You don’t always need to keep an eye on auction houses or online marketplaces to get your hands on vintage toys. Sometimes, you may find gold at a yard sale or through someone trying to get rid of old stuff. After all, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. For all you know, your friend, colleague, or neighbor might have a Grail stored away in a box somewhere, just waiting for the right collector to come along. You never know when or where you might stumble upon a valuable toy or action figure.
For instance, wellscounty showed off their latest haul of Star Wars figures on Reddit. They managed to bag 20 figures at $5 a pop, including vintage and relatively modern figures. Most of the figures are from The Power of the Force line, while the others are a mixed bag of Legends, Episode 1, and Revenge of the Sith action figures. All in all, $100 for the whole set is a pretty good deal, but it seems one of the figures might actually be worth way more than what they thought. The Episode 1 CommTech Yoda figure has a printing error, which might be worth a lot to the right buyer.
While Hasbro’s CommTech line isn’t as valuable as vintage Kenner toys, the microchip that allowed them to talk was quite a neat feature when it came out. However, what makes this Yoda figure special is that the ‘Episode 1’ title was missed out during production. As collectors will know, manufacturing errors like this tend to make figures more valuable, and are considered rare. Hasbro eventually fixed the mistake, resulting in a limited amount of these Yoda figures being in circulation. And, if there’s a limited amount of something, collectors want to get their hands on it.
However, you need to be strategic when it comes to figures with manufacturing errors like this. Of course, newer figures aren’t going to be worth much, with or without errors. While this Yoda figure may not go for a big amount right now, you can be sure that its value will increase over the next few years. If they manage to keep the figure and packaging in good condition, they might eventually be able to resell it for a good price.
That’s exactly what happened with this vintage Kenner Star Wars Jawa action figure. A limited quantity of them were made using vinyl for the cape, which would deteriorate very quickly. While the material was eventually changed, the vinyl caped figures are now going for tens of thousands of dollars if they’re in good condition. If wellscounty bides their time, that CommTech Yoda figure might also be worth something similar one day.
Do you own any vintage action figures with manufacturing errors? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
