Hot Toys The Dark Knight Joker DX/Artisan 1/6 Scale Figure

[Nick D]

Yeah, the end product was not close enough for what was offered in the promo for me. I didn't have faith that the product was worth £1k when I didn't think the clothing was particularly great anyway (no one can convince me the purple coat is a purple cotton sock material).

There are a few people here who wouldn't admit how bias they are towards InArt if you ask me.

Personally, I'd never want a cluttered display, even the thought of having more than 15 pieces is too much for me.

But also as a side note, if anyone travels to the show your collection part of the forum you'll find that most people's collections are cluttered and unrefined. ALSO DUSTY! Along with having no space how can you maintain such a collection is beyond me.

Agreed,

both have far too much hair, is too long, hairline and volume is completely different on final than the prototype on the Inart. The purple coat is the wrong material completely.

The majority of custom artists hair sculpts too thick, especially Ledger, so Inart & Hot Toys aren’t the only one’s getting it wrong, it proves difficult to hair a character based on an actor who was balding. However, if you know what you’re doing you can thin the hair on both the IA & HT, as well as a custom sculpt to get it more accurate to the actor.

Most people won’t do these upgrades so you judge the IA by how it looks in most people’s collections as that’s how it was received, not like mine or Holograms, etc. People have every right to be completely satisfied with what they got, it’s their money spent, not mine, not yours, but that doesn’t mean the IA release is scot-free
of being criticized. The tailoring isn’t good, better than what we’ve got in the past? Sure, the only other one to compare it to was released 10 years ago.

I’m not trying to enforce some rule of law here like some perhaps think.

Just offering a different perspective than the norm. You see all over this forum how people encourage others to go after every release, (not talking about Joker here) instead of actually being helpful and saying-

Hey man, you’ve already got some killer pieces, why don’t you skip out on a few upcoming figures, refine your collection and invest some of those funds into a better display.

These words are said so in good spirit,
not condescending, how one interprets
it is on them, not me.

If they take that advice great, if it falls on deaf ears, so be it, can’t help everyone.

It’s got zero to do with:
hey man, my collection & display is better than yours you peasant, be more like me.

We spend so much money on these things and yet people deal with dust everywhere because they have too many to properly clean on a regular basis. The fact is, it’s impossible to keep up with things at that level. Are there a few people that actually devote time into doing this? Yes, but the show your collection thread proves my point, most people buy a release and put it in the back of their collection and don’t touch it again for months, collecting dust until they sell it to some poor soul thinking the figure was properly looked after, this is why I never buy used figures.

At the end of the day, you’re correct, people will do as they please. This doesn’t mean a bit of help can’t do wonders for someone.

 

[a-dev]

My collection actually does currently resemble Nick's worst case scenario collection. It's why I haven't posted pictures in years. I've spent most of the last year identifying, organizing and labeling what I plan to get rid of somewhere somehow. Although I suspect even in its most pared back and disciplined state it will still be what Nick would consider wildly excessive (somehow I don't think he's a NECA and Hasbro man)

 

[DiFabio]

My collection actually does currently resemble Nick's worst case scenario collection. It's why I haven't posted pictures in years. I've spent most of the last year identifying, organizing and labeling what I plan to get rid of somewhere somehow. Although I suspect even in its most pared back and disciplined state it will still be what Nick would consider wildly excessive (somehow I don't think he's a NECA and Hasbro man)

He who dies with the most toys, wins.

 

[Nick D]

My collection actually does currently resemble Nick's worst case scenario collection. It's why I haven't posted pictures in years. I've spent most of the last year identifying, organizing and labeling what I plan to get rid of somewhere somehow. Although I suspect even in its most pared back and disciplined state it will still be what Nick would consider wildly excessive (somehow I don't think he's a NECA and Hasbro man)

I used to be man, when I was younger and into the hunt for those. I used to purchase TDK Mattel figures when the movie first came out. It was so much fun as a kid trying to chase all the variant clown masks and evidence bags. Although if you’d ask my grandma back then she’d have a different response.

I’m not shaming you at all man, you’re doing the right thing sorting through everything, that takes time. Not an easy process, but it takes the weight off of a family member having to do it if something were to happen to you. Once you weed through everything and start fresh it will feel like you have a new collection, sparking a fire in you in this hobby that may or may not have began to dim.

 

[Nick D]

The way I’d suggest
going about it would be-

put anything that resonates with
you on a nostalgic, personal level
in one pile, things that put you over the moon every time you look at. The badass ****.

put everything you’re not entirely pleased with, could live without, know there’ll be a better version down the line, in another.

Keep doing this until you’ve scaled down to the required space you’re using.

It’s the same as purging off old clothes that don’t fit or are no longer your style, ya know? A yearly to do list if you will.

 

[TheBatman]

I guess were doing therapy now?

 

[Hologram AI]

Yeah therapy if your therapist was also the drug dealer.

 

[batfan08]

My collection actually does currently resemble Nick's worst case scenario collection. It's why I haven't posted pictures in years. I've spent most of the last year identifying, organizing and labeling what I plan to get rid of somewhere somehow. Although I suspect even in its most pared back and disciplined state it will still be what Nick would consider wildly excessive (somehow I don't think he's a NECA and Hasbro man)

It really is incredibly liberating. I’m in the midst of some life changes and my stuff has been in a storage unit for the better part of the last 3 months while I’ve been moving. I took an inventory of it all and decided to sell…a **** ton. I had a collection of DC Collectibles Animated figures that was like 90% complete, 15 years worth of comic books, and a few miscellaneous odds and ends here and there that I’ve been unloading and I gotta say? I’ve never been so happy.

I loved the animated line, but I was tired of it sitting in boxes and not on shelves and it was honestly money in my pocket that was just sitting there instead of helping with the transition at a time when I really needed it. I’ve now unloaded nearly all of it and no sooner did I sell a Scarecrow figure I paid 10 bucks for for $250 that McFarlane announced a re-release. I never let out a greater sigh of relief in my life. As for the comic books, I will never collect that **** again. Omnibuses and hardcovers for stuff I want to read from here on out. 15 long boxes barely netted me a pot to piss in and the amount of labor and work that went into organizing stuff I hadn’t looked at, much less touched, in 20 years that wasn’t worth a damn thing is something I never want to contend with again.

I think it’s honestly that stuff that’s made it as easy to consider selling the InArt 2-pack as it is because, for a minute, I kind of saw that as my last hurrah for collecting for a while and my big “get” that was gonna be a show piece. Now, again, I’m like “ I just got $150 knocked off the top of a possibly inferior/possibly not Joker that I don’t have to worry about for another year and a half and an extra $1,000 on my person isn’t exactly chicken scratch.” I think letting go helps you recontextualize what’s important and why you do enjoy it. I really do feel like Nick’s right about over saturation and how it actually makes this hobby less enjoyable.

I see some guys with, like, 20 pre-orders saying “how am I gonna pay for this/how am I gonna explain it to my wife” and, in my mind, when this **** becomes stress? That’s when it’s time to cash out. For me, at least.

 

[Nick D]

@batfan08,

And the best part is,
you can admire from afar.
You can look at all the new releases coming out regardless of scale and enjoy the progression they’re making w/o purchasing.
I look at others collections all the time. Find myself in awe at a piece that I wouldn’t buy in a thousand years.

Sometimes window shopping cuts it.

 

[FlyAndFight]

Nick D, the Obi Wan of the Freaks Forum...

 

[BigWayne]

More like that psychologist guy on hoarders.

My collection is fine, but after reading the last few posts, I find myself wanting to clean out my garage

 

[Zurdo95D]

You meant her costume on the floor right?

 

[Gipetto0812]

@a-dev It’s fun to purge. I do it every couple of years. Much like Ras says in Batman Begins, “when a forest grows too wild, a purging fire is inevitable and natural.” It can take time to get rid of stuff (I started at the end of spring/start of summer and still going ), but it’s definitely a bit a relief as things move out. The regained space is nice whether that’s to fill with new purchases or to minimize your total collection.

@batfan08 RE: comic collecting-yea I had to stop with the comic book collecting as well. It was just too much of things I wasn’t ever actually going to read again. Now, I have 2 barely full short boxes of some of my favorite comic covers and variants, with the rest are my favorite stories in the graphic novel format. There’s also comixology if you still want to enjoy weekly releases without the clutter.

 

[TheBatman]

I should purge my Marvels. I collected the entire IW and EG lines... Lol

 

[Gipetto0812]

It has everything to do with it, if people were gullible enough to believe it then, they’re gullible enough to believe it now when they see him doing the very thing on this prototype, that they thought they were getting on that release. You must not have paid attention back then, I genuinely mean pissed.

I’m not digging up dirt, I’m simply telling you that people actually believed he was hand painting and hairing this release.
What’s stopping people like that from thinking the same this go around? Would you let this release for $400 usd with your name attached to it as a custom artist who specializes in paint & hair? It’s a bad look, thankfully for Viper the IA release swept the old one under the rug. As an artist your old work should always pale in comparison to your current work, that’s the goal, I don’t see that as me taking a dig at him. He clearly didn’t care enough about the quality of that release to step away from it.
Thankfully, you live and learn.

To your credit, you're not wrong at all. Ppl were under the same assumption that Viper was going to root and hand paint all the Queen Studios Artist Edition 1/4 TDK Joker statues as well, only to find out later that it was Viper's team that did the rooting and painting. The mark up on that one didn't seem as justified after that information was officially revealed. And that's a much more recent release than that previous 1/6 Joker you've mentioned. So, I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that some folks might’ve believed that Viper would be out here sitting at his desk painting and hairing all these InArt figures.

 

[Nick D]

To your credit, you're not wrong at all. Ppl were under the same assumption that Viper was going to root and hand paint all the Queen Studios Artist Edition 1/4 TDK Joker statues as well, only to find out later that it was Viper's team that did the rooting and painting. The mark up on that one didn't seem as justified after that information was officially revealed. And that's a much more recent release than that previous 1/6 Joker you've mentioned. So, I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that some folks might’ve believed that Viper would be out here sitting at his desk painting and hairing all these InArt figures.

Exactly, it’s no different than if HT hired Heise for their Artisan Joker, it comes with the territory.

 

[batfan08]

@a-dev It’s fun to purge. I do it every couple of years. Much like Ras says in Batman Begins, “when a forest grows too wild, a purging fire is inevitable and natural.” It can take time to get rid of stuff (I started at the end of spring/start of summer and still going ), but it’s definitely a bit a relief as things move out. The regained space is nice whether that’s to fill with new purchases or to minimize your total collection.

@batfan08 RE: comic collecting-yea I had to stop with the comic book collecting as well. It was just too much of things I wasn’t ever actually going to read again. Now, I have 2 barely full short boxes of some of my favorite comic covers and variants, with the rest are my favorite stories in the graphic novel format. There’s also comixology if you still want to enjoy weekly releases without the clutter.

I’m now telling myself anything I collect comicwise, I’m operating at a loss. I worked in a shop for 5 years and the perks of the job mean impulse buying a lot more stuff than if I didn’t. Now, I’m down to maybe six books (Batman, Superman, Nightwing, Titans, World’s Finest, and Shazam) and I’m telling myself that as soon as the runs conclude and there’s an omnibus or hardcover solicited, the floppies are getting sold and replaced. It’s just…a pain. It’d be one thing if I went for the high value old stuff as a collector, but as just a regular reader, it’s not worth it. As for all the “impulse buys,” I think I’m going to just try and get that DC Universe Infinite Ultra thing where you get access to titles 30 days after print for keeping up on stuff.

 

[Gipetto0812]

I should purge my Marvels. I collected the entire IW and EG lines... Lol

Unfortunately, unless you have some real grails, I’m finding most MCU stuff is going for below retail so you may not get your money back for each release depending on how much you originally paid.

I’m waiting for the new Xmen ‘92 cartoon to start streaming to sell my Sideshow Xmen figures as I’m thinking/hoping that the renewed interest will, at least temporarily, bring up their value. Right now, the only one that really went up in value is Magneto, followed by EX Cyclops and Astonishing Cyclops. Wolverine and Gambit don’t sell for much at all.

I’m now telling myself anything I collect comicwise, I’m operating at a loss. I worked in a shop for 5 years and the perks of the job mean impulse buying a lot more stuff than if I didn’t. Now, I’m down to maybe six books (Batman, Superman, Nightwing, Titans, World’s Finest, and Shazam) and I’m telling myself that as soon as the runs conclude and there’s an omnibus or hardcover solicited, the floppies are getting sold and replaced. It’s just…a pain. It’d be one thing if I went for the high value old stuff as a collector, but as just a regular reader, it’s not worth it. As for all the “impulse buys,” I think I’m going to just try and get that DC Universe Infinite Ultra thing where you get access to titles 30 days after print for keeping up on stuff.

Yea, I didn’t expect to get much for my comics so I just took them to Half Priced books to make the selling easy. I know what you mean about the impulse buys from a comic shop. While I didn’t work at one, my last gf was the manager at the comic shop I used to frequent so I was there all the time buying up stuff b/c she’d let me use her discount lots of comics and statues from DC Direct/Collectibles were bought just b/c of that discount. And I now use graphic novels as gift ideas for ppl when they ask what I want for birthdays/holidays, so no loss of money thankfully.

 

[a-dev]

I used to be man, when I was younger and into the hunt for those. I used to purchase TDK Mattel figures when the movie first came out. It was so much fun as a kid trying to chase all the variant clown masks and evidence bags. Although if you’d ask my grandma back then she’d have a different response.

I’m not shaming you at all man, you’re doing the right thing sorting through everything, that takes time. Not an easy process, but it takes the weight off of a family member having to do it if something were to happen to you. Once you weed through everything and start fresh it will feel like you have a new collection, sparking a fire in you in this hobby that may or may not have began to dim.

Yeah, it's taking a long time for a number of reasons - among them that I had never organized my collection before. So I'm doing everything that that entails from scratch. 30 years of it, pretty much.

The way I’d suggest
going about it would be-

put anything that resonates with
you on a nostalgic, personal level
in one pile, things that put you over the moon every time you look at. The badass ****.

put everything you’re not entirely pleased with, could live without, know there’ll be a better version down the line, in another.

Keep doing this until you’ve scaled down to the required space you’re using.

It’s the same as purging off old clothes that don’t fit or are no longer your style, ya know? A yearly to do list if you will.

It really is incredibly liberating. I’m in the midst of some life changes and my stuff has been in a storage unit for the better part of the last 3 months while I’ve been moving. I took an inventory of it all and decided to sell…a **** ton. I had a collection of DC Collectibles Animated figures that was like 90% complete, 15 years worth of comic books, and a few miscellaneous odds and ends here and there that I’ve been unloading and I gotta say? I’ve never been so happy.

I loved the animated line, but I was tired of it sitting in boxes and not on shelves and it was honestly money in my pocket that was just sitting there instead of helping with the transition at a time when I really needed it. I’ve now unloaded nearly all of it and no sooner did I sell a Scarecrow figure I paid 10 bucks for for $250 that McFarlane announced a re-release. I never let out a greater sigh of relief in my life. As for the comic books, I will never collect that **** again. Omnibuses and hardcovers for stuff I want to read from here on out. 15 long boxes barely netted me a pot to piss in and the amount of labor and work that went into organizing stuff I hadn’t looked at, much less touched, in 20 years that wasn’t worth a damn thing is something I never want to contend with again.

I think it’s honestly that stuff that’s made it as easy to consider selling the InArt 2-pack as it is because, for a minute, I kind of saw that as my last hurrah for collecting for a while and my big “get” that was gonna be a show piece. Now, again, I’m like “ I just got $150 knocked off the top of a possibly inferior/possibly not Joker that I don’t have to worry about for another year and a half and an extra $1,000 on my person isn’t exactly chicken scratch.” I think letting go helps you recontextualize what’s important and why you do enjoy it. I really do feel like Nick’s right about over saturation and how it actually makes this hobby less enjoyable.

I see some guys with, like, 20 pre-orders saying “how am I gonna pay for this/how am I gonna explain it to my wife” and, in my mind, when this **** becomes stress? That’s when it’s time to cash out. For me, at least.

At the moment I'm still in the identifying, labelling and condition description phase but, yeah, the part I'm really looking forward to is when I can finally start deciding exactly what I'm keeping and what I don't need anymore and re-sort the stuff on that basis. To get a fuller idea of exactly how much space I'm going to be freeing up and whether that's actually enough. Ideally whatever I keep should be displayed - nothing in closets or in the attic. Until I can do that the job won't be done.

And as I said, my collection would probably never get down to a level that I sense you, Nick, would endorse based on your posts on the subject - I'm not able to limit myself to one character, I'm nostalgic for too many different properties, I still enjoy lower end toys, multiple scales and so on. But certainly I can stand to get rid of a lot because the room is an embarrassment and nothing can be displayed well. Too much even for me. And absolutely it would be a nightmare for my loved ones to deal with if I were to drop dead tomorrow.

@a-dev It’s fun to purge. I do it every couple of years. Much like Ras says in Batman Begins, “when a forest grows too wild, a purging fire is inevitable and natural.” It can take time to get rid of stuff (I started at the end of spring/start of summer and still going ), but it’s definitely a bit a relief as things move out. The regained space is nice whether that’s to fill with new purchases or to minimize your total collection.

Did you ever get to sell to that store per this post last year?

https://www.collectorfreaks.com/threads/collection-end-game.246726/page-2#post-10766810
I'm still hoping I can sell much of it in bulk although I suspect the store I have in mind is a ''trade for store credit'' scenario which would not suit my needs.

 

[TheBatman]

We will see. Ive been moving around since Covid so my collection was never displayed so I personally never enjoyed them.