TF Views

She might be past it, but you ain't.


As far as the question of scalpers picking up every copy goes, that is only practical if the toy is underproduced. It is not the scalper's fault that you have a hard time finding a toy. It is Hasbro's and/or the retailers' fault.

Yeah, the scalper makes money from this. Maybe it is beer money. Maybe it is how they pay their damned bills. Either way, they keep toys available for collectors and hobbyists.

If a kid buys that toy, it is gone. It is out of the pool completely. At least scalpers keep the toys available for collectors. Yeah, I would much rather that everybody be able to get TF figures easily. (My biggest complaint about "Generations" Thundercracker is that it is still rare because Hasbro fucked up yet again.)

I would not take a toy out of a kid's hand. I have even conceded to kids (or grandparents) on a few occassions. But, I also make a point of accounting for rare figures that friends and I want when I hit the toy aisle, just in case.


My toy and comic collection is mine. I do not have a huge amount of money to spend buying or replacing figures, so I try to keep it in good condition. There is not point in my staying in the hobby if I cannot enjoy it.


Dom
-has also made a point of not hoarding rare figures, despite wanting to customize some of them.

Dominic wrote:As far as the question of scalpers picking up every copy goes, that is only practical if the toy is underproduced. It is not the scalper's fault that you have a hard time finding a toy. It is Hasbro's and/or the retailers' fault.

Practicality is irrelevant. Case in point: MP Starscream. That figure was not underproduced. And yet, the only reason I wasn't able to get one at retail was because some scalper was deliberately going around to all the area Wal Marts, helping employees open the cases and buying them on the spot. This was confirmed by the WM employee. The only reason I actually got one at cost was because someone on ebay managed to find one in the outlying suburbs and was nice enough to sell it at cost. My failure to find one at retail was directly the fault of the scalper, not Hasbro.

Dominic wrote:Yeah, the scalper makes money from this. Maybe it is beer money. Maybe it is how they pay their damned bills. Either way, they keep toys available for collectors and hobbyists.

They do so at the considerable expense of collectors and hobbyists. Said collectors and hobbyists are not able to find the toys they want at retail because scalpers buy them all. Then said scalpers sell them to the aforementioned collectors and hobbyists at an artificially inflated cost. So in reality, they're not really making it any more or less available to collectors or hobbyists, they're just making the hobby cost more and profiting from it. I object to this because I have directly been screwed by this way too often and do not have disposable income to be giving away free money to overly greedy fans.

Now, if scalpers didn't exist and I wound up losing out on toys because kids were buying them, I really actually would be ok with that. Because the kid isn't trying to just make a quick buck off of his toy. They only want the one to play with and enjoy the same as any of us would and that means that everyone has equal chance at knabbing said toy. If the kid gets to it first, he gets it fair and square. If the scalper gets there first and clears out 10 copies of a figure at 6 stores in a metropolitan area, that's not giving everyone a fair shot at it. I want my fair shot.

Shockwave
-Fuck. Scalpers.

What Shockwave said. I mean, c'mon Dom, the entire point of Scalpers is that they make toys unavailable at retail so fans have to pay their inflated prices for them.

Imagine it this way: At the Target down the street is a healthy TF aisle, with hoards of DOTM toys and a strip of Generations with a few waves' worth of merchandise on there. By some divine miracle, there're a couple of Generations Thundercrackers on the shelf. Normally, the scalper who comes to the store every day and buys every fan-desirable toy on the shelf is gonna have both those Thundercrackers gone a few minutes after the place opens up. But imagine if there were no scalpers: Yes, kids would still be able to buy the toys, but a kid who walks into the Target isn't going to do so at nine in the morning, and he sure as hell isn't going to snag two Thundercrackers and walk out of there to sell them back to you for forty dollars a pop (well, he might if he's the incredibly resourceful type). He might buy *a* Thundercracker, but he might just as easily buy a DOTM Thundercracker, or an Optimus Prime, or an Activator, or any of the bazillion Bumblebees Hasbro is constantly producing. My point is, with the scalper factor removed, I actually have a much *higher* chance of finding the toys I want at retail price. Scalpers *exist* to make that difficult for me to do. That is literally their job description: buy toys before the fans that want them and sell them back to them at inflated prices. I just...can't understand how you could possibly think that that's a 'service'.

Seriously, did any kid want Animated Arcee? She would've shelfwarmed like crazy and been a cinch for fans to find if it weren't for scalpers.

Fortunately, my new house seems to be out of range of the local scalper. The Toys R Us nearest to my house actually had several copies of Animated Hot Rod, Ironhide and Arcee when they came out and also found MP Grimlock there as well. More recently, they've been well stocked with Generations toys even (no Warpath yet, but I could reasonably see them having some in stock a while from now). Heck, I've even seen Wheeljack and Scourge there so I seem to have moved to the better area for getting toys at retail. Course, that doesn't help the fact that we still didn't get said releases until at least a month after the rest of the country, but hey.

Still no Warpath thought? (Yours is coming. Do not worry.)

Seriously, did any kid want Animated Arcee? She would've shelfwarmed like crazy and been a cinch for fans to find if it weren't for scalpers.

I found plenty of Arcees, and I live in an area where stuff typically sells through. (That "discount chicken" that some people play is not a viable option here. I rarely seen anything worth buying at any meaningful clearance.)

But, here is the thing. Aside from TrU Express stores, (that usually open in October or so), there are no TrU stores around here. Walmart is slightly more accessible to me. But, not by much.

Call them what you will, dealers?scalpers/aftermarket, but they make it easier for people who do not live near branches of certain chains to get exclusives from those chains.


Yes, paying a punched up price for a toy means that I have skip another toy. But, those kinds of decisions are (minor) part of life.


Dom
-what about wiping out a supply of figures for online friends? (More than one person on this forum has benefitted from me doing that.)

Dominic wrote:Call them what you will, dealers?scalpers/aftermarket, but they make it easier for people who do not live near branches of certain chains to get exclusives from those chains.

No Dom, the INTERNET does that. All scalpers do is make things more expensive than they should be.

Dominic wrote:Dom
-what about wiping out a supply of figures for online friends? (More than one person on this forum has benefitted from me doing that.)

That's not scalping, THAT'S a service. When I bought 4 copies of G2 Ramjet I did so knowing that I would be offering it to people at it's ORIGINAL PRICE (do ya see a theme developing here?) that wouldn't have the chance at it otherwise.

Shockwave
-How can you live in America and not be near a Wal Mart?

I know that they mark things up. But, in some cases, that is how they make their money and pay the bills.

And, it is hard for me to really complain about marking up discretionary items. Yeah, I like toys to be accessible. But, I also maintain the scalpers do, in a fashion, help with that.

If I drove, Wal*Mart would be more accessible. But, the nearest Wal*Marts would still be further away than other chains. Factor in the fact that hunts often involve trips to multiple stores, and gas prices would likely become even more of an issue than they would otherwise be. (In Wal*Mart's defense, for all of the bad things to be said for them, their supply lines are generally the most reliable.)


Dom
-gouging on food and shelter is worth getting angry about. Toy scalping is fairly benign.

I feel this entire topic is just getting.....stupid. Scalpers are horrible people, and we should burn them alive in the town square of Toytown as heretics.

I used to live practically right next to Dom, and there are Walmarts and Targets everywhere. There are a couple of TRU's, but they are about an hour away.

Dominic wrote:I know that they mark things up. But, in some cases, that is how they make their money and pay the bills.

Bullshit. At best, you could argue that someone who runs a toy store, like BBTS or Toy Fusion out here makes their money by scalping and to an extent you'd be correct, but (at least in the case of Toy Fusion, I know for a fact that they have other ways of acquiring inventory to sell for profit beyond scalping and that method is usually the primary bread and butter so to speak. I know of no one who has ever made a consistent living by running around to various toy stores to buy up their entire stock of wanted items for profit.

Dominic wrote:And, it is hard for me to really complain about marking up discretionary items.

Really? Because then you have to get less toys for your budget. So really, spending the same amount of money and only getting one toy when you should realistically be able to get three is not a service and in this economy is reprehensible at best. And actually, I would say it's reprehensible in any economy, even a healthy one.

Dominic wrote:Yeah, I like toys to be accessible. But, I also maintain the scalpers do, in a fashion, help with that.

This argument only works if said scalper doesn't clear out the entire inventory and leaves some for others to have the opportunity. If there's 6 Thundercrackers on a shelf and a scalper takes three, leaving three to be found by others, then yes, this argument works because they are presumably putting them online to sell to someone who is in a remote enough area to not have access to these toys in a store. But if said scalper takes all six and then sells them to people locally who should have been able to get them at the same store, that's not helping distribution at all and is simply stealing hard earned money from fans. You can maintain this position all you want Dom, it's a free country and you have the right to be wrong.

Dominic wrote:If I drove, Wal*Mart would be more accessible. But, the nearest Wal*Marts would still be further away than other chains. Factor in the fact that hunts often involve trips to multiple stores, and gas prices would likely become even more of an issue than they would otherwise be. (In Wal*Mart's defense, for all of the bad things to be said for them, their supply lines are generally the most reliable.)

I think most people hunt while they're out for other stuff. Like if I'm going to the bank and the grocery store and there's a Toys R Us across the street and Target around the corner, you're in the area anyway so why not? Then gas isn't really an expense exclusively associated with toy hunting.

Dominic wrote:Dom
-gouging on food and shelter is worth getting angry about. Toy scalping is fairly benign.

Ideologically you're right, but when the food and shelter are paid for and toys are the next priority unnecessarily inflated prices are a very frustrating hurdle.

Ursus mellifera wrote:I feel this entire topic is just getting.....stupid. Scalpers are horrible people, and we should burn them alive in the town square of Toytown as heretics.

I used to live practically right next to Dom, and there are Walmarts and Targets everywhere. There are a couple of TRU's, but they are about an hour away.

There probably wouldn't be a discussion if Dom hadn't thrown out the idea that scalpers are somehow providing some great and wonderful service to the poor remotely located collectors of the world.