JoeCanuck

You know, i've been pretty appalled with the new stuff that Hasbro has put out in the last few years but i've got to say, they have a winner on their hands here. I'm really taken by these sets (mostly because of the Kwinn figure) and i'll definately be tracking them down.

Pete, i'm with you...a comic version set of the Oktober Guard would be dy-no-mite!

I had a similar situation occur a few months back when i sent a package to Brazil...it was a BIG box so i opted to send it surface which was supposed to take 6 weeks. About 12 weeks later the package FINALLY arrived. Both the guy i was trading with and myself were getting pretty concerned but everything showed up in perfect shape!

As far as other weird stories go, i once had a UK seller send me a puzzle i won wrapped only in wallpaper! No outer box or anything and when i called him on it, he totally thought he was in the right! I was pissed at that one.....

I'm sure i've got more than that but after 13 years, it's a little hard to keep track of them all....i do know that i've been waiting on a package from Toronto for almost two weeks now and i'm pretty choked at good o'l Canada post for that.  :evil:

Well, you should be very careful before buying any prototypes online. The provenance on this piece couldn't have been better and i asked all the relevant questions before hand so i wasn't worried at all about authenticity. The differences between a produced 2 up bootleg and this piece are very telling so it's quite easy to tell between a legit 2 up proto and a factory produced bootleg.

The only legit 2ups i've seen come to market are a V1 Stormshadow, a Lady Jaye, a V2 Bat and recently, the same seller i got mine from offered up a Street Fighter Dhalsim which failed to meet the reserve.

I was planning on coming down for the show but i checked ahead on my schedule and i'm working that weekend unfortunately...maybe next time. If you need more info on the Calgary show, it's at the Red and White Club at McMahon Stadium from 10-5. It sounds like it's going to be mostly comics but you never know what you'll find.

Pete, are the protos you've bought modern or vintage? I'm also curious just what stage they're from if you won't touch pre-prod pieces?

I agree that there's far too much flag waving going on when it comes to foreign Joe collecting, or overall Joe collecting for that matter...it's one of the main reasons why i'm no where near as active in the Joe community as i am the SW one. I prefer the smaller boards where some of the better people in the hobby congregate. Some of the coolest looking and hardest to find figs aren't domestic, it's just a shame they're not respected as such.

I know that locally Joe is a fairly slow market. I have met very few other GI Joe collectors here in town in relation to the amount of vintage Star Wars guys i know. Contrary to the online world, i think it's getting bigger here.

As far as things go online, i think there's an overall decline in vintage lines. I know the vintage SW market is really weird right now with rare, high end stuff hardly moving while silly prices are being paid for run of the mill stuff. I sure hope the GI Joe market isn't dying tho as i tink there's still a lot to be explored and a lot of info yet to be publsihed on several facets of the line.

I also think that areas like prototype/pre-production collecting hasn't even entered in most Joe collectors minds (as evidenced by the Dojo thread, no offence to anyone here but if that was a SW piece, people would lose their head's for it. ). The foreign market is just starting to come into it's own and i think from there, you'll see some of the more interesting aspects of the hobby start to garner more attention.