Pokémon Unnamed Third Set Trading Figure Game TFG Heracross 17/42 UNRELEASED

Description

Pokémon Unnamed Third Set Trading Figure Game TFG Heracross 17/42 UNRELEASED
Brief History of these Figures
All of the Unreleased figures are available in far fewer numbers than any of the Next Quest set and nine of the Groundbreakers set. Those nine from Groundbreakers starter sets and a couple of singles were available in store shelves for a few weeks and then overnight were all pulled off every shelf and sent back to the Pokémon Company for destruction, so those are still fairly uncommon. But that’s not the case with these. They were all officially produced, but none of them were officially released.
Because of this, the Pokemon Company had much more direct control of the unreleased product as most of it never even left the factory. The people in China I bought these from described fishing them out of bins where they were slated to be destroyed. Many of them were heavily damaged just by being tossed into bins. Many more, particularly those with thin parts like Aipom and Suicune virtually always arrived damaged. I personally bought 4 auctions with Suicune. The other 3 arrived with demolished antennae. In all maybe 75 auctions with lots over 3 were ever available on ebay before the resale market started.
In that time, even being very liberal, there were lass than 1,000 auctions for singles. That’s around 1,225 figure over a 79 figure range, including the Promos. Some more showed up at a few thrift toy stores on the west coast of the US and some others in the Philippines. Even tripling the numbers which showed up on ebay, that’s less than 5,000 total. Over 13 years. It’s inevitable even more of them were broken or tossed.
With a mass produced (100,000+ quantity) figure like Scyther selling for what it just sold for, these prices are on point some were seen more commonly than others, but nowhere near like the first set. Some, like the Blastoise with no stickers on the base may have even been prototypes because the colors are a bit different and not as refined in paint scheme as the handful of pictures you can find online of models others have who did have stickers on the base.
These were all crafted by renowned sculptors, and though some of the castings from the sculpts were available mounted to a pedestal for another product, several were never released and this is the only way to obtain these particular sculpts.
All of the sculpts I presently have up for auction are in excellent condition. To get these to you with the best hope of them arriving as they were sent I have to take extra precautions to protect them. Even wrapping them gently in bubble is enough to break some of them. There is no combined shipping.
The last picture is how these will come shipped, with another piece of foam backing glued to the top to make the box as sturdy as possible. The figure bases are captured in card stock which is affixed to the foam on the bottom to keep the sculpt from being tossed around inside the box.
If there is anything of special note for the figure in the auction I will list it under here.
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Heracross was seen in three auctions. There may have been others which turned up somewhere but I never heard of any being found in the thrift stores where other figures were found in limited quantities.