Before Volks offered frightfully expensive limited edition Super Dollfie versions of Suiseiseki and Souseiseki from Rozen Maiden, they produced an even more limited doll of Shinku.

Given that, since they were announced, we've been fantasizing about purchasing the twins, we've also let our brain wander out into that joyful territory where we also happen upon, and purchase, the original Shinku.

Well, as Eminiem says, oops, there goes gravity. SD Shinku actually showed up on Yahoo Japan auctions this week.

For 600,000 yen.

And she's already got a bid. (She had a bid yesterday--from a buyer with no feedback. We will continue to monitor the situation.)

Just for gravity's sake, it was for approximately that amount, back in 1992, that we purchased our beloved '88 Honda Civic. We were a newly minted PhD, and in the middle of our first (and last) ill-paying academic job. We had to spend many an evening subsisting on ramen noodles to make the payments.

The Civic still runs. The odometer reads well over 100,000 miles now. It's taken us to LA. It's taken us to the Grand Canyon. It's taken us back and forth to Noxon, Montana, half a dozen times. It's gone on mad daytrips down to Portland, and up to Vancouver. It's hauled futon frames, leaf bags, IKEA cabinets, three full-sized Lilo & Stitch surfboards, and transported Philip's impossibly large "Predateur" bust--so large we had to roll down the window to fit it--to the airport. It still sits loyally in the driveway at Casa de Tikistitch, awaiting new duties.

And, that's what they want for Shinku?

Damn.

And so, let us travel back in time, off on a trip to a simpler time, a time during the 14th through 17th of July, 2005, when we had not a care in the world but for jostling against 20,000 other sentient beings at Comic Con.

( To the Wayback Machine, Mr. Peabody! )