I don’t speak Spanish but I watched the recent coverage of CoCoo and man the shelves are absolutely BARREN! I last visited the storefront in 2020 and it was packed out the wazoo with vintage and neokaiju. A friend told me that Mandarake is now setting aside the majority of incredible pieces for their Zenbu auctions. Reviewing this footage it sounds quite likely. I may skip a visit here completely next year.
I was there late last year and seem to recall that most of the items destined for the auction (HS springs to mind) were still on display in the cabinets at Cocoo (marked 'NOT FOR SALE'), just as in previous years they had been displayed at Nakano and/or Shibuya. Irregardless, even despite the sparse cabinets and crazy pricing, being so close to the subway station and being so focussed on sofubi, for collectors I'd say it would be a no brainer, just out of morbid curiosity and on the off-chance you stumble on a grail (but don't expect a 'bargain' if you do).
Could just be a return of post covid tourism cleaned out the store. But the secondary market prices on most stuff have really dropped a lot after the recent insanity. I’m surprised how low the prices are on a lot of stuff at Mandarake. Could be a lot less people selling at prices Mandarake is paying. So less inventory.
I was in Japan about a month ago and was really disappointed with all the Mandarake's. Sapporo had one tiny cabinet with about five vintage pieces in, Complex now has no vintage sofubi at all, CoCoo was half empty as was Shibuya. Luckily I had other shops to go too but if I only knew about Mandarake's and was looking for vintage I wouldn't have bought anything.
I remember Shibuya had a couple of cases where sofubi was just crammed into them when I was there in 2019. Was it just the sofubi stocks that seemed depleted, or the diecast too?
I went to cocoo last month and walked out with one of my vintage grails priced nice, and wasn’t listed online. shibuya is busted for vintage, but they still have plenty of great other things.
How well are the shops mentioned stocked with more modern sofubi, such as turn-of-the-century Marmits, Kaiju Ken, US Toys, Artstorm, etc. Are there any shops other than Mandarake that would carry these?
HOLY SHIT, IT'S JOEY TWIN TAIL!!! In my experience, Mandarake was the main place to find modern figures from the makers you mentioned. In Akihabara or Nakano, toy stores that carried sofubi mainly carried vintage stuff and if you found anything modern there, it was more likely than not something from M1GO or the modern Marusan or Bullmark.
Thanks, good to know about the differences! Of the stores that carry modern, do they still have a good amount of those on shelves?
I haven't been there recently enough to let you know but maybe someone else who's been there in the past couple of months can chime in. Nice to see you, Joey!
Visited CoCoo for the first time last week. Totally dead- must have been only a few people in the entire store. Lots of product in the cases, but the vibe is weird, like going to a museum or something. Very different from the 'classic' Mandarake, packed to the brim with both high and low-end items. I thought it was strange that CoCoo was so slow, given that a few blocks away, Complex was jamming with foreigners.
Their next auction has some very drool worthy vintage heavy hitters I’d love to see in person someday. Some of which probably do belong in a museum.
I've just received the latest Zenbu, and it's labeled as a giant Ultra Ace from 1971. The issue is really wonderful for any vintage collectors. (Sorry for the shitty photo. I can scan it if you'd like):
Oh thank you! That pic is great! It looks more familiar with the whole body shots, but can't place if I've ever seen it before or where it would have been. Edit. I was probably thinking of these other later less rare variants that I've seen but never looked into. I need to get that Zenbu catalog too! (I should buy more of them in general. They're a nice resource.)
This thread has scans of magazines and books that show the reissues and some of the originals: http://skullbrain.org/bb/index.php?threads/marusan-checklist.39575/
