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Illuminatus

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Year 19

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Conqueror of the Swarm!

Conqueror of the Swarm! (124/293)

  1. I'm happy to say that was me who won the prototype black Ruru; I just picked it up in person a few days ago at Copenhagen Airport. It is a thing of beauty and 100% genuine from what I can tell. I was very surprised that I won as I was realistically just one or two bids away from tapping out. It was a very long and drawn out $25-increment endurance battle between me and just two other bidders. I think it's possible that this one auction was just buried under the algorithm and seen by much fewer people than the one for the tan Kakama; it's also pretty likely that the few people that did see the auction very deliberately kept it to themselves. In fact, Thomas (the seller) was thoughtful enough to offer me a brown Komau instead of the Ruru and while I did very much fancy that mask, I respectfully declined as I'd rather secure the less common (if more obscure) mask. All in all, the $725 price tag for a prototype is definitely an anomaly and I consider myself immensely lucky.
  2. I've edited out the entirety of this comment to hopefully head in a better direction. As is customary with impromptu BZP debates, it will be a long one! I'm gonna be honest, this is not a great way to set the tone for any constructive conversation. I get that I'm the one making the claim and thus the burden of proof is on me; I also get that my initial conclusion can be construed as sensationalist and definitive with comparatively insufficient proof. But if we want to get to the bottom of this, the conversation needs to read more like we're refining, reconsidering and discarding arguments if necessary, and less like we're reiterating and insisting. Insisting never made anyone change their mind. This is incredibly reductive and would've been a sufficient retort to my original post but definitely not to my follow-up comment; it also borders on a strawman argument with "some masks" and "this one image" subtly implying that the two are mostly unrelated and I'm just seeing absurd patterns where there are none. My claim really isn't all that absurd and my arguments are much more reasonable (and numerous) than this makes them out to be. For clarity's sake, I will be re-outlining both below in detail. Honestly, just the one piece of information that a reddish gold Avohkii exists is enough to at least hypothesize that it must've served some purpose in the production process and that it likely was not produced in isolation, as very few prototype and pre-production Kanohi appear to have been produced without an intended set to go with. Either way, I am going by much more than those two pieces of information and will be thoroughly explaining what I mean below. I'd be happy to see which particular images you mean, especially for Lhikan. All of the images of Lhikan that I've seen give off a distinctly spray-painted gold feeling (the go-to approach for gold pieces a few years prior to that and apparently still a utilized approach in terms of box art at the time of release), as do at least two images of Iruini. I will admit I have seen other images of Iruini that could be interpreted as reddish gold but I can't seem to find them currently. So feel free to follow up on that. I fail to see how this disproves (and doesn't in fact prove) my quoted point that most prototype and pre-production pieces have fallen into obscurity. The fact that there are so few reddish gold Avohkii masks that we've seen is 100% in line with the fact that there were incredibly few of them to begin with, as there is very few of most prototype and pre-production pieces that have ever existed, let alone surfaced. I have several issues here. First off, the exact number of reddish gold Avohkii masks produced wouldn't necessarily have been equal to the number of test Takanuva sets produced (if they were in fact produced in 2003 for that purpose); they would've been produced in multiples of 4, 6 or 8 depending on molds. The same applies to shoulder and chest pieces. So if such pieces exist, they wouldn't need to be "at least 24" or really any specific number to match any other set of pieces; they would simply need to be enough to produce (roughly speaking) a few test sets for reviewing. But this of course is used to lead up to—and give extra punch—to your main point that if these pieces existed (let alone that many of them) then they surely would've surfaced by now, right? Well, no. Of course not. You say these "have somehow never seen the light of day" as if that were bound to happen if these were real, which is quite simply not the case. The vast majority of prototype and pre-production LEGO pieces end up in recycling or, at best, a Danish kid's closet whose mom or dad used to work at LEGO. That's why so many pieces we've literally never seen before are only surfacing now and it's always a Scandinavian dude that retrieved them; not Binkmeister or Black Six who've already had their day. Now I understand this puts me in a rather paradoxical position where I'm trying to simultaneously argue the existence of something and why we're likely to never see it in existence. At first glance it seems contradictory but I ask you to bear with me. Given that he got several dark blue Matatu masks, one would also expect he would have would up with at least one dark red Miru. Or a dark green Rau. Or a prototype (!!!) white Hau. Or any one of all these Metru Nui Matoran masks we literally didn't know existed until DuckBricks visited Christian Faber two weeks ago. Do you see what I'm getting at? Implying that what Black Six got in that lot is indicative of which prototype and pre-production BIONICLE pieces did or did not exist, let alone how they were matched and distributed, isn't simply a massive stretch; it's demonstrably false. And at this point I could just as easily say that your whole argument amounts to "Black Six got this lot of masks in 2009 and it's a lot of masks so that must be all of them" but that would be the least respectful way of delivering the same point. I'm sorry, but this isn't an argument so much as it is a handwave. Again, I am aware that the burden of proof is on me but the implication here is that because what we've seen in terms of prototype and pre-production pieces so far appears random and without any particular purpose, then those same pieces must've been produced without purpose. That simply can't be the case. In fact, the whole point of seeing never-before-seen pieces—not to mention the fun of it—is in hypothesizing what their purpose could have been (why else would I be writing a 5000-word reply if it wasn't fun). So let me once again refine my initial claim so we both have a firm grasp of exactly what we're arguing for and against. I find it incredibly likely that a full set of reddish gold armor for Takanuva has at some point been produced for internal use at LEGO; not that such a set was ever released publicly; not that the number of required shoulder and chest pieces in physical existence would be proportional to the number of Avohkii masks in existence; not that anyone outside of LEGO has ever seen or ever will see these pieces in person; not that these pieces will ever reach the secondary LEGO market in any way, shape or form. I'm arguing only that they were produced. My main arguments for believing so are as follows: The reddish gold Avohkii exists. The reddish gold Avohkii would've been produced in 2003 and not later as evidenced by unreleased Colgate toothbrushes featuring it. The reddish gold Avohkii uses a non-final mold as evidenced by notches on the back differing from officially released Avohkii masks. This means it was more likely than not produced prior to any mass production of Takanuva sets. No solid reddish gold BIONICLE pieces have ever been released and reddish gold was generally an unpopular color at the time. Takanuva was the first BIONICLE set to feature flat dark gold pieces of any kind; prior to that we'd only ever seen "BIONICLE Gold" and a wide variety of differing silvers. This means that by necessity LEGO would've arrived at that decision following at least some discussion and more than likely some experimentation with different shades of gold. Concluding that 2003 was a turning point for BIONICLE in terms of gold isn't even remotely a stretch. All of this alone indicates that the reddish gold Avohkii would've more than likely been produced for the purposes of developing and reviewing a Takanuva set and not for any other purpose. An accompanying set of armor is hence extremely likely as it would've cost LEGO practically nothing and would've served an essential purpose in testing and reviewing. It could of course be counter-argued that it could've been produced a) for the toothbrush alone, b) as an extra mask in place of the translucent Avohkii, c) for unknown reasons or d) for no particular reason. Which of these is the most compelling hypothesis in your opinion? Now in addition to all of this comes the otherwise ignorable and useless image of the Takanuva set as featured in Rahkshi instructions. Here's what's up with that: The aforementioned image of Takanuva is a photograph and not a digital render. Titan sets have always used photographs instead of renders. The image shows Takanuva in a different pose from the one on his final box art as evidenced by his staff and other minute details. A reshoot can be necessary for all kinds of reasons but changes in the model stands out as the most substantial one. The shade of the mask and armor on the image are visibly redder (may be attributed to many factors not least of which digital altering) and softer (may only be attributed to the quality of the plastic in my opinion) than the stark yellowish gold on Takanuva's final visual. All of this, as stated before, lends additional credence to the hypothesis that a complete reddish gold set of armor was produced for Takanuva. It is crucial to understand that not a single one of the arguments outlined above is sufficient on its own. But all of them put together and coupled with the fact that we have only seen a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of prototype and pre-production BIONICLE pieces in existence adds up to a pretty solid hypothesis. Some possible avenues for you to explore at this point could be those Lhikan and Iruini (or any other) visuals with a supposed reddish hue to them, making the case that this is much more common than I'm currently assuming and doesn't mean anything per se. You could explore the presentation of gold in box art throughout BIONICLE's history in general. Or you could freely hypothesize as to the reasons for the reddish gold Avohkii's existence, if not to potentially be the Kanohi Avohkii. But I expect stellar counter-argumentation in the event that you disagree with any one point that I laid down.
  3. Let me clarify my conclusion just in case it could be misinterpreted. By "exist" I mean it is incredibly likely to me that they were produced in that color for pre-production purposes, not that a single piece like that ever made it to shelves. The reddish gold Avohkii similarly never made it to shelves. And by "assemblable" I mean a reddish gold Takanuva figure could hypothetically be put together in the same way that a Sand Tarakava could hypothetically be put together if you can retrieve both a prototype yellow Ruru and a dark gray Onua claw. That's all. Assuming you understand my actual conclusion, the vast majority of prototype and pre-production BIONICLE pieces (in wildly unexpected colors at that) have only surfaced in the past couple of years, some of them well after BIONICLE's 20-year mark; additionally, recent research into LEGO piece inventory (building on the list Aanchir assembled back in 2012) reveals the overwhelming majority of these pieces haven't surfaced at all. I'm obviously not going by the digital render alone and I believe I made that pretty clear. Again, assuming you understand my conclusion that these pieces were produced internally and not that they were ever released. If I were saying "Hey, this picture exists so the pieces must exist," that would obviously be insufficient. If I were saying "Hey, the mask exists so the armor must exist too," that would also obviously be insufficient. But when both an eerily reddish-looking gold set of armor (the only such gold armor that can be seen on any BIONICLE render at all; feel free to prove me wrong) appears on a demonstrably early iteration of a set's box art and a reddish gold mask has physically surfaced from that very set (the only solid reddish gold BIONICLE piece we've ever seen too), it becomes a much bigger stretch to assume these two things are coincidental, especially knowing what we know about how LEGO develops and tests sets. Here I am once again getting the distinct feeling you think I'm saying a reddish gold Takanuva was released; I am categorically not saying that, lol. I am saying it is very likely to me that reddish gold was considered as the color for Takanuva's armor and was hence produced in extremely limited quantities, of which we've only ever seen the mask (ask yourself why they would only produce the mask too, btw, if the armor doesn't really exist). This falls absolutely in line with what you just described precisely because reddish gold was used so sparingly. Overall, "Instruction colors are always janky" and "We haven't seen it, so doubt it" are valid arguments in general, but are the much less compelling arguments in this particular case given everything else I lined out. Let me know your thoughts. PS: I think it's important to re-highlight that this is an entirely different render of Takanuva, not a differently colored render of the official visual, in case anyone assumed I was going by colors alone.
  4. Hello, everyone. I believe I may have finally (and unexpectedly) made sense of an image that used to fascinate me when I was younger: This is the key visual for Takanuva as featured in Rahkshi instructions. It is notably different from the final box art as can be verified by comparing the figure's feet and staff, as well as other small details, meaning that this was either a different model or at the very least the same model but shot at a different moment. Anyone with a physical Rahkshi instruction manual on hand can verify that the color of the mask and armor appear distinctly different from flat dark gold on this visual. If not for the existence of the reddish gold Avohkii (often erroneously called pearl gold) I might've assumed this was a printing issue but as it stands this seems like very solid proof that reddish gold was considered and tested as Takanuva's official armor color in place of flat dark gold. What lends additional credence to this hypothesis is that prior to Takanuva there weren't any gold-armored BIONICLE sets at all, meaning LEGO definitely would've experimented with a variety of gold-like colors. So in a nutshell, this means that Toa Nuva chest and shoulder armor pieces exist in reddish gold and a hypothetical reddish gold Takanuva is fully assemblable. Cheers.
  5. I don't believe that was ever the implication at any point in the topic. No one is looking for a singular explanation as to why the market behaves one way or another. It's obviously not all the result of scalping. It's also obviously not all healthy competition and grown-up fans finally coming into income. Both factors (and others) continuously play into the "hype" that dictates prices. And everyone buys the hype eventually. I really don't see why it's so hard to believe that a) healthy market fluctuations can attract predators and b) predatory practices can give a vastly unrealistic perception of prices in general (especially to newcomers) and make people readily shell out amounts that they wouldn't be willing to otherwise. I personally know of a handful of newcomers that just have a wholly different approach to collecting which can only be described as hype. They aren't exactly driven by nostalgia, they don't exactly want to resell, they don't exactly like anything about any one collectible; it's almost like they view collecting as a strictly financial instrument but not for direct gain so much as the perceived pleasure of owning something expensive. Idk, it's honestly all very strange to me.
  6. The yellows are a mess. Since my last post I have discovered a fourth kind. None of these are worth going after.
  7. That was poor phrasing on my part. My point was they used to be inconceivably rare whereas now they are quite reliably rare in that you can pretty much bet a new one will surface in Scandinavia every year or two. The latest one surfaced just now. Can't say that about any of the GPKK or VMKK at this point. Fair points. I may be misremembering whether just the Infected Hau or other/all Rahi masks were available that. Going back to old convos that I think mentioned it doesn't yield any results, so don't take my word for it, lol. EDIT: Upon researching something else entirely, I inadvertently found proof that only the Infected Hau was in fact distributed in those packs and also that those packs absolutely contained predominantly default masks (absolutely shame on you, LEGO).
  8. This is a really good argument I forgot to address (thanks for that) and (imo) a prime example of the market doing its job right. The point here is that you were missing something for long enough that you were willing to nudge the market along, and any lasting inflation resulting from it should be condoned (even if scalpers inevitably hijack it too) as there effectively wasn't a market prior to it. It's a win-win for both of you because you got what you were looking for and the seller probably got a fair price for a piece that they love to death. It doesn't feel like extortion, is what I'm trying to say. It's demand-driven and not (blatantly) profit-driven. What you did with these pieces should not be conflated with what's been happening with a lot of other pieces, because it is categorically not the same. Which leads me to my next point. Obviously scalpers don't go out and buy every single unit of any given piece all of the time, but they absolutely buy every piece that's priced significantly lower than their own and then relist it at the "market" price. Which is very neatly excused as healthy and normal business if you fail to consider that you can pretty much set whatever price you like for any piece you can think of that way. The way it usually works is not that one seller buys out everything and then singlehandedly twists the market's arm (more on this in a bit), but rather enough sellers buy enough stock that other sellers inevitably feel compelled to catch up. Take the orange Vahi for example. It seems to be doing pretty abysmally right now despite having a moderately good storyline appeal and being objectively rarer than most regular 2001 Kanohi. Don't you think it has a bit more "rare" energy to it? What do you imagine is to stop me from buying out all 30+ pieces currently on BrickLink and then drip-selling them at $350 a pop? What do you imagine will happen next? If any other Vahi show up for less, I buy those too. If they show up at my price, I let those be. How long do you imagine it will be before everyone starts listing at my price (the "market price")? How long do you imagine it will be before I break even and start raking in hard cash? Is this the market just being the market? And this is the least likely scenario of all. Nothing is stopping me from carrying out the least likely scenario with the biggest initial investment on my end and still turn a profit. Obviously most sellers don't brute force the market quite like that; most times it takes just a couple of lots of a couple of units each to produce the exact same effect in the long run, though. As for my previous point of "singlehandedly" twisting the market's arm, I really don't see how even that is so hard to believe. I can think of at least four instances of sellers stumbling on mass reserves of items and then pretty much deciding the market price for those items. I don't recall a single one of them going "Hm, I guess these are dirt cheap now and there's plenty to go around, here you go, everybody!" Part of what really fascinates me about the market is how much stuff went entirely under the radar because it didn't happen in the US. Collectibles that were previously considered astoundingly rare have been proven to be just decently rare (however still astoundingly priced); the brown Komau is a prime example of this; the copper Komau has in fact been proven to be entirely common within Poland (I can only think of a single Polish BZPer back in the day). I think we have yet to see what kind of treasures Eastern Europe has because the market is apparently just starting to blossom here whereas I previously thought it was dead after being practically nonexistent. Guess I was wrong. But yeah, new collectors from around here are especially vulnerable to buying fake hype and taking a scalper's price at face value. Not defending him but if he's been through enough of those packs then I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this. It has crossed my mind that overlapping releases of Krana and Krana-Kal packs might both include Protodermic Kanohi Nuva as LEGO doesn't appear to care all that much about consistency; I also think I read that someone had stumbled upon one as a kid? Like I for one had no idea that Rahi Kanohi were available in 2001 polybags but that appears to have been proven at this point.
  9. BrickLink is right not to distinguish between these as I have two "single" green forehead masks with differing codes on the inside, meaning it is extremely likely that both molds/codes yield both patterns (and they really are one pattern when you carefully inspect them; just a matter of more red or more green). Me. Thank you, DeeVee.
  10. Hello, I'm currently missing three Krana and would like to buy them off of a single seller if possible: Lime Za Lime Vu Pearl Very Light Gray Bo I'm also potentially looking to replace one yellow Xa and one pearl very light gray Su, but those are extra. I can offer cash or trade tan Kanoka. Thank you!
  11. I think it's important to not get carried away when describing what the market is and does because the line between that and justifying what the market is and does is very thin. If we're to logically follow the line of thinking where we simply observe, describe and predict how something will be, we sweep the "should" bit very comfortably under the rug. And the "should" bit isn't unimportant. Because the market doesn't exist in isolation. The market consists of every seller and buyer that's ever participated in it and every seller and buyer has agency in the process. Going by that logic, there is nothing more "natural" than a market being overrun with bad actors. But natural doesn't make it excusable. That's why I'm all for constant, active discourse on the subject. Certain things really are a certain way "regardless of how we feel" but the market is something that is very much defined by how we feel; it's not just a thing out there doing its thing. I think a big part of the reason why most of us are willing to give scalping behavior a pass is that deep down we all kind of wish we could operate with that type of cash on that kind of level. And we all kind of admire what the scalpers do (not unlike one admires a very well thought out con; except in this case the con isn't even sophisticated). EDIT: The reason why I think discourse is important is because if people have easier access to information that validates their frustration with the market, it would make them feel less isolated and powerless. It is one thing to just "go with it" when only a scalper has that thing you really want when everyone seems to think that's just how things are; but when you know that quite a few others share your frustration, you'd be much more likely to reconsider how much you really want (let alone "need") that thing you're after. It also helps you unframe every single other fan as your competition or potential buyer. There is tremendous power in not caring. As @T.B.O.C very adequately put, there is nothing stopping any of us from just moving on if we see the market is hopeless, because hopelessness is exactly what makes an "eager" (actually desperate) fan accept the price tag. This hobby is meant to bring joy, not misery.
  12. Was just about to double post (that still a rule?) saying I was rich. Maybe the market's not so bad after all.
  13. It pains me to say it, as Bionicle Universe is a friend, but his contribution to the steady (and occasionally abrupt) rise in prices for the past decade has been enormous (and we all know once they go up, they stay up; ain't ever been such a thing as a "correction" in this type of market). I can vouch that he (unlike some others) is particularly pleasant to do business with and while his pricing has always ranged from slightly over-the-top to downright obscene, he's also done a great service to the community in providing a readily available marketplace for the fandom especially in terms of sealed sets and collectibles. I'd really like to think he hasn't ever dabbled in any of the more shady stuff but I'm sure at least some people have, as you described. This. Absolutely this. Same goes for the pearl gold Ignika, 5-hole Kraahkan (lol??) and honestly even the misprint Kaukaus; these things are literally abundant but the consensus seems to be that they're ultra rare so they're just treated as such. And if it ever happens that a relatively high number of extra units are suddenly injected into the market (like with the yellow Huna), that doesn't ever appear to have a stabilizing effect, like ever. It's just "more of the rare stuff = more money to charge." It is absolutely backwards (and also proof that supply doesn't amount to anything in this particular case). And here lies the biggest tragedy of it all: if some pieces that are as common as the pearl gold Ignika can get pumped so high, then sellers will naturally use that as pretext to pump the prices of actually rare items to unfathomability. Bionicle Universe has just listed his gold Hau for €50,000. And a few prototype sets for €5000 each. I saw that yesterday and unironically wanted to cry because I guess all the good stuff really is taken. :)
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