Q and A of the Day: Day 42

Welcome to our next Q and A of the Day post! This column will be published daily, weekly, monthly, or just based on how many questions I get emailed – but no more than one a day. Feel free to send in your questions and I will put them in the queue. Click through for Q and A of the Day: Day 42. Topic: VOTC/VTSC versus TVC....

Q: What were the production numbers on the VOTC figures compared to the series released with the VC number system? I've always wondered why the original set in the cases aren't more valuable today. Thanks for your time! (David K.)

A: Let me start off by saying that production numbers are the #1 thing that Hasbro will NOT reveal, but astute colleagues like Adam Pawlus from GalacticHunter.com and others have worked up number and educated guesses on how many figures did indeed get produced. Since I don't have that info handy, I really can't reveal more than that, so you might want to reach out to him to see if you can get more detail. There are of course some exceptions. The "Lava" Darth Vader from TARGET was released with a set edition size, as were many other exclusive releases available at TARGET. But that is a rarity and Hasbro really hasn't done that since. That being said, I can absolutely tell you without hesitation that the production numbers of The Vintage Collection are a fraction of the production numbers of the "Vintage" Original Trilogy Collection line. This is why you can get most figures from the VOTC/VTSC lines for really good price today, while a single TVC figure can sell for quite a bit more. Hasbro began seriously scaling back production numbers on figures after the blue phase of The Legacy Collection. The red phase Legacy Collection was supposedly the first collection that received a significant cut in the number of figures released (as admitted by Hasbro). But who really knows numbers wise what that means. Of course there are exceptions for these figures also as a few go for very little money (based on popularity), but if you search on eBay for anything 2009 and after, you'll see that figures go for a premium in comparison to most anything else released prior to that. So while I can give you a hard number, I can confirm that by comparison, VOTC/VTSC were mass produced whereas TVC figures were produced with much smaller runs. (Just look at the eBay prices for many of the figures in wave 1 of TVC for example.)

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