This is ridiculous

http://www.ebay.com/itm/G-I-Joe-2013-NJ ... 3f24ab8d6b

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makes me glad im not interested in it. that being said for about the last 5 years the only figures i have wanted that they have made have ALL been exclusives, i have bought far too many figures for the fiftyish dollar range these last few years but yeah that is very ridiculous.

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Since it's nothing more than a custom, I'm sure you could make one yourself or commission one that would be indiscernable from the original for far less than that price.

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it might be a ridiculous price, but that has to make our very own KrymsynGard666 proud, and feel better a little better about all the work he had to do to make them -

Apparently, there is a market for that figure!

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That's cool the maker is a JC guy.

I love the figure. I'm just short about $500. Maybe more. Still 2 days to go on that auction.

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Got to be honest here. I actually attended the NJCC and consider myself fortunate to have actually scored a Salvo.

Ironically, I had stopped by Nova's table to buy vintage Salvo weapons to make my own Salvo right before I won it.

Is the NJCC Salvo a reproducible custom? Yes. The figure itself is essentially a Rockblock base with some improvised body armor and a sculpted helmet.

However, the makers added some nice decal work on the helmet, armor and missile launcher. I really love the artwork and details they put on the card (front and back) as well.

I truly appreciate it because those guys really put a lot of effort into this project. Krymsyngard, Nova, Raginspoon, Marauder GR all had their hands in this among others. That to me makes it special which is why I won't consider selling mine.

Will I ever score another custom exclusive like this again? Probably not but I am okay with that.

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I know it is a custom for the con, but it'd be great to be able to buy a "kit" to upgrade your own Rockblock with.

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I don't understand why some of you are so shocked or bothered by this? It's not the first time, and it won't be the last that a fan-created product finds an audience and ends up being worth more than usual. I've had items sell in the lower $200's several times, and even got up around $400 once. Jin Saotome does it constantly.

A piece like this captures a bit of several markets and ends up being valuable outside of it's usual sphere. It's a bit of art, a bit of custom, and a lot of presentation. Keep in mind that these are given away, and any price that ends up being paid for them is strictly based on what the market will bear.

Mike T.- I'm not trying to start an argument with you, but I do find your dismissal of this figure as "just a custom" a bit off putting. As a very long time member of the GI Joe community, I'd be surprised if you didn't acknowledge how integrated customizing is in the Joe community at large all the way back to the beginning. I'd even go so far as to say that it's almost fundamental and certainly more pervasive in this hobby than just about any other.

I've been a long time proponent of trying to make people (and GI Joe collectors in particular) understand that customs are art and an art-form. Like traditional art it is practiced in varying degrees by people of all abilities from novice to professional. Because it is art, it has a value, both real (monetary) and implied (collectability) and like traditional art it is subjective.

Being subjective (in the eyes of the buyer), it's worth what your willing to pay for it. If it's not worth anything to you, then you won't pay. If it is, then you'll pay what your willing, and that's a case of what you have in this instance. Just because you can't afford it, or don't want to pay the fair market price for something of this nature, doens't make it worth any less.

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I started this thread so I'll explain myself. Its not really shock or being bothered motivating me to post. Its sort of frustration. It seems like everything is too expensive. Nocturnal Fire? Too expensive. FSS 2.0? Too expensive. This figure? Too expensive by far. I am not belittling the hobby or saying these things are not worth that price, because if people pay it, they are worth it, but its tough when nearly everything that's available is super expensive. Then, when Hasbro releases stuff I want like the 30th line or wave 2 dollar general or the recent Retaliation wave with Colton and Lady Jaye, etc., they are impossible to find. They hit the stores near me once and then never get restocked. Its very frustrating sometimes to be a Joe collector/customizer.

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Mike's right, it is just a custom, and we have never tried to bill it as anything but that. I'm sorry people are willing to pay so much for it. On the upside, I'm starting to feel like we are really doing something special when I see our teams work bringing that much money.

Also, Mike, I appreciate your pragmatic stance, I always have, but I think "indiscernible" might be a little far. Certainly, any customizer could replicate the figure, just like any other fan made custom show giveaways, but with some of the work and techniques we put to use this time around, a 100% match would unlikely. If for no other reason than the decals aren't available to anyone else, before we get into what Spoon and I went through sculpting/bashing/molding/casting that vest.

I completely get that, I have been super frustrated by the hasbro/Club releases for a while. I love that people are valuing our work so high, but knowing that every one of those figures were made at my dining room table, and that I was finishing them at the show as they were being given away, is pretty crazy to me.

Thank you! I should have said that when i saw your comments on Hisstank, but I took a couple days to decompress from the show before getting back into things.

We didn't start doing this to try and cash in or step on any convention's toes by doing our own pieces. We just did it to have something special and different to give away to people who came to the show. We never expected any type of major secondary market value, or any value beyond the items being customs (one of the reasons, among others, that we don't sell these, we give them away, so there is no initial value put on them, they are just a winning ticket and an admission fee).

That doesn't mean we aren't happy that there is so much after market interest, because a lot of the pieces we do are given away to partners on the project in exchange for goods or services. Initially, trying to sell the idea of "hey, send us some free stuff and we will send you one of the customs we make for the show" wasn't exactly easy. Now, when we need something for the project, I ask one of our sponsors, and they send it without question. The growth of interest has allowed up to branch out and do more pieces, use more costly techniques, spring for more expensive figures to use as bases, etc. (OK, maybe not the Rock, but we shelled out $17 apiece on the average for the black Cobra Officers that we used for Metal-Head, because that was the eBay value and the only way we could get the 40 of them we needed).

well I love it, I especially love how you upgraded his missile box.

if you guys ever sold the missile box, vest, helmet, maybe off colored from the con exclusive as a kit I'd buy it in a heart beat.

I agree with Aly's comment about customizing being a form of artwork, and it shouldn't be dismissed. Especially when the quality of a custom is hands down superior to product coming out of Hasbro or Master collector.

I think a lot of frustration from the average fans comes from a couple of places, but really all comes back to something rather simple. Most of us collect a toy, GI Joe to be specific, we are still told these are toys, for children, on a regular basis. However, we can't find them in toy isles. If you want them all then you need deep pockets. Clearly as that auction indicates, some fans do. It is like modern collecting is being treated like collecting vintage toys. Institutionally it feels backwards that it costs more to get a MC leatherneck (the better of the modern leathernecks) than it does a vintage one, or even a mission brazil one. We might not think about it daily or anything, but it is there. Couple that with the typical complaints, like distribution.... then they see an awesome Joe they would all want, like this Salvo, and it sucks.

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Just to be nitpicky, Master Collector was the name of the Club's newspaper with adds and such in it, which also doesn't exist anymore. The name of the company running the club is Fun Publications.

For me, the frustration is that it's just too expensive to be a collector anymore. I don't mind the SDCC exclusives too much, because they're generally revealed far ahead enough to plan for, and even when I've gotten them on the secondary market they've only been twice the original price. Not cheap, but again, you can budget for it and they come along at pace that's generally affordable.

With the Club stuff, it's just too expensive to keep up with. Even if I could convince myself to go in on an official con set, and I've been tempted many times, the FSS figures are just too much to invest in to get the characters I'm interested in. It's especially frustrating that they're using FSS to complete sets of figures from the con sets (OG, Night Force), so if you're interested in a full team you've got to go in for both.

Combine that with the dry spell from Hasbro and the lack of support for classic characters, it's just a VERY frustrating time to be a casual collector.

The "fan" convention figures are a wonderful idea, it's just really frustrating to see yet another part of the collecting hobby sky rocket out of one's price range. I'm not faulting any of the teams putting them out, they labor and love going into them is great and they're coming up with really interesting offerings... it's just another piece of that frustration when they're yet another thing out of your hobby budget on the secondary market. Again, I'm not faulting those of you producing these.

It's just disappointing stuff like this isn't available on the shelves and pegs. A few years ago the craziest thing I had to budget for and track down were the BBTS sets. It's just not a "casual" collector friendly time for GI Joe right now.

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