A couple of weeks ago I had a weird experience in NYC. I was keen as mustard to check out vintage comic and toy stores to whet my geeky appetite but I was extremely disappointed when I didn’t find much vintage star wars in some of the more well-known places.

I did though stumble upon a really cool vintage toy shop named ‘Toy Tokyo’ in East Village. If you’re interested in vintage Japanese toys and you live in New York then this will be your shrine. There were also some nice star wars items, such as playsets and a few loose figures. I didn’t spot any MOCs though.

Toy Tokyo in East Village, NYC

Although this shop was great, this post isn’t really about giving it a review. Rather, I want to mention a conversation I had with an employee there, whose opinion don’t  necessarily represents that of the store owner. Anyway I’ve been chasing down two Japanese figures – the ESB Luke Farmboy and Luke X-Wing, made by Popy (If you have some for sale let me know!) so I asked one of the employees if they had any in stock. He told me that the owner definitely had some but they had been moved to the warehouse because there wasn’t much financial value in vintage SW these days. He then tried me to convince me to buy a Cloud City playset and went on to explain what a great set it was I told him that as far as I knew vintage SW were rapidly on the rise. He looked at me like I had three heads and questioned my sources. Of course I referenced Ebay, the forums etc and told him I was an informed collector. He told me that Ebay prices should not be trusted and that they aren’t a sound indication of market value. While I understand that Ebay prices are usually inflated, they are a huge indicator of the SW market. They are what they are, whether or not we agree (which I for one don’t!).

While I understand the nature of sales tactics, I was flabbergasted with his comments. Was he straight up lying to me, thinking I had no idea what I was talking about or was he the one with no idea? Or is the truth somewhere in the middle? I’m confused, as far as I know there is a huge SW bubble right now.

What do you guys think? Am I missing something here?

This is the store’s link if you are ever in New York. Definitely worth the visit:

https://www.toytokyo.com/

If you’d like to learn more about the Popy line and other Japanese SW lines, click here for a great article from Japanese collector extraordinaire Toru Komoru himself:

http://www.rebelscum.com/japanswhistory-japan.asp

Thanks for tuning in!