MAFEX Marvel Figures

EnigmaticClarity said:
The because was to justify extending the tax cuts in the Big Beautiful Bill to fiscal conservatives (mostly the Freedom Caucus) who Trump knew would oppose it. The top 20% of US earners appreciate your sacrifice! :rolleyes:
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Isn’t it more like the top 0.001%? I’d argue the GOP isn’t even a good choice for high-income professionals, only the very, very, very, very, very wealthy.


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I think it's really the top 3%. What I've always found fascinating is that the Republican base is primarily made up of the lowest income Americans in primarily the South and Midwest (where I am) very much voting against their own best interests. Sure the ultra wealthy are often Republicans also but that's a very slim sliver of their voting base. If you look at a map it's almost universally urban voters voting Democrat and rural voting Republican. It has never really made much sense to me. In the end I think that I've mostly accepted that the lines are drawn more around religion than economics. Since I am not a person of any faith that has never really been at the front of my mind in any meaningful way (other than freedom FROM religion at least).
 
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Red Ogre said:
Exposure to differences make you more accepting and open. Rural communities don't get the exposure, hence their refusal to accept others.
Source: Was raised in a rural area.
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I fully agree with this as it matches my personal experience as well.

I grew up on a small 80-acre farm and attended a high school with a graduating class of 100 students in a town with a population of around 2,500. Although I lived 20 miles away from the town with that school, it was still the closest. I moved away and went to a very liberal college with an enrollment of 30,000 students and it was the first time in my life that I had daily interaction with anyone that wasn't white / Christian / heterosexual (openly anyway).

After I graduated, I've never lived in a town with a population of under 80,000 since - by choice.

When my parents passed and I inherited their paid off 80 acre farm I easily could have lived there the rest of my life, but there were no real jobs within 45 miles and I would have been bored out of my mind. The full sale value of that 80 acre farm was roughly equivalent to 40% of the value of the home on a one-quarter acre that I live on in town.

People in that small town that I grew up in would still never accept anyone that was different even all of these years later because they've never been exposed to them or gotten the chance to truly know anyone not like them. So they fear / hate what they don't understand.
 
It’s hard to believe the Yen is down to .0063 USD as of today, and Japanese imports are becoming too expensive to justify collecting them any longer. I think the exchange rate was around .0086 USD when I started actively collecting Japanese imports back in 2015.

As much as I’d like to put the entire blame on everyone’s favorite Oompa Loompa, I blame most of it on the Pandemic. The term “Inflation” in the 2020’s is a gentle euphemism for giving pretty much anyone and everyone selling a good or providing a service carte blanche to price gouge us. In many respects, I think this all began with most of us simply trying to be kind and supportive of others during a very difficult time. Boy, did that backfire.
 
Xavion2025 said:
It’s hard to believe the Yen is down to .0063 USD as of today, and Japanese imports are becoming too expensive to justify collecting them any longer. I think the exchange rate was around .0086 USD when I started actively collecting Japanese imports back in 2015.
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Am I backwards on the math here or am I just missing your point? The lower the Yen gets relative to the dollar the cheaper it gets for people buying with US dollars.

The reason they're more expensive now is due to Medicom increasing their MSRP several times during the post-COVID inflation period coupled with the tariffs. We're almost to the point where buying from Japan doesn't work anymore due to inflation and the tariffs, but right now it's still slightly better to buy there due to the weak Yen and the bite that the American retailers take on selling imports.

The tariffs should expire within six months unless Trump finds another workaround or just defies the Trade Act of 1974 and just dares people to sue him as he so often does.
 
EnigmaticClarity said:
Am I backwards on the math here or am I just missing your point? The lower the Yen gets relative to the dollar the cheaper it gets for people buying with US dollars.
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No, you’re good. My point was that even with what amounts to a built in 26.7% discount from the lower exchange rate (compared to 2015)), collecting Japanese lines is becoming prohibitively expensive due to (as you mentioned) manufacturers raising prices, the tariffs, and increasesd shipping costs.
 
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Okay, here we go. Mafex Hush Superman shipped from Ami Ami on 11/26/2019. $87.84 all in. Yen to USD on that day: .009175. So roughly 9,575 yen. (Edit: 9,576 yen. I confirmed it through my order history on AmiAmi).

9,575 yen at today’s exchange rate of .006385 is roughly $60.94. So all other things being equal, that same figure would cost me $26.90 LESS today.

Mafex Rogue shipped from HLJ on 03/10/2026. 15,697 yen. So roughly $99.91 at an exchange rate of .006365…except I paid $119.51…which would be an exchange rate of .007614.

So that tells me a couple of things. The first is that a Mafex figure, shipped, costs 6,122 yen more than it did six years ago…a 64% increase.

The second is that someone is f’n me on these exchange rates, because my total is clearly 15,697 yen on HLJ, I was clearly charged $119.51 by American Expeess, and the exchange rate is clearly .006385.

(Edit: I paid AmiAmi through PayPal. Not sure if I used my bank account or my Amex as the source, but there was no exchange rate hanky panky going on. HLJ uses a payment processor in San Francisco called Reach. I’m wondering if those are the mofos that are skimming money off of me for their “service”…but 20 USD? Seems exorbitant.)
 
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I hadn't paid attention to my cost, but I paid 17,421 shipped for Gambit on March 2nd and was charged (through PayPal) $116.89 which would translate to an exchange rate of 0.006698 so I got dinged a bit.
 
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