The Draw Of Unpunched Is Going Crazy

My con buddy, John Miko (Star Wars The Vintage Collection Facebook group), alerted me to this auction the other day, and my eyes virtually popped out of my head. An unpunched VC19 - Clone Commander Cody just sold (stress SOLD) for $970. This is insane. You may remember this particular unpunched figure from our "They're Rare And You Probably Don't Care" article. Clearly, some of you are starting to care. This is getting insane.

If you want a quick recap on why this particular figure is rare, it's because only a limited amount of non-carried forward wave 2 figures were released on unpunched cards. Most were factory shipped on punched cards. For carded collectors, "unpunched" is considered the highest state of collectibility as it obviously indicates the figure was never placed on the retail pegs.

To put this craziness in perspective, an unpunched POTF '85 Luke Skywalker (in Battle Poncho) recently sold for $493. Continuing to add perspective, I can honestly say that I've seen more unpunched samples of that 36 year old Luke figure than I have of the 11 year old VC19 figure. This auction is a testament to the insane prices that truly short supplied items can fetch. As I've written about many times, there's an inflection point where it stops being a case of what people are willing to pay, and starts becoming a case of what people are willing to take to part with the item. We may be close to that point with rare Vintage Collection items.

This is further proof that it's a DANG shame that Hasbro is not bringing back unpunched cards to the Vintage Collection despite the fact that they are shipping unpunched Marvel Retro Collection figures. Unpunched Vintage Collection cards would definitely create more of a buying frenzy than kitsch paint jobs.

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