The Class of 2024 (The Vaults of Iacon 2024 Pick-Ups Gallery)

To accompany our YouTube video, here are all the photo's of our 2024 pick-ups.

2023: A YEAR IN COLLECTING RETROSPECTIVE

We are almost done with January, February is looming on the horizon, much like the sun of the lengthening days. I’m a little later than usual with my year end look-back. I could make a plethora of excuses, each more dramatic than the other. The truth is two fold and quite unremarkable. Firstly I’d not been so well over Christmas and the New Year, still not 100% even now but getting there. And secondly, I’d really enjoyed not doing the whole social media / collecting thing over the festive period. I’d come to really appreciate not feeling the need to come up with new content, new camera angles and how to do my next Photoshop gimmick. But, there are still things I want to do so it’s back to it and where better to start than the retrospective of my collecting during 2023.

NEWAGE 57EX BOMBARDIER FREYR > REVIEW

Preamble

Firmly cementing my plan of not collecting Legends scale figures, Newage’s H57EX Freyr arrived into the Vault back in early December. Their take on the G1 toy version of Swoop was easy for me to pass on, considering I don’t have any of the other Dinobots from them to date. Sticking to my guns, I fully intend to ignore the eventual releases of both Snarl and Slag, happy in the knowledge that I will then not have a full compliment of Dinobots!

NEWAGE 56EX JUNGLE WARRIOR RHEDOSAURUS > REVIEW

Preamble

I’m not a Legends scale collector, and truth be told I have no intentions of becoming one. But that said, there are always those few figures that come along which grab your attention and somehow end up on your shelf.

The above was pretty much how I started the review for H-44EX Ymir, Newage’s version of Grimlock. I stand by those words but have to admit that Newage are making it very hard to do so. I always intended to pick up the rest of the Dinobots… and so here we now are with H-56EX Rhedosaurus, their take on Sludge.

NEWAGE H27-W CONQUEST & H28 OCTAVIAN > TRADED-IN with COSMIC TOYS

Our friends over at Cosmic Toys approached us a while ago with a view to send me some traded-in items they have had. Asking me to take a quick look at, do some photo’s and write a word or two about them.

You may have already seen some of them, as I had previously categorised them under the “Half-Arsed Review” feature. However I have decided to ditch this in favour of a shortened and more straight to the point commentary, after all, they are items that they do hopefully intend to sell. But don’t worry, the Half-Arsed Review is still a thing but will be moved onto something else.

TOP 10 TRANSFORMERS PURCHASES OF 2022

To close off the run through of my 2022 pick-ups I have been asked what my 'Top 10' of 2022 was.

So here they are, just the pictures and no text as to be honest, there's nothing more really to say that I've not addressed in the previous blog entry, which you can view here. I'll also be discussing them over a live stream, the link to which I'll add to the bottom of this blog when it's done.

A YEAR IN THE DAY - THE VAULTS OF IACON 2022 COLLECTION REVIEW

Well, that’s 2022 done with. But before I close it off an move on to 2023 I thought I’d take a look back at my year of collecting. There was a lot of stuff that came into The Vault over the year, the most since 2018 in fact. It was all mainly Masterpiece this year, aside from the few bits of Black Series, but we’re not here to discuss that today.

I’ll break this down by Month and then do an overview at the end, giving my best / worst figure of the year etc.

Right then, let’s crack on shall we?

NEWAGE 44EX COMMANDER YMIR > REVIEW

I’m not a Legends scale collector, and truth be told I have no intentions of becoming one. However, that said, there was always going to be a few figures come along in this scale which would grab my attention and potentially make it onto my shelf.