19 replies to this topic

[bachamn]

If you've been paying attention, you're probably aware that the recent Mandarake Zenbu 'Big Auction' featured a size-able quantity of Beastformers items, including some pretty cool and rare stuff! There were a huge number of boxed BB's and LB's that sold for very low prices, and a handful of unique stuff that I've not seen turn up on the market in my past few years of collecting. As much as I wish I could have bid on some of those higher-priced items, it was awesome just seeing complete photos of things like the punch box for the first time. 

 

Here are some hot links to the images in case you missed any of this. I've saved all the significant ones for archival purposes once these auctions expire. Sale prices listed are the winning bids and do not include Mandarake's 10% fee.

 

Prize Punch Box - Sale Price: ¥120,000 (~$1,005)

Interestingly this only received one bid. The box is the coolest part to me, but also contains two clear carps and a maroon drill. I found it interesting that two of the figure boxes were from a different release series. 

 

 

 

Punch Box Refill - Sale Price: ¥255,000 (~$2,135)

This was the biggest fish of the whole auction run, with a blue drill and two striped carps. 

Maybe this was known previously, but I was unaware that this refill box was the origin of the Blue Drill and Striped Carp. Was this distribution random or controlled? I had always assumed the contents of the punch boxes were completely randomized (and knew nothing of a refill box), but this could explain the rarity of the blue drill vs the maroon one. 

 

 

 

Diorama Display Case - Sale Price: ¥58,000 (~$485)

An acrylic store display case with the original box and instructions. Very cool!

 

 

Shield Battler 6 Set - List Price: ¥150,000 (~$1,255) - No Sale

Seems they over-valued this one, especially considering the company it was keeping. Maybe it'll turn up again on YAJ sooner or later.

 

 

 

 

Aside from the excitement of watching some of the big ticket items play out in auction, it also created an ideal opportunity for my bids on the items I was after to go relatively uncontested. I don't want to jinx myself, so I'll wait to post my winnings until I can take a photo of them in-hand, but in all I am quite satisfied!

 

Feel free to share if you participated as well, particularly if you won one of the rarer items I mentioned above. It'd be cool to know some of those will soon be living within the LRG community 

Edited by bachamn, 12 December 2014 - 07:36 AM.

[jkaris]

Awesome bit of history there!

Thanks for keeping tabs and saving the info.

[thenerdieststore]

wow. love those prices!

[Beastformers]

Awesome, thanks for recording this Bachamn as I´m sure we´ll be looking in to this more at some point with the BA project.

I was aware of these auctions, like probably most of the BB die hards out here, and considered to go after a couple of them but in the end it would´ve been an impossible effort looking at the price ranges for the most interesting pieces and the struggle to get in on it.

 

But pieces like that Punch box and the Display are so classic and like Jon already mentioned these hold a lot of historical value that any number for them is possible because they´re simply priceless. So that said some did end relatively cheap in the end..... I just hope these items will stay together as such but there´s a big chance that when these items aren´t purchased by a big collector they´ll end up for sale being split into individual lots which would be a shame. I knew about the refill box but I´m not sure if the content of this particular one is representative for all of these since it looks like this one might´ve been a jackpot with two Striped Carps in it as well as the Blue Drill. hope we´ll figure more of this out in time as well. For now we can only be in awe of what passed by today and I deeply hope for all BB lovers out here that one of us has been able to take any of these down. Time will tell but this is simply;

 

CLASSIC......

[dabbuu]

I have opened 3 refills packs myself the contents are random. Each one had 2 carps (being striped or clear or both) and each had a laser with a drill. The three I opened all had the maroon drill but the actual punch box had the blue drill for me. Finally the refill box contained a weapons bag for taping to the tops of the single packed BB.  

[Skullcruncher]

Don't forget the instructions for the display case? Now who was that jerk telling me the display case was custom and not an official item.........

 

I won a couple of beasts just because I needed the bio cards. Stupid thing is I actually lost my folder of cards when I moved house. Maybe it will turn up one day.

[108KickBack]

Do these mandarake auctions happen every year?I

[Skullcruncher]

Do these mandarake auctions happen every year?I

The auctions happen every 4 months or so, all these beastformers came from some warehouse. It was a pretty good chunk of the toy line.

[108KickBack]

I'm definitely saving up for the next one.I didn't know about this.Is mandarake easy to deal with?

[Grencats]

Wow awesome refill box! Thanks for sharing the auction photos.

[bachamn]

I have opened 3 refills packs myself the contents are random. Each one had 2 carps (being striped or clear or both) and each had a laser with a drill. The three I opened all had the maroon drill but the actual punch box had the blue drill for me. Finally the refill box contained a weapons bag for taping to the tops of the single packed BB.  

very informative! I'm glad to hear that speculation can be closed quickly. Did you ever see the premium drills bundled with figures other than King Buster? I'd always thought of them being bundled with Slag or Grottess so thought it unusual to see Buster in both of these bags.

 

Since you've had your hands on a punch box, can you describe the material or functionality of the printed map piece that goes over the top? since it's a "punch box" I guess I'd always imagined the holes to be covered with tissue paper or something, but after seeing these better resolution shots it looks like it's just cardboard? Are there perforations or pre-cut holes? Assuming if the box comes with re-fill packs that it's intended to be re-used, so the tissue-paper or material that's actually damaged with use doesn't make any sense.

 

Don't forget the instructions for the display case? Now who was that jerk telling me the display case was custom and not an official item.........

 

I won a couple of beasts just because I needed the bio cards. Stupid thing is I actually lost my folder of cards when I moved house. Maybe it will turn up one day.

added the instructions pic  I'll have to re-link these from my webspace eventually anyway once the auction history goes down

 

and yeah, I got one of the lower-12 LBs pretty much just for the Bio-card, but at these prices I can re-sell the extra fig to make up the difference.

 

Do these mandarake auctions happen every year?I

They happen six times a year. Their website isn't completely clear regarding specific dates when the different periods of the Zenbu auctions actually happen, though they do an ok job describing how it works. It doesn't help that there are multiple revisions of their website without consistent navigation that appear in different sections, but if you can navigate through it it's worth the time. For the past two years Beastformers items have almost exclusively showed up in the December auctions, unsure if this coincidence or if they have general themes they follow for each auction.

 

Anyway,  every other month they release a Zenbu Catalogue of items that you can purchase (which themselves become collectible items, I've seen old Zenbu cats sell for $100+, which is intriguing to me). Anyway this used to be how you would qualify to bid, but now they offer the option to just pay 500JPY to join the auction and view the items online. This is the first Zenbu auction I've participated in so I was a little unclear about the registration period, bidding periods, etc. so I emailed their reps with some questions. Here's the response I got that cleared things up for me. 

 

 

Hello,

The auction will starts on 1st December.
Hammer time is 5th-11th December.
You can register starting 3 days before the auction.

There might be slight changes, but most of the time the auction will
start on the 1st of the following months. Hammer time is 5th-11th.
February, April, June, August, October, December.

Regards,

Mago

 

 

So basically all the stuff goes up so you can see what's available 3 days before the auction starts, then on 12/1 it becomes available for "pre-bidding". When he says "Hammer Time is 5th-11th" he's referring to when the auctions go to "Live Auction" Status. This means all auctions for that day queue up on a single page and have sequential 30s countdowns before they end. This past time this was starting daily during the "Hammer Time" period at 6am CST and all auctions would be over by about 7am CST, but unsure if this ever changes. Bids received while the item is in 'Live Auction' status pushes it back (5mins?) into the queue. (which seems to be the standard Japanese auction style).

 

I'm definitely saving up for the next one....Is mandarake easy to deal with?

All of my experiences with them have been pleasant. Language barrier doesn't seem to be an issue at all, and unlike most Japanese stores they will ship internationally. They do charge a 10% fee for the auctions (which still ends up cheaper than most bidding services used for YAJ). They also have a store-front that they sell items from, but those items are listed by individual Mandarake stores, and are available for walk-in purchase so sometimes the older stock isn't accurate.

 

Good new stuff typically goes pretty quick though. Also be aware if you're using their webstore to buy multiple items that they sell from multiple store-fronts and sometimes can't combine shipping. I believe all the auction stuff comes from the same warehouse though so it's not an issue.

 

 

I didn't know about this

 

which partially explains this: http://ekizo.mandara...ml?index=292752   

 

 

Edited by bachamn, 12 December 2014 - 07:59 AM.

[jkaris]

You should just upload the images directly into the post instead of hotlinking them from somewhere.

[bachamn]

You should just upload the images directly into the post instead of hotlinking them from somewhere.

yeah could do, I've just always been annoyed by the tiny display size used for embedded images. is there any way to increase that?

[jkaris]

Let me check.

[Skullcruncher]

A couple of these look like to be on YHJ already...

Edited by Skullcruncher, 14 December 2014 - 03:13 AM.

[bachamn]

A couple of these look like to be on YHJ already...

assuming you're referring to the carps that just went up. 

 

I saw that too, but can't really be for sure that these are the same ones.

[jkaris]

Let me check.

I bumped the size to 400 pixels instead of 150. That should work.

[Skullcruncher]

assuming you're referring to the carps that just went up. 

 

I saw that too, but can't really be for sure that these are the same ones.

 

What are the chances? My items I won from zenbu arrived two days after I paid for them so although we cant be 100% sure I'd say its quite likely.

[Edmasta]

amazing stuff.

[dabbuu]

 

very informative! I'm glad to hear that speculation can be closed quickly. Did you ever see the premium drills bundled with figures other than King Buster? I'd always thought of them being bundled with Slag or Grottess so thought it unusual to see Buster in both of these bags.

 

Since you've had your hands on a punch box, can you describe the material or functionality of the printed map piece that goes over the top? since it's a "punch box" I guess I'd always imagined the holes to be covered with tissue paper or something, but after seeing these better resolution shots it looks like it's just cardboard? Are there perforations or pre-cut holes? Assuming if the box comes with re-fill packs that it's intended to be re-used, so the tissue-paper or material that's actually damaged with use doesn't make any sense.

 

 

No problem,

 

The two times I have seen the blue drill they have come with a 102. The maroon drill I've seen with a 101,102 and 103.

 

The top of the box is perforated cardboard and each punch is into one of those squares that you see in the top picture. You are simply supposed to pull out what is underneath it without seeing what is in the adjacent boxes. Also the punchbox came with a spare punch through top so you could do the whole thing over again. The punch box could only be played twice.