10/21/2025

Re-Collection Log #3

Dread Eye's Phantom and Coffer Trap

A mere four days (September 26th) after I purchased Stormstalker and Maroon Gally, I stumbled upon another incredible deal on eBay.

I was just beginning my re-collection journey, and was still after the mainstays in anyone's Pyrates collection. So my eyes were on the obvious things. Stormstalker, Treasure Island, the skulls, and of course...

Dread Eye's Phantom

One of the main ships of the series. (Not a high bar, I know. There's only three of them). And one of the most iconic, next to Stormstalker herself. I was browsing deals on eBay when I stumbled upon an absolute goldmine of an auction. Dread Eye's Phantom, mostly complete. For an insanely low price.

Now, I had learned my lesson from the Stormstalker incident. I wasn't going to get overexcited, bid instantly, and drive the price up. So I waited and watched. The time ticked by and still, there wasn't a single bid upon it. In its final hours, I threw down 50 dollars. And won her.

50 dollars for an ENTIRE ship is insanely good. Less than half of what I paid for Stormstalker.

Now, however. The eagle eyed among you might have taken notice of one thing. This ship isn't the original Dread Eye's Phantom.

To those of you that don't know what I mean. Allow me to remind you of something I mentioned at the start of this blog. Remember how Pyrates had a reboot in 2010? This is one of those rebooted sets.

Now, its not too drastic with Dread Eye's Phantom. Unlike Stormstalker 2.0, The Phantom remained largely the same. The biggest changes were removing the gray sails, with the Skeleton Crew logo, and replacing them with pure black sails. They also replaced the throne in the back with a third tiny mast.

The hull of The Phantom now no longer lit up either. But that wasn't that big of an issue.

Speaking of the hull though, one disapointment of this set actually comes from the 2.0 boxart.

As you can see, on the boxart of this set the 2.0 version of The Phantom is depicted as having a black hull. Which looks absolutely incredible when paired with the black sails. It makes me very much wish that this set had the black hull instead of gray. Because honestly, the gray on the 2.0 version of the set looks way worse than it does on the original.

The listing I bought also came with some random extra sails. They aren't Pyrates. I believe them to be Playmobil. I would've told the owner to keep them, but I worried that he would've misunderstood me and kept the actual sails instead of those weird things.

Dread Eye's Phantom (2.0) now in my hands! I switched the third mast for my own, original throne. So it better matches the 1.0 version

The set arrived a few weeks later. Officially joining my growing fleet. The plastic definetly feels cheaper on these 2.0 sets. Unfortunately.

The set came with four skeletons, including Dread Eye himself. As well as Brigadoon Blackburn, a very interesting choice of Marauder for the set.

It was around this time that I also was able to snatch up a relatively cheap listing for Coffer Trap. I was now one step closer to having all three of the original skull sets.

Coffer Trap has arrived! Octopus included! Oops. That treasure chest is from Pieces of Eight though. My bad.

Oh, one last thing before I end this post. In this set is a character known as Shifty Merchant. Who bares an identical appearance to Topmast Tremblay. Its rare that Megabloks did this. Usually they'd at least change the character's body or head or something. But nope. Shifty Merchant and Topmast Tremblay are a rare case of identical figures. I've decided to headcanon them as twins.