What's your most expensive prop purchase regret?

I always approached the hobby in two ways : 1. Things I really wanted when I was a kid (like a graflex- I mean, come on... its a lightsaber) 2. Or something that symbolizes

I know the 300 thing was mentioned above and Lord knows, I was in on that screen used run as well. I pass that thing every day and am still loving owning this thing because of what it stood for at the time of purchase and what the movie stood for.

As for the items that were here and there, not falling under the two categories, were the outlier props, such as MiB neuralizer, Kermit the frog, and other little things that still have to make their way to eBay.
 
I have a few things I have squirreled away in closets that I probably could have passed on, but they will come out someday for display. I don't really regret those purchases. Yet.

I did come oh so close to buying the unobtainium Enterprise. Whew.
 
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rubies halo delux master chief armor.....over paid...ouch!


cleaned it up a bit, fixed up the helmet, and put a cool visor in it, and turned it armound to only lose 150 bucks.
 
I almost forgot...there was a Vulcan harp that I bought and paid WAY too much money for. It looked GREAT in the pics but when it arrived it was about 1/3 too small and made of what felt like balsa wood. I gave it away in the PIF thread and when the recipient received it he was upset when the post office tried to charge him a kings ransom in duty charges (it was sent to Malta). He asked if he could open it right there at the post office before he paid for it and he said it pretty much just crumbled in his hands! To make a very long story short, this inspired him to build a superior harp of his own in about a week just out of spite! He and I had a good laugh about this and for MONTHS this harp was sent back and forth ending up in postal limbo, playing "tag" with it every time they tried to deliver it to one of us. This fiasco ended up creating an on-line friendship between he and I and now I consider him to be one of my closest 'virtual' friends.
(Hi, Alan!)
 
the only thing i regret is waiting to long to make a paypal claim for my never delivered endo rifle. I'm not a rich man so if i want something new i usually have to sell something old , and my regrets are more what i have sold.
 
i can totally relate. not a super expense but, I paid a fair sum for an IM helmet back last year on ebay only to find out once it had been shipped, wound up with a crack right up the back about four inches. the seller was gracious enough to send a reinforced replacement for only the shipping cost but it also arrived cracked around the crown. decided to try and pep out my own helmet to much success. almost done a mk 4 suit.
 
Oh yea, buying a Superman costume from a seller, and having them SHIP IT TO ME DURING A ****ING HURRICANE.

Yea, package never showed, out 250$. When I asked about getting a replacement, I got lead on and on and finally gave up after I got the "miscarriage" sob story cause I kept asking on a monthly basis "So... how's it coming along?"

A: I didn't believe the seller, and b: What in the hell is going through your head where that is something that is OK to share with a customer, who's only contact with you is "Here is my money, please send me a replacement".

Another "What in the hell was I thinking?" moment was when I bought a pound of Magicsculpt cause I was totally gonna get to work on this statue I was gonna make, and it's been like 4 years and I am still in the "Welp , there goes 30$" stage of thinking instead of sculpting anything.

I think every newbie to the hobby goes through a "CRAP! MUST BUY ALL!" and then realizes they don't actually need/want all the items they see and now own, and then sell later. That's kind of a right of passage with us :lol

Chris
 
No wounds here, Funky. My most expensive prop isn't a regret for how much I spent (won't name the price), but just a regret that it didn't find a better home. Seriously considering selling KITT, and wish he/it could stay in the prop community. My only regret is that I stay too busy to put more work/time into it myself, and it just sits in the garage, collecting dust. :( My favorite prop I've owned so far though ... not counting the R2 that has been a decade long journey so far. ;)


ATM
ShackMan
 
Wow, now I almost feel better that I don't have an enormous collection of props. :)

In terms of "most expensive" regrets, the excitement about my Off World PKD wore off pretty quickly. It looks cool and all, but it just didn't satisfy like I'd hoped. (Must be all that hollow plastic.)
 
Mine would probably be a Krull glaive kit my wife bought as an anniversary gift for me waaaaaaaay back in 98 or 99. This was the same kit and seller known here as Firefox/Will. It took a year of badgering him and threatening him with legal action before he finally sent it. I was very dissapointed when it arrived, it didn't look 1:1, had cheesy "stick-on" Hobby Lobby "jewels" and just generally didn't look like it was worth the money paid.
It's been sitting in a box ever since. I can't sell it because it was an anniversary gift from my wife yet I can bring myself to put it together because it's not accurate.
 
I had gotten a decent tax return one year and decided to buy a disney nautilus kit with the money. I didn't look to hard and bought the first one i found. I realized when i recieved it that it is beyond my skills to assemble and paint. I haven't tried selling it yet, but i'm sure i can't get anything near what i paid for it.
 
dropshipbob said:
Mine would probably be a Krull glaive kit my wife bought as an anniversary gift for me waaaaaaaay back in 98 or 99. This was the same kit and seller known here as Firefox/Will. It took a year of badgering him and threatening him with legal action before he finally sent it. I was very dissapointed when it arrived, it didn't look 1:1, had cheesy "stick-on" Hobby Lobby "jewels" and just generally didn't look like it was worth the money paid.
It's been sitting in a box ever since. I can't sell it because it was an anniversary gift from my wife yet I can bring myself to put it together because it's not accurate.
Click to expand...

You should put it together because it was a gift from her. :) It could be an interesting story piece.
 
I can think of 2. The first was one of my first original prop purchases ever. The screen used DX-1 planet killer from Soldier. Huge thing. Beautiful thing. All electronics in place (cooling rods/leds). Paid $800 for it (the seller was expecting more than double that). Invested another $400 to have it packed and shipped through a professional shipper the seller recommended. Weeellll, the shipper was a friend of his and they sent it loosely wrapped in a wardrobe box on a palette (pocketing the excess). The globe broke off (1/16 steel weld) and the aluminum on the tripod stand fractured in 2 places (1/8 aluminum). Thing has been in storage for over a decade. I know better now.

The other was a comissioned Metaluna mutant. Paid half and got photos of piece underway. Artist had a good rep and a line of Hallowen masks. He contacted me with shipping details and I paid the other half. Quite a chunk of change all in all. No item. Basically flaked and I think used the money to bail out with the mask guys. Actually went to a lawyer and threatened extradition to the great State of Texas on the Deceptive Trade and Practices Act which covers ecommerce to some degree. Finally sent arm molds and head. Hildebeast has rescued this project so not quite as bitter about it now.

Both experiences have made me cautious (perhaps overly so) with folks I haven't dealt with before especially if not RPF.

Doc

P.S. No wounds on this end either. True wisdom derives from surviving misfortune. These were minor in cosmic terms but learning lessons nonetheless. To quote Socrates (or Plato depending on how you roll), "I growed a foot them days."
 
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Got boned on an ebay facehugger back in the day, the guy never sent it. $125 out the window, and paypal was not what it is today as far as refunds go. Dude in Texas somewhere, was also selling alien hand and chest pieces. He emailed me like four months later out of the blue telling me his dog had cancer or some such and that it would be out any day.. That was 2001, I quit holding my breath.

Biggest regret was passing on an original Darth Vader light saber. Not screen used, but one of the reserve stunt props. Ended up going to one of the dudes at Kerner after the ILM model shop kerfuffle.

Speaking of which, when I was at the ILM models shop around the time of the second pirates move, there was a pile of stuff off in some side room that was just in a big heap. All kinds of stuff. The license plates from the "Last Crusade" R75s, chunks of ET's Phone, goonies stuff, a file box marked "wookie parts" full of hair and hands etc. etc. I was getting pics of things with my phone, most in states of disrepair, but iconic none the less. I commented to one of my PMs "do you know what this s**t is worth?" He talked me out of my tree and convinced me to leave it alone (we were leasing the space from ILM and didn't want to **** them off). A few years later, I ran into one of the girls I had worked with there on another shoot. She told me that when ILM became Kerner Optical, all that stuff plus much, much more just went into a dumpster.

I still have fantasies about going back in time and filling my backpack with as much as I thought I could, telling somebody I would move it to "the trash" for them.. etc etc...
Still makes me sick to my stomach.
 
First, I always try to remember this is a hobby, not an investment. I pretty much figure I'll never make my money back on anything I've bought.

With that said, looking back, I've spent more money on certain replicas than I should have but I really did want most of these pieces and they are still in my collection.
 
Very recently dropped way too much money on a big box of proton pack bits from eBay, figuring I could pick out what I needed and sell on what I didn't

Well as it turned out pretty much half the listed stuff was missing and what was in there was terrible terrible quality resin recasts.

I've yet to receive a satisfactory refund, and I'm determined to find out who they are on the gb forums to call them out. Can't be that hard they were also selling a slime blower, not many of them around ;-)
 
I paid a boatload for an MR Battle Damaged Maul and when I got it I almost immediately decided I didn't like it at all (though I tried to convince myself I did, of course!). I was able to sell it even steven though, so no worries.
 
I am extremely new to the prop collecting thing but have always wanted certain items. Those are the ones I plan on going after. But after finding RPF and other sites, I keep getting big eyes on items I almost certainly will regret owning. But I just keep talking myself out of it. Sooooo since I'm a noob my regret would have to be all the video game Limited/Special edition garbage I have gotten. From Halo helmets to little(Should say mini) art books, I have spent way more than I needed to. Sometime I would justify buying the LE or SE edition because I would get some extra map or character skins, when I could have gone to ebay and gotten that content for less than the extra I paid for the SE/LE Edition. Yet I still find myself buying these editions because of the extra digital content :~ I know the money lost or should I say overspent, is miniscule compared to what some here have lost, but it's my (continuing)regret. The worst one I can remember right now is the Arkam Asylum LE. For $100+Tax (instead of $60 for the standard it came with a Batarang, which in pictures looked awesome. When I opened the box it was plastic and all scratched up and unremoveable from the base it sat on. When I inquired to the company there response was it was supposed to look like that as though it had been used by Batman himself. Such Garbage!!!
 
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