My two cents: scalping is not a proud nor lucrative business. Man, if some dude wants to spend his time racing from Walmart to Walmart to snag a fig before it really starts hitting, then bring it home, create an eBay listing, pack the thing and ship it out for a couple buck profit, then geeez, go for it homie. Kind’uv a rough existence, but who the hell am I to judge!

Grow Up all of you complaining – The “scalper” has every right to clean out an entire store if they want as you have to buy it and stick it on your wall with a push pin.

In summary: No, scalpers did not bring down ToyBiz.

I thought of a more positive point I could make as well: we post to these boards for a reason – there’s a community here. Lots of folks pool their resources to buy cases, trade items, and often sell the ones they don’t want for reasonable prices on ebay. Might be something to consider doing. (I’m a big fan of doing things)

If you could have someone at the store call you up and let you know they held some stock back for you, would you pass up that opportunity? Or would you say, “No thanks, that’s bad toy karma – I’ll take my chances in the ailse!” I think confronted with that temptation, most of the folks who complain here would find their moral high ground evaporate.

I’ve heard the expression many times: You make your own luck. It gets tossed around so much because it’s true. It’s easy to sit back and complain impotently about the state of affairs, but nothing’s going to change if you don’t change (and here I don’t mean you specifically George, I’m speaking generally). It relates to another statement that gets bandied about a lot: The definition of “insanity” is repeating the same behaviors and expecting a different result.

These “scalpers” are able to get what they want… why can’t you? Are they better than you? Born with some advantage you don’t have? Is it just that they’re jobless losers, and you only have certain windows for toy shopping, making a fruitful excursion nigh-impossible? Well life isn’t fair, and you then fall into the category of having to rely on the secondary market.

I know some folks who, bafflingly, collect designer sneakers. Oftentimes there are “exclusive” offerings that are only available from a certain geographical location. That’s just the nature of that commodity. If they can’t fly to L.A. to be there when a specific store opens, they’re S.O.L. for getting those sneakers. This is an extreme example, but there are “limiting factors” to any commodity, good or service on the market. And one primary factor is the ability to be present when the product(s) are made available for consumption. If you can’t meet that basic factor for any reason, you cannot participate in the consumption of that good.

So what I’m hearing is that scalper-haters hate captialism, and therefore democracy and freedom. And probably baby seals too.

All kidding aside, it sucks to be priced out of a hobby, but as long as there is a market for said hobby no one will care that you didn’t get what you want, or quit buying entirely. In summary: 1) Try Harder. 2) If you must go to the seconary market, set a limit for the % your’e willing to pay above MSRP and stick to it, b/c collectively we (the market) tell retailers and resellers what we’re willing and able to pay.

But toys aren’t flu vaccine. It is a different moral argument because of the severity of the situation, but the practice is the same. Businesses do things that most would consider wrong all the time, in the name of profit – it’s hard to get too upset about this particular issue because the stakes are so low. This doesn’t dump poison into the water table because it’s cheaper to build a low-cost and dangerous wall between your coal-slurry and the environment, the worst that happens is someone doesn’t get his toy.

The crime of greed is the same, but the consequences are negligable, and without any real harm or victim, it’s not much of a crime or moral offense.

Scumbag Rex: U Mad?

AFI used to be regarded as a paragon of how toy collector websites should be managed. I think the comments section of this editorial managed to undo all of that.

It’s not only irresponsible, it’s just plain lazy.

Buy from scalpers, support 35+ year old men who hit Target when it opens in the morning and quote “Clerks 2″ dialogue like Scalpy. Don’t buy from scalpers, wait a while and you’ll probably find what you want in the stores. The end.

Or should I have begun with “Dan, you pompous ass?” I suppose it’s at least better than reading Steven butcher his poor thesaurus.

See, you’ve still got no sense of proportion. You’re drawing a line between totally different levels of greed. One involves playing with people’s livelihoods by exploiting their dreams of home ownership or their retirement accounts to push bad investments. One involves buying and reselling luxury goods for profit, which is perfectly legal and would be considered just fine morally by anyone who’s not a nerdy figure collector like us. I mean, have you seen how many auction/collector shows are on TV now? People love that stuff. The only difference with figure scalping is that we’re selling products WIDELY AVAILABLE NOW. Think about that. These are consumer goods you can find at the biggest retail chains in the country! And we’re supposed to feel bad when a collector can’t find his Gentleman Ghost?

And it’s all well and good to talk about buying from the companies, and that’s a perfectly fine thing, but the volume you’re going to need to do that in is significant, and that’s while you establish a customer base. I can’t make any claims to know how ETC or BBTS got started, but I’d have to assume a sizable loan for initial capital was part of it, or else years of building a base through selling vintage stuff interspersed with new. At any rate, I wouldn’t suggest going into that business. It’s incredibly niche, dependent on a fickle market, and companies are realizing that they can make more by just selling to collectors themselves (ie, Matty). Not to mention that you could lose one of your major revenue sources in a blink, like say if DC decides to make Mattel overhaul their line to suit their own license’s needs. Small business guys trying to sell the same stock as Wal-Mart have it rough, even in a collector community.

I wrote a sentence fragment all by its lonesome up there to sum this entire discourse up. We have a free market, no one is breaking the law, and life goes on.

It sucks when you want something & it was not produced in ample supply for you to be able to pick it up at MSRP without competing against your fellow man. This is true. But what are you going to do about it?

You can get to a shop early, do your due diligence. RUN to the toy aisles first thing in the morning, every morning. If that’s what you’re competing against, and you want something bad enough, and the “scalper” situation where you live is bad enough, either do this or shut up about it already.

If this seems unpalatable to you, or you are incapable of competing for any of numerous other reasonable factors, such as having a job during hours when new product is stocked, or a physical disability, them’s the breaks.

There is no law that says every toy must be available to every American for MSRP. Star Wars toys are not a commodity or heavily regulated like oil barrel prices. Folks buy the hot stuff to re-sell online because they can. Wishing things were different does nothing.

I appreciate Jon’s enlightened attitude about the subject. He was able to get a good deal & that’s great. I think with PATIENCE, most of us can, either with re-sellers or at retail. In a free market, your power is your purchase. Don’t pay the extreme end of these inflated prices to these jokers, and you’re doing your part by sending a message about the prices the market can reasonably tolerate.

…or you can pick up a new, less stressful hobby. Like yoga, or quilting.

I mean, I’m a scalper myself, but I’ve been to plenty of stores where the good stuff was gone already. I just assume that another collector got to them first, not another reseller. One population is way more numerous than the other.

And the idea that reselling/scalping action figures could possibly be compared to Occupy Wall Street is ludicrous. That’s an extraordinarily complicated situation with a ton of different root causes, and symptoms that include widespread unemployment and economic turmoil. This is people getting to luxury goods before other people and profiting off it. Even making that comparison is a lack of proportion at best and yes, entitlement at worst.

Kinda like a pee-wees playhouse all my own

Im middle aged now, have a decent job not married and no kids and now As a collector I found myself in the perfect position to pursue that dream on the Internet…

So I Started buying stuff I thought could be rare or exclusives at retail and selling on ebay regularly as a side job/test.

I currently have a stock of over 3000 items for sale at markup.

I don’t make too much money yet, but what profit I do make either helps me collect for free or pay a few utility bills or buy new stock.

Am I wrong for pursuing my dreams? For wanting to increase my income, my collection, my lifestyle? Does this make me a bad person in your eyes and a blight on our hobby?

I spend countless hours driving, paying for gas, spending money on food during my missions. I get to meet other collectors from all walks of life and occasionally chat about the hobby, always with respect and dignity.

Really this whole scalper issue is ridiculous.

We live in America..the land of the FREE…The land of Opportunity…Capitalism

For every Market a Sub-market Grows

If you believe that everyone deserves a nice even portion of everything in life for everyone equally I recommend you try living in a communist or socialist country.

Kinda like a pee-wees playhouse all my own

Im middle aged now, have a decent job not married and no kids and now As a collector I found myself in the perfect position to pursue that dream on the Internet…

So I Started buying stuff I thought could be rare or exclusives at retail and selling on ebay regularly as a side job/test.

I currently have a stock of over 3000 items for sale at markup.

I don’t make too much money yet, but what profit I do make either helps me collect for free or pay a few utility bills or buy new stock.

Am I wrong for pursuing my dreams? For wanting to increase my income, my collection, my lifestyle? Does this make me a bad person in your eyes and a blight on our hobby?

I spend countless hours driving, paying for gas, spending money on food during my missions. I get to meet other collectors from all walks of life and occasionally chat about the hobby, always with respect and dignity.

Really this whole scalper issue is ridiculous.

We live in America..the land of the FREE…The land of Opportunity…Capitalism

If you believe that everyone deserves a nice even portion of everything in life for everyone equally I recommend you try living in a communist or socialist country.

We already have re-sellers: The stores we (should) find them in.

They buy from the companies and sell them to us, we don’t need a second middle man. And like I said, I do see the appreciation of being able to go back and get some stuff you missed, but my problem is when you can never find anything to begin with because (at least the ones around here, which is maybe why I’m so biased) they take EVERYTHING and leave nothing. It would be different if they bought a case of something online and then sold them, but when I go to a store I’ve just checked the week before and see three of the same figures from a new wave left lonely on the pegs, knowing that there had to have two assortments put out and all the good ones were taken and that because of these pegwarmers there won’t be another restock it annoys me greatly, I hope you can understand that.

Nothing personal to the original author, but I’m very disappointed in this article.

I have no issue here. I’m just saying I’m not surprised people are peeved because scalpers unnecessarily make something they want harder to find and more expensive.

My hobby isn’t just collecting it’s the hunt also, the satisfaction I get for getting a figure after a long search for normal retail just gives me the drive to keep going. I’ve been in situations, where the scalpers beat me to it. Also I’ve been in situations, where I see the figure, just one left on the peg and some lucky kid snatches it up before me and takes to his mom. It sucks, but it doesn’t deter me. I’ll keep hunting.

As far as the scalpers they’re just doing business. Taking advantage of situation that will benefit them. Sounds smart to me. I understand the frustration of having to pay them more for something they paid for but come guys. This is how the world works and it ain’t changing. So lets just move on.

Providing a service requires the effectuating of a purpose to satisfy a need. Scalpers, again, different than resellers, do not fulfill a need. If they did not exist, the figures would still be picked up by those that want them. They interrupt the flow of services.

It’s a simple concept, but I can see you’re more interested in posting somewhat insulting responses to everyone remotely anti-scalper.

SCALPASAURUS REX has spoken.