Congrats on the pickups, all!

flippj, congrats on those one-off M Frames, especially the one with the strip lens. I was wondering who'd have the willpower to eventually pick up mtedenajimenez's exceptionally rare pieces. - Oak

Thanks Oak

I couldn’t actually see the listings for some reason as I was in the uk but a friend tipped me off and then I recognised them straight away!

I proper humbled even though I had to sell a cornea and my house - flippj

Thanks for the purchases Paul!

Hey y'all! Yup, slowly I have been trimming back my collection. Back when I was more active on here, one of my last posts was about getting back to the Oakley basics of just having pairs to enjoy in use. It took a long time after that to start listing items, but as some may have seen on ebay, I've posted and moved a good amount of rare and top notch condition items since last year. My prices aren't low, but I feel they pretty much match the collection opportunity considering rarity and/or condition. FYI, I can do at least 10% better from ebay through PM, possibly more if multiple items. I keep my O-R collection page up to date with available items.

For original animation cells, it doesn't get any more iconic than a clean original Optimus cell from the 1986 movie, especially in a nice action shot. There's so many awesome scenes from different bots in that movie that would be awesome to own.

I haven't watched a Transformer movie since 2011, I told myself I wasn't going to be tricked by Michael Bay no more after that one (good thing as I heard it somehow went further downhill after that). I thought Bumblebee was going to follow the trend and blow, but my eyes lit up while watching the recent trailers! I'll be back for IMAX 3D on this one simply due to finally getting some recognizable G1 design. I really hope they keep the human portion of the storyline to a minimum, and give the Transformers most of the screen time.

There will probably be a plot hole or two created since this is supposed to be a prequel to the Bayverse stuff. Bay had the Autobots arrive to earth in generic bot forms and then scan into the native vehicles, where as this prequel seems more like G1 origin. Optimus Prime was re-built into his FL86 truck mode by Alpha Trion millions of years ago, he didn't come to Earth and scan into a truck. I'll take it though, give me a plot hole if it means bringing in the G1 inspired designs! I already got a commission going for some art inspired by these trailers to add to my general TF collection.

Cool idea, always interesting to see Transformers theme crossovers, very nice display!

That Penny listing is hilarious! A big part of the Oakley collector chase for me was the thrill of the treasure hunt for those super limited pairs/items, but it's so tough to really know now with custom guys good enough to plate X-Metals, or color match O-Matter finishes, or make trophies, etc. For me it's made me realize that I need to go back to concentrating on the simple enjoyment of actually wearing Oakley instead of chasing the super rare stuff to keep in storage, which is getting faked better and better. I miss the days of laughing at foakleys at the small convenience stores with the dumb lens stickers (I guess Oakley ended up thinking lens stickers weren't so dumb), now foakleys are no laughing matter.

Great job on the new design Dann!! Super happy to have OR back!! Feels like it was much longer than 5 months, by habit I would type in o-review.com into my browser every once in a while, feels good to get the log-in page now!

Such a huge difference, the new MP-36 mold is better in every single way other than the MP-05 height being taller. The only reason to still have MP-05 now is to have another MP to scale with MP-01/04 Optimus, but for those that mainly have the modern post MP-10 figure scaling, it's MP-36 all day over the rusting toothpick balancing mess that is MP-05, haha. This is coming from someone that owns the regular and gold version of the old mold. Really thinking hard about still having MP-05 taking up space in one of my displays. I will mainly keep MP-05 around for now due to sentimental reasons of being the first mold.

Anybody thinking of getting the new Megatron mold (MP-36) should jump on it! Amazing detail to the figure and accessories! I can't take a picture that does the MP-36 colors and details justice. I went with his 1986 movie battle damaged look. A must have for any TF MP collector in my opinion.

Somehow my permissions got all messed up, I didn't realize it since I could see the pics no matter what. I hate google photos, I miss how straight forward linking pics and setting permissions used to be with picasa. Anyway, I think I fixed it with the links below? If someone could confirm?

**edit** Seems to still be having issues if I try to look at pics while not signed into my accounts. F google, here's clickable links, so much for my grand presentation, haha.

https://goo.gl/photos/pDJcXUVN9nAgfK6C9

https://goo.gl/photos/oBiTwNPMudm3bigN6

https://goo.gl/photos/76vTxxjdozKD5JUdA

https://goo.gl/photos/7cTgPkHJnYuoTE8Z8

Sweet shelf Lance!

I'm digging Titan Trypticon enough to buy, I'm curious what the SDCC version will be, will probably get whatever that version is. May be my last Titan Class pickup as I don't think I'm fond enough of Scorponok or Omega Supreme to make the space for them.

Sweet! Defender of the Grips!

Great choice on SOC Voltron Dann! Of all the "masterpiece" options for the original style Lion Voltron, SOC Voltron is by far the most positively reviewed in the Voltron community so far. I got it as well, but not sure if I'll open it as I already have two other "masterpiece" Lion Voltron's on display. Will prob keep SOC Voltron displayed MISB for the foreseeable furture. Very happy that you finally got to satisfy the Voltron toy itch Dann, picked a winner for sure!

Beautiful M Frame Francisco!

I'm drooling over that pic of the Rosa Blades, super cool paint design and the sweet sticker, drooool...

Time to bump up the Transformers thread as its been a little while. Finally got the chance to mess with MP Inferno and complete another shelf. He's bigger than I thought he was going to be in both bot and vehicle mode, which gives Inferno a really awesome shelf presence, but caused me to tweak my original idea as to how I would fit him in the display. All for the better in the end, I really like how this shelf turned out! Hard to capture all the awesome with one picture/angle, so had to take multiple.

Wish I could put up my other recent toy purchases, but there's other things to do to the collection room and with other hobbies before that. It's a seemingly never-ending to do list, but feels nice seeing some things being finished every once in a while, haha.

.......

Another thing brought up in the Mumbo thread was how it seems dealers/shops were putting custom sets together. It's not the first time I've heard someone mention something like that, so I think that was for sure happening as well. It's possible Oakley even allowed shops to do the custom building down to the set box. Imagine a shop receiving a box of various lenses, a box of various frames, and a box of various set boxes. Or maybe even getting a stack of generic boxes and various lens sticker sheets so the custom shop themselves could make the entire set from the pieces they ordered.

That would explain something like the Strip sets not having barcode stickers. If the shop put the strip set together, select shops would have the box/sticker for the Strip, but they would be putting it together so they wouldn't have a barcode. I think I remember someone saying that the Strip was mainly available as an accessory when released.

Anyway, I think it's multiple of various scenarios happening leading to boxes not having UPC stickers. The question is which ones are true and which ones are not. I think that would also explain why boxes are more often than not found without UPC sticker because there's so many different ways for the set to be missing the UPC sticker.

For sure the UPC stickers were around when the Strip lens was released. My orange iridium Eyeshade has it, and it's in a late 80s dated box. Yet I have never seen any 89 Mumbo box have it, only the circle lens sticker.

The question is what is the missing piece of info that we don't have? Did it depend on where the sets were going? For example something like yes for larger retail stores, no for local Mom and Pop stores?

Did it take Oakley a little while to put them on at the start of production, and in the end, because certain models ultimately had a short run like Strip sets, 89 Mumbo, etc, Oakley never bothered?

Or did they pretty much all have them and the retail stores and/or consumers take them off? The lens sticker is cool looking and I could see why a consumer would be OK leaving the lens sticker on, but yet wanting to take off the "unsightly" barcode sticker on the back. It's a very easy sticker to take off, much easier than the lens sticker, I also feel like it was the norm back then to take off barcode stickers if possible when giving as a gift. It was before a lot of collecting crazes of today, back then the idea of buying a pair of Oakley's to never wear and just admire in a case was probably crazy. For stores, things were still very analog during that time, I can image a lot of Mom and Pop shops having a basic register with no scanner (just punch in the sale value with tax). Very possible a lot of stores took them off to add their own dollar label.

Or was Oakley just so dang random at that time? It was the late 80s/early 90s, Oakley wasn't yet anywhere near their peak, the most important thing for them was probably getting the production out by any means necessary to stay alive. I work in a production factory, and sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to hit production goals.

Who knows? Only JJ or possibly production managers during those times depending on how Oakley was tiered back then.

Crazy cool art, framing looks great! Glass is the way to go.

It kinda got lost in the Cubs World Series mania for me, but I just watched this past week's Agents of Shield episode, and it was the episode I was waiting for! Real compelling with the origin story and the plot getting real thick, hope they can keep the momentum going.

For the size that's about right, is that with the frame place doing the complete framing?

I got a couple bigger pieces completely done at a local family shop with all the fixins, but after seeing them go through the process I did a few smaller pieces at home just buying the pieces at Michael's. Michael's with those 40-50%+ sales on frames/glass/matts is hard to beat when assembling at home. I'm a fan of their masterpiece glass, real good clarity. It is a bit tedious getting things clean and keeping them dust/particle/fingerprint free while assembling though, luckily I haven't had to frame many things over 20".

That first original piece is awesome, also looking forward to seeing the next pieces completed.

Really liked the first two episodes this season, they are once again building up some good mystery just like they did in the early stages last season, just hope they can also deliver the goods at the end (unlike the flat/predictable ending of last season). Ghost Rider kicking butt so far.

Wow, amazing presentation! I'm not an X-Men super fan, so I don't really know who was together with who in the different timelines, but as a general X-Men fan I can't believe they didn't put Wolverine in this diorama. Wolverine is the moneymaker so I'd think from a business perspective you'd want to add Wolverine in the position Beast is currently in to more easily sell these pieces, unless Wolverine wasn't in the timeline they are trying to present, but Wolverine has pretty much been everywhere, haha.

Very cool, Agents of Shield is one of the few superhero universe shows I still watch (plus Arrow and Gotham). I was disappointed with the end of last season after I thought it had a very strong run of interesting episodes up to the mid-series break. Ghost Rider looks promising, hopefully he's not just a one episode bump in the road.

Very nice stuff! That MCC set was pretty popular if I remember right, a very good one to have some cool stuff from. It can get really addicting to collect sketch cards just because there's so many different ways in going about collecting styles, or artists, or sets, or characters, etc. It's pretty cool to have a hand made piece of art that is easy to store and display.

Anybody using an air compressor better make sure it's oil free, otherwise the end result will not be good, haha. Even better if it's oil free and has an inline filter.

Oh yea, I have no idea where I'm even going to store that when I get it though, haha. Having no space sucks! Somehow I gotta figure out how to add Fort Max to the collection room.