Metroid Prime Echoes Varia Suit Samus First4Figures

[Cosmic_Link]

Hi all,

I have recently had an update from F4F with regards to theirs Varia Suit Samus statue. I have had this on order since 2016. Per-orders have been closed since then, but they are now opening pre-orders again for the statue for a weekend as they have made some changes to the originally advertised statue.

I am just looking for what other people's feelings are with regards to re-opening of pre-orders on an edition where pre-orders have been closed for a number of months (18-ish). See the following from the email which was sent to me regarding this:

Dear *Customer*,

First, we apologize for the delay of the release of the Varia Suit Exclusive.
We finally got the feedback from our licensor about the approval of our design. There are some updates from the previous prototype according to their request.
In order to have a more detailed comparison between the two versions, please check the video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBhd60M3kJ8

Due to this update, we will have a special arrangement for Varia Suit Exclusive.?
Since the estimated released date will postpone to Q3 2018, we will re-open this item from the 29th of December to the 1st of January (Hong Kong Time) as the Last Chance Weekend for customers to place their order.
There will be a price increase due to the update but this will ONLY apply to the orders that placed within the Last Chance Weekend.
For current orders, please check below:

1. Confirmed orders
No action needed if you wish to keep the order with the updated version.
If you are not happy with the new version and wish to cancel your order, please login and click cancel and we will refund all the payments you made without any handling charge (including
the deposit).

?2. ?Wait list ?orders?
All wait list orders will be converted to CONFIRMED ORDERS automatically due to the delay in production. No action is needed if you wish to keep the order.
If you are not happy with the new version and wish to cancel your order, please login and click cancel and we will refund all the payments you've made without any handling charge
(including the deposit).

3. Changing versions/ adding FlexiPay
If you wish to apply for a payment plan/ change the version, please cancel the current one and place a new order within the Last Chance Weekend (29th of December to 1st of January).
However the ***NEW PRICE WILL BE APPLIED*** instead of the old one for your new order.
We will refund all the payments you've made without any handling charge (including the deposit) once we received your cancellation.

4. Cancelled orders
All orders that cancelled before this announcement, we will also refund all the payments you made without any handling charge (include the deposit) at a later time.


?Please notice that any cancellations must be done on/before the 1st of January.
Any cancellations received after? the 1st of January will be handled as normal cancellations and fees will be applied.

Should you have any inquiries, please fill in the Contact Us form on our website? and we are happy to help.

Again we apologize for the postponement of the release!?


Kind regards,

First 4 Figures Team

Just looking to see how other people feel about this or would feel about this if it was to happen with a statue or item they had on pre-order.

Thanks all.

[Mar-l-Aoutat]

Of course it makes the statue feel a little less limited, but I think it's great for all those people who missed on the original PO and want it badly.

It actually reminds me when they announced that their Artorias EX would come with not only one extra sword and the art print , but two extra swords, giving a new plus to all the people who PO the EX. It got me a little mad, since I bought the REG, thinking one extra sword wasn't worth the extra money. Two swords? Yeah, it was worth the extra quite enough.
So if they re-opened the PO after announcing that - even if it wasn't much of a big change - it would have made me really happy.

Also they are not like Gaming Heads, Sideshow or Prime 1; they do not set edition sizes in advance. If they labelled it as''limited edition of 1500'', and then ''yeah, not really 1500, we re-open the PO and it's going to be 2000'' it would be wrong. But they don't do that.

[Cosmic_Link]

Originally Posted by Mar-l-Aoutat

Of course it makes the statue feel a little less limited, but I think it's great for all those people who missed on the original PO and want it badly.

It actually reminds me when they announced that their Artorias EX would come with not only one extra sword and the art print , but two extra swords, giving a new plus to all the people who PO the EX. It got me a little mad, since I bought the REG, thinking one extra sword wasn't worth the extra money. Two swords? Yeah, it was worth the extra quite enough.
So if they re-opened the PO after announcing that - even if it wasn't much of a big change - it would have made me really happy.

Thanks for your reply.

I completely appreciate what you are saying about allowing other's who missed out a second chance to own this statue, especially when they have not announced the closed limit size. However, when pre-orders have been closed since 2016, what is your view regarding this? It is quite a large duration of time to have closed pre-orders then suddenly re-open them, don't you think?

Originally Posted by Mar-l-Aoutat

Also they are not like Gaming Heads, Sideshow or Prime 1; they do not set edition sizes in advance. If they labelled it as''limited edition of 1500'', and then ''yeah, not really 1500, we re-open the PO and it's going to be 2000'' it would be wrong. But they don't do that.

With regards to this comment, you are completely correct, they are not like this now...

This is one frustration I have with all of F4F recent statues is that they do not announce the limit quantity anymore and instead just allow pre-orders to dictate the edition size.

I have been purchasing statues from them since the beginning and all of their early statues always had closed print runs which was announced at pre-order opening, typically 2500. Larger statues were smaller prints runs. It is really disappointing to me that they have chosen to do this now (Or rather the past few years).

To put it into perspective, (before somebody bashes me about my reasons for collecting) if a statue you wanted was limited to 100pcs and priced at $1000, would that price be justified based on the limited quantities? If that same statue was $1000 but was left as an open edition or limited to a much higher quantity (ie. 10,000), what is the likelihood that you would pre-order said statue at the $1000 pricetag, or would you wait for a potential sale or price drop?

As you have said, it makes it less limited, so is it worth paying the high price for still?

[Mar-l-Aoutat]

Originally Posted by Cosmic_Link

Thanks for your reply.

I completely appreciate what you are saying about allowing other's who missed out a second chance to own this statue, especially when they have not announced the closed limit size. However, when pre-orders have been closed since 2016, what is your view regarding this? It is quite a large duration of time to have closed pre-orders then suddenly re-open them, don't you think?

It's true it's weird, but I don't see this that much as a problem.

Originally Posted by Cosmic_Link

With regards to this comment, you are completely correct, they are not like this now...

This is one frustration I have with all of F4F recent statues is that they do not announce the limit quantity anymore and instead just allow pre-orders to dictate the edition size.

I have been purchasing statues from them since the beginning and all of their early statues always had closed print runs which was announced at pre-order opening, typically 2500. Larger statues were smaller prints runs. It is really disappointing to me that they have chosen to do this now (Or rather the past few years).

To put it into perspective, (before somebody bashes me about my reasons for collecting) if a statue you wanted was limited to 100pcs and priced at $1000, would that price be justified based on the limited quantities? If that same statue was $1000 but was left as an open edition or limited to a much higher quantity (ie. 10,000), what is the likelihood that you would pre-order said statue at the $1000 pricetag, or would you wait for a potential sale or price drop?

As you have said, it makes it less limited, so is it worth paying the high price for still?

I understand. That said, if the ES is based on the number of PO for the first two weeks, I can't see the statue having a price drop because a lot of people order. Because:

ES = number of people willing to PO and pay the suggested price for the first two weeks.

That means...

ES always < total number of people willing to buy the statue on the long term, 1, 2, 3 years and more after the statue is released. Which means there will always be more demand than the number of statues initially made. Even if there were initially 4000 made instead of 500.

Basically, every statue they make sells-out two weeks after the PO open. That's selling out pretty fast...

If we compare with Gaming Heads, they set the ES at say 2000 and put the statue up for PO. Then it takes YEARS to sell-out. Versus 2 weeks for F4F...

So even if the ES is bigger than you would like, it is still pretty limited, and the statue will still go up in value and be hard to get after the release, because F4F don't make more than that 2 weeks PO demand.

Also I would not be happy if they setted very small edition sizes instead of giving people 2 weeks to pre-order. Just think of the mess the Lucky cat mario statue was (ES setted at 150 I think, and then put up for PO). It makes a very small amount of people happy because they snagged the statue within minutes before it sold-out, and makes so much people mad and disapointed because they could not get it.