An unfortunate part of this greed and not caring is that it impacts people that it normally wouldn't..instead of people picking up pieces they want and need for their collections they are picking up pieces here and there with the intent of saving it from people like this guy, U graders are forcing people to spend money on toys just to save them instead of buying what they want to.

This might be the extreme case but it is happening!

I wish people would stop selling to people like him (at least on the forums) but money talks and if you need the $$ any sale isa good sale, even if you are delivering the items into the hands of this dude.

I wonder if its worth bumping up the RS thread to stir up some reactions to the latest grotesque U graded figure

Paradox is about to be bumped..

I agree man, you know the reply is going to be :

"The baggy was damaged or dirty or stained and it would have pulled a low grade"

Why does that matter ? Its such a shame, dirty , worn or puked out by a dog its still what it is, its not about having things in pristine condition, some of the rarest things out there do NOT exist in pristine condition, so to remove them from their packaging to improve your $$ return is just not right.

I would rather have a fucked up baggy than this thing

The dare worked.

I was thinking about it all day to be honest, since it was posted here by Shawn and Andy. I expect a frosty reaction from the supporters or him but there we go, no news there.

My AFA debating was supposed to be over and I know everyone can't be arsed with it over and over again, but if a few posts make a few more sellers wake up and not sell to him, so be it.

Money talks, knowledge walks. As long as they are willing to pay top dollar for an item, the sellers are going to keep on selling to them no matter what anyone says. But it still sickens me to see key items like the DT get chopped up like that and then brag that there are no more known examples out there is worse than rubbing salt in the wounds.

I wouldn't be surprised if the AFA and these aggressive U Grade sellers / dealers like Rulair have some sort of mutual arrangement. Look at the grades the DT MOC's got when they were chopped into U90 AND U95's!! Now this uber rare baggie gets sliced and it hits a U90

Smells like shit either way

Oh my, this beggers belief.
That WAS a very rare baggie, now its just an overpriced loose DT that suprise suprise happened to get a 90 grade


I can't be bothered with this anymore tbh, AFA/Rulair have no respect for this hobby end of. Its just money money money

Just seen this post... (Thanks for the tip-off Shawn!)

Man I have had a tough week in work, the car is dead and first thing I wanted to do when I came home after 12 hours of work each day was crack open a few tins of Heineken and sleep like the dead. So I have totally missed out on the TIG forum this week especially on such an important thread like this.

However, I have now though gone from feeling totally bushwhacked to feeling physically sick and its 100% it my own fault that I am. I could say nothing here, but I think it’s the right thing for me to do so and will mark a change in my attitude henceforth. I hope I don't lose any of the new friends I made on the TIG because of this honesty.

I too, I am ashamed to say, have a small collection of U90 figures. I have been ashamed of them for some time but have no idea on what to do with them. I feel that selling them on will only do more damage to the hobby by encouraging more people to get hooked into a destructive area of collecting.

Why on earth did I collect them in the first place I can hear you say?

Honestly; I don't know! A massive lack of education I guess and pure ignorance of the destructive nature of this type of collecting. This first forum I have ever joined so I’m only starting to see other collector’s opinions and wisdom. I can surely say though if TIG was around when I started this focus then I wouldn't have got involved.

I started by getting the U90 POTF figures. I never had the POTF line when I was a kid so my thinking was if I collected 1 of each POTF figure as a U grade then it would be like my second chance of being the original owner of some nice figures. At the time I wanted the best and the U90 grades were relatively cheap and I started picking them off quite easily. I also started picking up the bounty hunters since no one was getting them either. At the time I foolishly believed that AFA only “U” graded a carded figure that was so damaged it would be better for the figure to be encased loose, e.g. cut cards, black bubble etc. In a warped way I had no guilty conscience whatsoever in what I was doing. I haven’t bought a U90 since last September; I think the only reason why I stopped at the time was because of the massive surge in prices that came from nowhere. I had no idea that “star wars collectors” and the AFA for that matter would sacrifice such beautiful cards just to get a U90 grade.
I started to realise what I had done was really bad when I started my Luke Jedi character focus. Many important carded variations of this figure’s evolution may now be lost forever because dealers have sent so many to their grave. I have found it particularly difficult to track down certain variations which I can recall being everywhere only a few years back.
If this is what is happing to Luke, which in general was a pretty well realised figure, then I can only imagine what happing to the earlier SW/ESB figures where the paint and quality was a little hit and miss. There might be 50 perfectly good carded specimens destroyed just to find one that will reach 90.

And for that I feel sick and I am truly sorry.

Joe: that’s one more soul saved, TIG: another excellent reason why this FORUM exists.

You and me both Craig!!!

That was a well written response Craig!

It's not that anyone is trying to tell you how to collect or what to collect. And I'm glad that you were able to see through that to the real point of the argument. So Kudos for that!

I think the U grade as a whole is just unworthy. And the argument about them being from a cut card, etc. really doesn't hold water with me either. Afterall, some cut cards were there for a reason as well.

I'm glad that the education helped at least one person (and looking at Coach's response, it looks like two people). It's sad to think that so many figures have been removed from their cards just to get the U grade. And I think what's saddest of all, is the prices some of these are getting.