OPINION:  The New Salacious Crumb Should NOT Be VC66

Just before San Diego Comic Con, Hasbro revealed the Vintage Collection Jabba the Hutt set which would include an all new waste of tooling dollars Salacious Crumb, which would come on a mini-card. This will make it similar to the one from the 2011 SDCC Death Star set. That set also included a matching carded Mouse Droid. Those two mini-cards are somewhat of a controversy because they are part of the numbered continuity of the Vintage Collection. They are VC66 and VC67 respectively. That means to have a truly complete set of Vintage Collection figures, you need that Salacious Crumb and Mouse Droid from that exclusive and increasingly scarce set. That's not an inexpensive task in 2023.

I would say a good 90% of the community is utterly unconcerned about having a gap in their numbered collection due to not owning what are essentially a pair of gimmick figures. I know if I didn't own them, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it, and I'm a fairly obsessive carded collector. But for that 10% of the community who are maniacal, hardcore completionists, not owning VC66 and VC67 makes about as much sense as Six Minute Abs:


While at San Diego Comic Con, Hasbro was soliciting opinions on whether or not the new Salacious Crumb should also be numbered VC66 to help people fill that gap in their collections. My opinion is firmly, “No.” A new sculpt demands a new VC number, if it must be numbered at all. If you're obsessive enough to care about a gap in your numbered collection, you’re too obsessive to accept a stand-in VC66. That collector still wouldn't own the VC66 from 2011, and it would eat at them until they did. Furthermore, is the new mini-carded Salacious Crumb going to come on a "Revenge" card like the 2011 release? I can almost guarantee that it won't. So collectors who care about these things will still be missing "Revenge" carded release, and their facsimile VC66 will not salve that pain.

Finally, up there on the primary market, that's Hasbro's time. Down here on the secondary market, it's our time. IT'S OUR TIME DOWN HERE! The secondary market has become an indispensable resource for new collectors to get access to items they may have missed. Without this, the current line would have to take on the feel of the vintage Kenner line where Episode IV Luke shipped for the entire six year run of episodic cards. Truthfully, I wouldn't be opposed to a little of that in the modern line, but that's a subject for a different day. With respect to the secondary market, the VC numbers are a valuable search tool. Having the same VC number point to two different sculpts of the same figure separated by thirteen years, would create a minefield for collectors to traverse. New collectors would be bewildered by the spread in prices, and it could become intimidating. I actually wish the photo real re-releases had a adopted an alpha suffix for this reason (i.e. VC23P).

So there's my opinion on the subject that a vast majority of the community doesn't care about. And while I don't care if I do or don't own a VC66 in my collection, I am passionate about the precedent. A new sculpt should always be a new VC number.

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