By RMThompson

I know, so much as been written about the Florida Project already, what else could we cover? Well, as much as Fl Project was a showcase for new things coming in the Vinylmation world, it was even MORE SO, a place to trade for things already released. While other DV Reporters spent their day…reporting, I spent mine trading, and now I am here to give my review of the trading room, and what was going hot, and what’s not.

First, it was nice to see so many traders, ESPECIALLY after the doors opened for the Public Day. Previous to that mark, a LOT of traders spent their time in various Trading Lines going after the elusive Orange Bird Chaser, or other rarities that were found in the trading games. Once they were all gone, they, along with all those who just came to public day, FILLED the trading room floor.

However, I will say I still expected more traders. While the number of registered guests was near 700 for the event, those that set-up and traded was closer to 30 or 40 traders. That’s an exceedingly low number, especially when compared to pin trading events. Yet, those trading had LOTS to trade, it seemed to be nearly double the amount of figures for trade than the typical every-other-month trading events.

Certain figures were seen a lot, and were losing value as the day went on, including the WDW and 71 Cast Chasers, Clear Pink Elephants and the growingly more common (yet still totally awesome) Urban 5 3D Chaser. These figures had certainly slipped some since the previous trading event where they were hotter traders.

Also slipping were some older figures. Park and Urban 1s that aren’t highly sought after (SMRT-1, Graffiti, Fireworks, Glow for example) are becoming more and more available. I can only assume that as newer sets become available, people are more and more willing to trade their older figures to get the stuff they really want. They need more room on their shelf to hold the new stuff, and quite frankly despite the value of the figures, a lot of the new figures just plain look BETTER than their older counterparts. Yet, this doesn’t apply to the figures from these series that people REALLY love. Balloon chaser made a brief appearance by one highly-selective trader, but there were also precious few Figment, Oopsy, Teacups and Gold Chaser figures to go around, making them very tough to trade for.

More recent figures that are seeing a spike in value are hard-to-find figures based on characters a lot of people love. Dripping Mickey chaser and Pongo are now in the well-over-$150-range, while other “easier” figures like Stitch, Supermouse, and a lot of Park 4 are steadily rising above the $50 dollar range.

As for figures released at the event, they were surprisingly not being swapped, with the exception of the Orange Bird Chaser, which is not only the BEST figure ever created on the New Mold (seriously), but was trading upwards of $60 to $80 dollars by the end of the day… once all were given out.

On the 9 inch front, things were slower than I expected. I saw almost NO older 9” Vinylmation. A Mummy was there but not traded, and I got my hands on an Urban 2 Angry Mickey Tiki (underrated figure in my opinion), but there was little else from the older era of Vinylmation to represent the bigger figures. The ones that were there were almost exclusively Location-Based figures; TONS of New York figures to be found, and none of them worth anything save the original “brick head figure.” The remainders were a blend of newer figures with a variety of values. Maleficent and other Villain 9” were surprisingly low in value, while Rafiki and Up were steadily being traded at over $100 dollars in value.

Everyone had the Disney Afternoon series. While Bonkers and Dougs were just taking up trade space, I saw many Ducktales, Talespins and Rescue Rangers being traded, with the Rescue Rangers being the hardest to trade for and the highest in value. The other two packs to be had included the lower-end Cars and Halloween, and the higher end Disney Cruise Line Stuff. Location based tins and 3” were easy enough to gobble up, but perhaps the rarest was the San Fran 3” Bridge.

Interestingly enough, certain Park/Urban series are seeing a WIDE variety in value from figure to figure. To better reflect that, here is a list of each of the main series and their highest and lowest traders based on what I saw this weekend, excluding the chasers (which in almost all cases are the hottest traders in each series)

Park 1:
HOT: Figment/Creepy Wallpaper.
NOT: Fireworks/SMRT-1

Park 2:
HOT: Mike Mouse/Little Green Men
NOT: Monkey/Aquaramouse

Park 3:
HOT: Blue Monorail
NOT: Almost everything else

Park 4:
HOT: Combo Topper (Plane Crazy)/Epcot 84
NOT: Tower of Terror/POTC Dog

Park 5:
HOT: Stitch/Yeti
NOT: Buzz Lightyear Vehicle/COP John

Park 6:
HOT: Orange Monorail
NOT: Troll/Primeval Whirl

Urban 1:
HOT: Oopsy/El Super Raton
NOT: Checkered/Graffiti

Urban 2:
HOT: Cosmos/Chinese Writing/Chocolate Mickey Bar
NOT: Gear Bear/Girly

Urban 3:
HOT: Cheeseburger/Green Dragon
NOT: EVERYTHING ELSE

Urban 4:
HOT: Supermouse/Robot/Heartbroken
NOT: Everything else but Strawberry Fields

Urban 5:
HOT: Nothing
NOT: Everything

Urban 6:
HOT: Blue Thumb Variant
NOT: Baby Crying/Sideways Mickey

All in all the day was a success, and I saw LOTS of trading going on, which is a great thing. I hope that Disney will realize that Vinylmation is a BIG success and give us more than a handful of exclusive event figures next time, compared to the DOZENS of pins that were available the day before… but that’s a story for another article.

Nick LoCicero