This is a hobby that everyone should enjoy but thanks to these jerks we can’t. Regardless, I still love the hobby and will always love collecting.

damn.

Thanks for making me feel old, ‘Fly!

I also feel the charitability of people on this board has waned over the years and they have become more cold and lost their sense of community.

Collecting is difficult and we all know how bad it feels like to strike out on our hunts. These hunts are often exhausting, depressing and sometimes soul crushing (and of course exhilarating when you do find stuff and a strong possible motivator to paying ridiculous sums on ebay), but to rub it in people’s faces is really cruel, rude and low class.

Especially the ones who will comment after someone has posted how extremely bummed they are that they did not find what they wanted and they are like i saw x amount of these everywhere and i had no issue and basically mock you for not finding it. That is cruel and in my book makes you a super d bag. If it is that easy for you and God has chosen you to be the lucky benefactor of the toy hunt and you have seen so many, how about doing a kind thing by offering it up to those you mocked? It will go a long way for your Karma or just doing a nice thing by putting positive energy out in the world. If you wish to not do it for others then do it for yourself as it feels great. Way better then mocking someone or scalping your bounty.

So if you are going to SDCC, offer to help or if you see stuff you know people are looking for pic it up and offer it to your fellow AFIer and tell them to pay it forward.

Before ebay, i never , ever had an issue finding anything. Some things took a little longer but i never did not find them.

Those soccer moms are the worst of the bunch of scalpers and even worse are all those who use their kids. The most obnoxious of the scalpers are those that like to tell everyone they open their toys and are collectors like everyone else but they are only in it for the money.

This one time at a kmart cars collector event, this scalper brought his entire family 25-30 people each staked out at 2 stores. Suffice to say he walked away with 90-95% of them and then offered to sell me a set at 4 times retail, all while telling everyone who attended how he was a collector and opened his toys and only bought 2 of everything, one to open and one to keep MOC. At another similar event a kid asked his dad why there were so many old men (50+) buying all the toys and was worried they would be nothing left for him.

In the end though, it really comes down to us collectors and what we are willing to pay. We are our own worst enemies, if we want change then we need to be more disciplined about how much we spend and bank roll these scalpers, stop complaining and take action and make our voices heard with the manufacturers. There is a lot they can do to make this easier but they care not to as this is the mechanism on which they profit. Hasbro has reps who place teaser cases in certain stores just to stir the pot and create a frenzy. We also should report any store employee(s) who scalp to their respective companies should we have proof. But honestly if a bunch of people complain about the same person, it is likely they will let them go. Overall big box stores do frown on this practice and some have weeded out some of them but as they get rid of one another two take there place. Some places the managers are in on it. Some of the stock people also call their buddies and say come get it. As i said earlier the deck is stacked against us and it is a miracle we ever find anything.

There are many stories but one of the more extreme cases: A hot wheels scalpter lost his cool when we told him we didn’t have anymore in the back. He told us that another guy gave him information that we had them and we were lying. So he’s trying to go into the back room, literally making his way into the storeroom and looking around to prove us wrong. That didn’t sit too well with management, and after a fair amount of yelling, cussing, and verbally attacking the employees he was trying to ‘buddy up’ with, security was called and he was thrown out for life. After I stopped working there, he would see me at places and run up to me and ask if I could work there again (or any retail place) to help him out. He’d lost all of his insiders apparently. Again, one of the more extreme cases, but its terrible to think of anyone just in it for the resell value.

Don’t get me started on the out of shape, middle aged mothers run down the isle for Tickle Me Elmo. That toy brought out the worst in all humankind.

As long as demand exceeds supply, we’ll always have people looking to make a profit from collectors and fans willing to happily pay for that service.

Welcome to the 21st century age of collecting where the honest collector has a very slim chance of landing anything when the deck is so stacked against him. With managers, store employees and scalpers all in on it, it is a miracle that any of us finding anything at all, unless we lower ourselves to their level.