500 and will climb from there, it depends on the variation.

Ghostron will be 150-175 for the green version original, more for the variations.

sasogiras vintage will be 100ish for the bullmark, and 75-100 for the Orange (that is a company name) version, they are very similiar but I like the Orange version better. (It is a zone fighter monster).

As an uneducated nonce in this area, how does one discern between the vintage figs and the re-issues???

First of all, if it's bagged, it's more likely to be a reissue, although vintage bagged kaiju do pop up from time to time, and you can usually see the wear and tear on their packaging.

Companies that make reissues nowadays are very careful to mark the feet with their own brand name in addition to the Bullmark stamp. Also, they usually do the reissues in color schemes that differ from the original issues.

At the beginning of the kaiju reissue trend, some people were scuffing up the reissues and trying to pass them off as vintage to uneducated sellers. I haven't heard about that in a while.

Even if you were blind, you would be able to tell reissues from originals. The smell is a dead giveaway. And it's toxic!

The new figures are generally "shiny" and look "new", the old figures are usually more matte, and have some wear and tear. Also, almost all the reissues have a black stamp on the foot that says b-club (in katakana) or popy. The 1991 reissues had small stickers as well.

The easier answer is almost all (M1 and some b-club or 1991 versions excepted) are different paints or paint variations from the originals, this assumes you know the original paints though, which is hard to know at first.

Great info by all!
thanks
and keep it comming

BRD

One of the best thing you can do at this point in your collecting is to go out and purchase a series of books that came out a number of years ago with beautiful pictures of lots and lots of bullmark vinyls (in their original colors) Last I checked 3 or 4 volumes were published just on vinyls alone.
You might want to give the Super 7 store a call, last time I was there they had a number of copies left, these are now out of print so better hurry.
Those books are a really good way to get a cheap education, and if you're going to start collecting vintage Bullmark...indispensable !