But sometimes, a find happens that is too good not to share.
On to Part II...
On the morning of March 21st, my wife and I (and our dog Cinnamon) drove up to Greensboro, North Carolina on the hunt for Transformers. Specifically to a store called Nerdbombers.
Now I had never heard of this store before. I have long been familiar with Acme Comics on Battleground, a mainstay of Greensboro for years. In fact, I bought my very first Armada Minicons there twenty plus years ago and the owner of that store attended Charticon way back in 2013.
But Nerdbombers was new to me. I had looked up some images online and from those it looked like they really didn't have much inventory. More of the kind of store that stocks a lot of Funko Pops and not much else. You know the kind.
Boy was I wrong.
We arrived about twenty minutes before opening and already there were a few people outside. Of course, being neurotic the way I am, I immediately assumed they were there for the same reason I was. But I'm not the kind of person to push and shove my way to the front of anything. I didn't want them that badly.
Fortunately, that turned out not to be the case. The store opened and I found myself alone looking at all the eHobby figures that graced the back wall. A young man came over to ask if I needed help and I asked him for the prices, while at the same time talking about Transformers. It turned out he was a collector as well, having started just after Covid. And he was excited about expanding his collection.
The first figure he pulled for me was the ehobby Orion Pax, the Kup and Wheelie repaint. It was priced at $495. Here we go, I thought. The next was the Gold Jazz.
Only $200. Market price.
Ok, so maybe this wouldn't be so bad.
The next few figured fluctuated from market price to just below. Then I asked him for the price on the Shining (yellow) Magnus. Now I had seen this figure on eBay for upwards of $2,000 with only one sold in the past 90 days at almost $900. And that had been opened and played with.
So imagine my surprise when the price was tag said $600. At first I couldn't believe it. I then asked about the price on the prototype Astrotrain. $380. Both still sealed.
It only got better from there.
Overall, the prices ranged from fair to absolute deals. With the odd outlier such as Orion Pax. And before I knew it, I'd racked up $2200 worth of toys. And for what i was getting, I was happy about it. Thrilled, in fact.
Finally we got to the last one. The ehobby dimension hopping Minibots, you know, the ones colored like Gobots with the names. Still sealed, excellent condition. But the price: $1200. Same price as those unsold ones on eBay.
Now I am not a great negotiator. Honestly most of the time I'd rather pay a little extra than hem and haw over a few bucks here and there. But I thought maybe I could get them to come down on the price a little, given how much I was buying.
But the mandate was clear. They'd just gotten these in, so no price reductions for a while. Not without the owner's approval and he wasn't there.
Fair enough. I asked them to hold everything behind the counter for me while I took a look around. It turned out they had a wide variety of Transformers, everything from opened and loose G1 to sealed Beast Wars, RID, Armada and beyond. And a few Japanese lines behind the counter. I was also eyeing that Baldigus that was really quite the deal as well.
But, I figured I'd done pretty well already. And after admiring the store and chatting with the employees a little, I decided the trip had been worth it after all, and I'd go ahead and snag those Minibots anyway, considering how much I'd just saved on literally everything else.
Heading up to the counter to check out, another man came in and headed behind the counter. From his frantic nature at such an early hour I could only surmise this was the shop owner, in the middle of bringing in new inventory or working on a deal with a seller. I'd recognized the look of someone juggling just a few too many balls. But I said hi anyway and he mentioned he'd heard of Charticon, which is always nice to hear.
But when his associate mentioned I'd driven in from Charlotte and pointed out how much I was spending, the owner paused a moment and told me to hang on. He had something for me.
Now I've heard that line many times before. And usually it's nothing super special. It might be a rare figure here and there and sure enough, he brought out a tub of Botcon exclusive figures, most from the FunPub era, the ones that had been show exclusives, not the boxset ones.
I politely thanked him and told him while nice, I was more of a Mint In Box Collector these days.
And that's when he got this look in his eye. Little did I know what that look meant.
Stay tuned for Part III.
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