Action Figures
Buy and sell action figures in Panama.
Anime figures share Panamanian shelves with Marvel and Star Wars, and Comic Con Panamá, held at the convention centre in Amador, gives figures and dioramas a collectors’ zone of their own. New or pre-owned, the range runs from a Dragon Ball prize figure made for Japanese crane games to a Nendoroid with a bag of swap-in faces, a fully jointed figma and the six-inch Marvel Legends line. Whether a figure poses or just stands on its base, and whether the box survived, settles most of what it is worth.
Anime prize figures and the lines built to pose:
sit at opposite ends of the same shelf. Banpresto, SEGA, Taito and FuRyu make prize figures as rewards for Japanese crane games: one sculpted pose on a base, simple paint and no joints, which is why they are cheap. Nendoroids from Good Smile Company are small, big-headed figures that come with swap-in faces, hands and a stand, while figma and Bandai’s S.H.Figuarts go the other way, with realistic proportions and joints throughout. At the top sit scale figures from Good Smile, Kotobukiya and Alter, statues with far finer paint. Western collecting runs alongside, from Hasbro’s six-inch Marvel Legends to sixth-scale Hot Toys. One Piece and Dragon Ball cards have a shelf of their own under trading cards, and older toys in tin or celluloid fit better with antiques.
The scale on the box and the room on the shelf:
settle which kind suits you. A scale figure says 1/7 or 1/8 on the box, and most prize figures give no scale at all, which is the quickest way to tell a statue made for display from one made as a game prize. Decide early whether you want to pose your figures or simply look at them: a figma rewards someone who will keep moving it, while a scale figure is built to be placed once and left alone. Nendoroids suit small shelves and a collection that grows character by character, and a shelf that mixes scales rarely looks right.
A prize figure next to a Nendoroid:
splits the anime shelf by price. New in Panama, a boxed prize figure is around $30 to $60 and a Nendoroid around $65 to $90, while figma and proper scale figures start past $100. A prize figure is easy to replace new, so out of its box it fetches only a fraction of shelf price, and any lean or scuff takes more off. A Nendoroid or figma with every face, hand and stand back in its tray, in a box with sharp corners, keeps much more of its value, and once a figure sells out and is not reissued, a complete one can fetch more than it cost.
Leaning statues and loose Nendoroids:
are the two problems worth ruling out before you pay. A figure carrying heavy hair, a long weapon or all its weight on one foot can slowly tilt on its base, all-PVC prize figures most of all, and a sunny window or a parked car speeds it along. Ask for a photo from the side with the figure standing on its base, and check that the feet sit snugly on the pegs. Good Smile Company does not sell Nendoroids without a box, so one offered loose in a bag deserves suspicion, as does a listing that uses a name close to the official one but not quite it. A licence sticker that looks different from another copy is not proof of a fake on its own, because the sticker changes with release and sales region.
The plastic tray, the box corners and a side-on photo:
tell a collector most of what they need before they message you. Say whether the figure was opened and whether it stood in direct sun. Keep the clear plastic tray: a Nendoroid or figma without one is harder to sell, because the small parts have nowhere to go. Shoot the figure on its base from the front and from the side so a buyer can see it stands straight. Give the character, series and maker exactly as printed on the box, since buyers search by official name and a vague title looks like a bootleg. Anyone coming to collect a scale figure will want to see it standing assembled on a level table before paying, so fit the feet onto the pegs ahead of time rather than wrestling with them while they wait.