Griffin you are OTCA royalty. Your participation brought a smile to my face. Really glad you showed up towards the end.
The dinocassets are all in the hands of Aussies and ex Aussies
1. Change in priorities.1.Why you chose to move on?
2.Will you be keeping any pieces?
3. Did the final price of any items surprise you?
2. No. I have no emotional attachment to any piece. When you make a decision like this, there is no room for sentiment. The decision was swift and easy, because the reasons were clear and logical. You will all face this day sometime in the future, don't make it hard on yourselves, be clear and be firm and enjoy the ride while it lasts.
3. Many. I guess eBay is like that. Bargains and overbidding lol.
The Japanese items mostly did piss poor (with the exception of Artfire, which went way over my estimates). Dino cassettes were rubbish. KO hit the loose/boxed market hard as expected, which affected the basis used to apply a premium on graded samples. Didn't help either that some American douchebag was pulling bids out the last 30 seconds. (They really should implement a timeframe restriction to that).
Japanese merchandise did exceptionally well. As specimen mentioned to me, this must be the gap in alot of peoples collections now, that and all the masterforce, operation combination lines.
KO bootlegs mostly did well as expected due to shortage in supply.
AFAs were poor. Probably why no one auctions them any more, most are BIN listings.
Do not be fooled that AFAs will always add value to your collection. Sometimes they will, most cases they won't. Any price is dependant on the basic principles of supply and demand (and in this case the popularity of the character). The demand for AFA G1 appears to have dipped considerably (not sure if this had anything to do with their qualified grading BS) but the dropoff is quite clear in my eyes. Something changed in this market. I have my theories but cannot confirm.
There is also alot of highly visible inconsistency in AFA grading which somewhat defies the purpose of having a grading scale.