Well Played

It should have been a nice day. The weather was perfect, I got to sleep in, Tigers beat the Yankees …

Then I woke up, stubbed That Toe again, lost my last quilting thimble, and discovered a little "present" the dog left behind in the chair (before I sat down in it, at least.) I also got yelled at by several people for things I either didn’t do, or had no control over.

Oh, and I also forgot to mention that the last dream I had before I woke up this morning was a rerun. It wasn’t even one of those that you wouldn’t mind having again - one where you remember how to fly, or fall into a giant vat of Stablemates, or something. It was boring, predictable, and no fun at all.

When even your dreams fail you, you know you’re in for a rough day.

I haven’t gotten my Pamplemousse yet, either. Not that I was expecting it today, but seeing the huge glut of them on eBay and MH$P just made me realize that I’m probably going to miss the window of opportunity for unloading mine in a timely manner. I had kinda-sorta come to the conclusion last week that I had to let mine go - no profit, really, just cost plus postage - but apparently so had everyone else.

(I had intended on keeping him, but the money situation is tight and not going to get better in the short term. Last one in, first one out, etc.)

I should have realized that there was going to be a glut of Pamplemousses. We’ve seen this story before, too: remember the "Limited Edition" series of models that began in 1987 with Precipitado Sin Par? These "Limited Editions" were limited not by quantity, but by time: basically, to the number of pieces ordered in a production year.

Many hobbyists - and most casual collectors - made the assumption that the "Limited Editions" implied future scarcity. I mean, if they were only going to make them for a year, then it’s going to be way more rare than some Regular Run item that runs for a couple years or more, right?

Nope. What actually happened was that Reeves ended up making way more of those Limited Edition models than they did of many of their Regular Runs, based on that assumption of future scarcity. Several thousand more, in fact, if the numbers from an internal document I have from 1992 are true (and I have no reason to believe they are not.) Consequently, most of these Limited Editions aren’t terribly hard to find.

I suspect the same thing is happening with the Pamplemousse: I would not be surprised if Reeves sold significantly more pieces of their final JAH Special than they did of several of the more recent releases. It didn’t hurt that they put it out on a very popular mold, in an attractive color, and upped the potential order quantity to two.

It’s a win-win for Reeves: they sell more models, and won’t get stuck with a lot of warehouse overstock. (There will be some - via bounced checks, expired credit cards, and the leftovers reserved to cover damaged items - but not a lot.) The extras that many hobbyists ordered for resale become the responsibility of the buyer to redistribute, effectively making these buyers micro-dealers.

Nice trick, Reeves. Well played.

I only ordered one, and it’s no big catastrophe if I have to keep him. I’ll just have to find something else to sell in the meantime, until the market absorbs all of the extras.

I think it will; as I’ve said, he’s a popular mold in an attractive color. He may not be as "limited" in quantity as other JAH Specials, but he’ll definitely be more limited than most other Othello releases. Not only that, he does have the cachet of being the last official JAH Special, and that means a little something, too.