There were the options of yellow and read (no choice of course). Personally I think both work fantastically in their own way, and can't decide which I like better.

oh thats cool- im leaning towards red eye if i ever had the pleasure of owning one. i like how it matches the red mid section

5 grand !!!!

489.000 ¥
....geeeeeesuuuusss...

Try $6,211. This hobby has been ridiculous for quite some time.

No kidding!

k

One hour before the ending of the auction 250000yen,when I back home,amount almost doubled,incredible!!!!!!!!

My god.

Crazy stuff. At least Hirota got the money and not a flipper....

What are the odds that this goes back up for sale after some over-zealous bidder doesn't pay?

"Honey, why are we missing 6,000 dollars from our savings account? We needed that to pay for our mortgage."

"........... well you see, this guy in jap--" *Calls Collection Intervention*

doubtful. that's a real bidder.

That's some crazy amount. Good thing the money is going straight to Hirota.

It will be really interesting to see what he does next: another one-off or a production run that wouldn't fetch nearly as much profit.

I'd feel like shit if I won the yja auction and then he put up another one and it went for less money.

Also, this auction definitely just brought up the value of all Hirota in general. I'm sure of it.

I've been feeling the same way for a while Chris and It's not just the aftermarket prices. Smaller runs, fewer Lotto's, higher prices and stores offering less pre-orders have made it hard for me to get excited about new stuff. I still try on the Lotto's but thats about it. On the positive...I think it's a great time for tracking down older stuff(I've been able to grab at a few things I had never thought I could ever get).

I think it comes down more to a couple collectors that can outbid almost anyone. The prices just skyrocket when they try to outbid one another.

That price is insane... Especially for a new toy. I understand it is a one-off. I really don't agree with the way Hirota is doing the auction thing. Imagine if Gargamel did that??? I think it is just plain wrong.

Gargamel makes tables of one-offs and gets pretty high prices for each one. These one-off auctions from Hirota help him with extra income. He really doesn't make that much from the production ones. Making toys is time consuming and takes away from his core business so doing one-off's just helps to make it all possible. I don't think he even expected a price like that.

With you 100%. Where as I once thought prices like these were reserved for ultra rare vintage toys, seeing new stuff (even if it's a really cool GID one off) go for insane money makes me sad. I'm sure whoever bought has the spare funds and is not going to worry about spending that much (at least I hope they would) but you're exactly right:

Stateside you have less stores carrying anything besides their own lines or doing pre orders anymore. For what I'm into the count is now zero here. More people migrating to this these japanese toys just to value speculate and only buy those toys accordingly. Info here is posted so freely it would never take a rocket scientist to figure anything out. The dollar has completely sunk and the exchange rate blows (and has for the last few years) so your only option is YJA (middlemen) or few online stores that ship overseas and it's a costly one. I mean you are right you can find some older stuff cheaper these days but I can't even get excited about that YJA process anymore. It's frustrating I can't complete the whole process on my own. Whatever happened to Yahoo Auctions Japan opening up internationally like we thought was going to happen years ago?

All this and how many shady characters we've had come through here, it's like why am I bothering anymore? I think a super long break is well overdue for me. Maybe just collect vintage and keep it to myself. I use to like to share but it seems like you can't anymore. I can't count how many times I've wanted to share info and have even canceled pm's to close people here just because I'd over think and say "man what if they tell someone else?" It's just ceased to be fun, at least the sharing part of the community (toy-wise) for me.

good for Hirota for getting so much money, I hope it helps with some of the costs producing his awesome toys.

On the other hand, this hobby has turned in to a clone of collecting baseball cards in the 90's and that's become a real turn off for me.

Sweet gid mecha nonetheless.

At least one good thing about the price, I'm sure they intend to keep it. No way they are turning a profit. Silly price but it bums me out to hear good collectors loosing faith.

that price is nuts. but, at the same time a lot of the current crop of juxtapoz/pop surrealism/urban/graffiti artists get more than that for paintings, so if you really want to consider this stuff Art at all it's not totally unreasonable. i don't really know that i could necessarily sell myself on that line, but if i were a bazillionaire i can guarantee you that this GID gorilla would have been mine.

@ Ha Slack you collected BB cards in the 90's? So did from I from the early 80's till mid 90's. Not hardcore by any stretch but I did own some Mantles, Aaron, etc etc I was mainly into older cards. Hobby really started to suck though. Got rid of them all in a huff when I first moved to NYC as I had not touched or looked at them in years.

I also agree that it's good for Hirota to continue making toys. Rather see him get the money than someone flipping it.

I blame eBay. Suddenly everything you used to find at garage sales, fairground shows or in specialized mail-order/newsletter venues that you had to really put some effort into hunting down became collectable and every unethical greed-head came out of the woodwork to cash in.