Anyone have any sense of what the retail prices were for toys back in their day?

What would a vintage Doruge have cost if a parent purchased it for their child?
Or what about a Kamen Rider villain? Or Astro Mu figures?

Are we talking 1000 yen? or roughly $10?

Just kinda curious what the retail market prices were back then......

Anyone?

Here is an example of the exchange rate from 1975

291.6583 Yen to $1 USD

The standard sized Bullmark vinyls retailed for 350Y..

Holy Crap...

Indeed.

Just imagine how much the new vinyls will be worth 40 years from now!

Maybe the cycle will be completed and the new vinyls will be worth $1 each 2049!

Back in the day you say? How about 1958?

I was 8 years old, an air force brat living near Tokyo with my older brother and I prowling the toy shops just off base. We would buy so much stuff, toys, candy, fireworks etc., and the exchange rate then was ¥360 !! And then there were the times when mom would bring us to downtown Tokyo and we would go rampant in the toy section of the big department stores!!!

p.s The yen was pegged at 1 USD = ¥360 in April 1949. It remained at this value for a period of 22 years until 1971.

Now we just need some smart skullbrainer to invent the 'way back machine' and away we all go on a shopping spree.

Wow it really is amazing (but not surprising) just how bad the dollar has become...360 yen to 1 dollar? Jeez....

The Yuji Nishimura book lists the original prices for most of the toys in it. Bullmark standard size went for 350 Yen, minis for 60 Yen, and giant size for 1500 Yen. He does not list the prices for Barom 1 toys, but standard Bandai Kamer Rider baddies were 380 Yen so I would guess about the same.

We better see if we can find Mr. Peabody then! Man, I think I'd go hog-wild buying all the "vintage" toys I could find, and just think, they'd all be sparkly, shiny, and new, when I returned forward to current time (I wonder if they'd carry the vintage "scent" with time transport?)

...the mind boggles!

If my memory serves me, I paid less than $5 for each of my Bullmarks in the 70s here in Hawaii.

Folks, that weak Yen in the 1970s is the reason there were so many badly dubbed (and dubious rights-transfered) films in the 1970s as well as local stores importing goods to the U.S. And basically the reason anyone in the U.S. learned about Japanese sci-fi and related toys.

Like this place in Waltham, Mass. I didn't go to that store since I lived in NYC, but man going to local toy stores to see what odd Japanese stuff they would score was practically a ritual of every trip to every new neighborhood when I was a kid.

Man....Mr. Big Toyland.

That place comes up every now and then on TBDX:
http://toyboxdx.com/phorum/read.php?1,5 ... #msg-52943
http://toyboxdx.com/phorum/read.php?5,1 ... msg-148058

So fucking good...

Anyway, back to vintage pricing...when vintage was "modern"!

As long as we are dreaming:
If only I had been able to buy Bullmark toys & Microsoft initial public stock offerings.

I do remember back in the 70's showing my stuff to other kids, a $10 die cast toy was considerd "expensive" and a $4 standard size Bullmark vinyl was considered "stoopid junk".
However most adults saw the value and there were a few "adults" I would see buyng tons of stuff regularly and I would talk to them and they really knew their stuff and didn't seem to care how young I was they just approved of what i was getting on my $30 allowance.

Maybe some of us will actually time transport?

Oh Wow....total blast from the past for my childhood!
this commercial ran all of the time, as well as others they did, when I watched cartoons in the afternoon!

Waltham was so far away from me, but my mom worked close and bought me things there once in a while.

i also have the gardian in that video, first Japanese toy!

thanks for the link!

Holy shit, Ed...I can't believe we haven't talked about that commercial! It seems like the rest of us (robot guys) talk about Mr Big all the damn time. Surprised the subject never came up around you. [By the way, sorry we missed each other at the Summit...I hear it was only by minutes... ]

oh damn i brought a goga with me as well...i think a few dudes were almost converts (i say almost)

yeah there used to be a store in my hometown that sold the die cast stuff too. i bought my gardian there.

Ed....diecast? We need pics of the burgeoning collection!

i posted the gardian here once without much fanfare, although that was before this area of the board existed.

I need to dig out my diecasts.

I sleep next to them, they are in a big trunk next to my futon.