Anyone looking to start a toy collection in a long-running franchise is going to have a tough time pulling together hundreds of figures from across several decades. For that reason, a huge collection of Transformers toys being sold in one go could be an easy way for someone to go from zero to four hundred in one swoop. If they have around $60,000 lying around.
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To most people, stumbling across 400 Transformers figures in one go on eBay would sound like the ultimate collector’s jackpot. The listing price is very scary, though, and yet when you put it a different way, this collection seems like the steal of the century. $65,000, which is the original listing price, is not a small amount of change, but it is also half the price that a record-breaking Transformers Megatron figure sold for at auction. Of course, you shouldn’t expect to find any original 1980s grail items in this bundle, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be worth much more one day.
The G1 Megatron Is Currently Untouchable
That is the very nature of toy collecting. Something that was once worth a few dollars can now cost more than a house. That is true of an auction in March this year, where a 1984 G1 Megatron sold for $133,435.20, the current record for a Transformers figure. The factory-sealed item was professionally graded at AFA 85 and was also notable for being the first time that a first-release Megatron had come up for sale at auction in the last decade.
That scarcity is the biggest reason the item, which originally retailed for $21.95, hit a record price. When Megatron first hit shelves in 1984, like most toys of the era, the vast majority were torn open and played with until pieces snapped and they fell apart. Surviving examples that are still factory-sealed are extraordinarily scarce. In 1984, not many people bought action figures with the intention of turning them into a healthy profit 40 years later. That is how the single, original Megatron is double the price of a 400-figure bulk-buy auction of easier-to-find figures.
Famously, the G1 figure had another reason for being such a unique version of the character. The first Megatron off the line transforms not into a car or a jet but into a realistic Walther P-38 handgun — a design so realistic that the toy has been subjected to bans and licence requirements to own. That kind of iconic does not come along very often, and helps explain why it is currently one of the franchise’s biggest grails.
In comparison, for those who are simply interested in filling a room with as many Transformers figures as possible, then the current eBay lot is probably the best shot anyone has of doing it without months or years of bidding and searching. The collection includes multiple versions of some well-known characters like Soudwave, Star Scream, Gimlock, Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and many anniversary and crossover figures from other franchises such as TMNT and G.I. Joe. While very few people will get to hold a sealed G1 Megatron in their hands, this collection is at least sitting there waiting for a buyer to come along and give it a good home.
Ultimately, one thing that both the current collection auction and the March sale of Megatron have in common is that they are not for the casual toy collector. Picking up some of your favorite figures from childhood is a long way from spending tens or hundreds of thousands on even a collection of 400 figures. Even the offer of a reduced $60,000 to anyone within the Texas area (where the seller lives) is possibly a stretch too far for all but a small handful of people, so it could be an auction that remains active for some time to come.
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