Art Asylum Marvel Milestones Thing statue

I've had some luck with some cool Thing items recently. Here's a statue I've been looking to pick up for quite some time. This is the Art Asylum Marvel Milestones Thing statue from Diamond Select (phew!) and it came out about a decade ago. I had a chance to buy one at the time but couldn't afford it. Often times, statues and other items such as this will depreciate in value over time (due to a lack of interest or simply a greater supply), but this statue has bucked the trend over the years and has been hard to find.

The statue is a recreation of the Jack Kirby classic Fantastic Four #51 cover from 1966. It's referred to as the greatest Thing story of all time and comes right after the Galactus trilogy...Lee and Kirby were at their best around this time.

The story features a jealous scientist rival of Reed Richards who steals the Thing's powers in an attempt to infiltrate the Fantastic Four and kill Reed. The Thing on the cover is *probably* the imposter Thing (covers don't always directly represent the story inside), meaning that this statue might actually not be of Ben Grimm at all, but the jerk who stole his powers.

The statue itself is a little under 12 inches tall and is pretty heavy. The Thing's head is a little disproportionately small compared to his oversized hands and feet, which is a little strange considering that the Thing on the FF 51 cover is fairly undersized compared to how he is sometimes depicted.

I unfortunately didn't get a box with this statue, but it was an instance of beggars and choosers this time around. I got the item for a incredible price and the statue itself is in perfect condition. To give you some idea of how much this statue can sometimes run, here's a link to a current eBay auction (with the box) that has a buy it now price of $1200, which is kind of outrageous. Who knows what leads someone to set a price that high. Maybe the person who owns it doesn't really want to sell it, but why list it at all if that's the case? I can't imagine that the statue will sell at that price (I paid less than 10% of that for my version), but until I found this guy pictured above, I had only seen versions priced in similar ranges. If I've got to pay over a grand just to get the box, I'll be happy to keep mine as is.

The bottom tells me that there was a run of 2500, which is actually not too bad for a Marvel statue (another I'm looking for only had a run of 125), so, again, I'm not sure why these cost so much on the secondary market. They don't seem especially fragile, so I can't imagine that there are a lot of broken versions out there.

Whatever the reason, I'm happy to finally check this great Thing statue off my list. It's a neat item that is fun to look at...which I guess is the purpose of statues.