Scalpers – the bane of collectors everywhere.
Nasty little parasites who eagerly buy up all the figures they can and then flog them for twice the price. Evil pricks without an empathy or remorse.
No, I don’t like scalpers – no sir!
Now I want to make a distinction here. I don’t consider scalpers people who sell rare old toys for a lot of money. Yes sometimes the prices they ask are ludicrous, but there is no rule saying you have to buy what they are selling. You need food. You need water. You need sleep and shelter. You don’t need action figures.
So if someone has an old toy from the 80’s that they are selling for 10 times what it originally cost, I don’t consider that scalping. The toy is not available anywhere else, it’s been maintained for 30 years, chances are there is someone out there that is willing to pay the larger amount and be happy with getting a long sought figure. That’s fine, no problem
No, what I consider a scalper is some unscrupulous sod that goes from store to store (and even online) when a new figure is released, buys every single one, then is selling them on eBay half an hour later for twice the price or more. In those cases you are a scalper sod. A prick of the highest level! Because you are stealing the opportunity for others to buy the item fair and square and then making them come to you to buy it at an inflated cost.
As a Transformer Collector, I have seen 3 major incidents of scalping over the last 6 years:
- 2013 – Hasbro Masterpiece Soundwave
Everyone was so excited for this figure! An MP Soundwave with 5 cassette warriors included! Personally I got on the American Toys’R’Us website the moment it was listed and refreshed the page for an hour until I finally got one in my basket. Only then to be thwarted at the checkout with ‘This item does NOT ship internationally’. Would have been nice for them to have that on the product listing. No wonder the company went out of business.
Half an hour later the item was completely sold out. And surprise surprise, within the hour those Soundwave’s were being listed on eBay for twice the price. Usually with the disclaimer ‘shipping will be delayed two weeks’ because these pricks didn’t even have the figure themselves yet!
The same thing happened in the US when Soundwave hit the physical TRU stores. People were walking in the moment the doors opened, taking every single MP Soundwave off the shelves and then going through the checkout. So if you came in at 10am – too bad! You want that toy now? You have to go online and pay the bastard that came in at 9 twice the price!
- 2015 – Combiner Wars Devastator
Rather famously here in Aus, there were several people (and I use the term loosely) in particular that went from store to store in Capital Cities and bought every single one! Once again, those figures were then listed online for twice the price within a day. The outrage on the Aussie TF chat forums was palpable. But to show the lack of ethics and empathy inherent within your average scalper, one seller even went online showing a photo of himself with a stack of Devastator’s and thanked the irate members of the Ozformers site for all the free publicity.
- 2018 – Heavily Discounted TLK Figures.
This has just happened within the last week here in Australia. Big W had a sale where a large range of figures from The Last Knight were being sold in stores at incredible discounts. Most notably Voyager class figures were going for $5! So many TF fans were rushing to stores to pick up figures they had previously been unable to afford, only to find the shelves empty. Why? Because the F’ing scalpers had bought them all and stuck them on eBay – that’s why!
So why do scalpers annoy me in particular?
This last incident, despite affecting my collecting the least, has annoyed me the most. I was lucky enough that a friend in the US was able to find a lone MP Soundwave sitting in a TRU for me, and likewise my mother-in-law was able to find a CW Devastator in Bathurst by asking the staff who luckily still had two sitting in their storeroom, the shelves themselves now bare. I missed out on the TLK figures last week but, for myself, I don’t really mind. I would have liked to pick some up at that price but it’s not like they were figures I felt I had to have.
No, what annoyed me about this last incident is it was robbing struggling families of the opportunity to buy a big toy at a cheap price at Xmas time. There are a lot of families doing it tough and can barely afford to eat, let alone get their kids a decent present. Especially out here in rural NSW where we are still in the midst of a shocking drought.
Transformers aren’t the cheapest of toys, and there are lots of little boys and girls who will never own one because their parents can’t afford it. Some of these kids wonder, when they have been good all year, why Santa won’t even bring them a little robot, whilst the kid up the road who habitually beats them up gets a PS4 under their tree. For those kids and their parents, the opportunity to buy a $50 Optimus Prime for only $5 would have been a godsend at Xmas! But nope, the scalpers had to go and buy them all up first and now eBay is awash with them. Bastards!
So scalpers out there, I say this to you: You are scum. You are filth. You have no kindness or empathy in your hearts. I may not believe in God but I do believe in karma and I hope you never sell a single figure. I hope that under your Xmas tree this year you find naught for yourself as you don’t deserve a gift. And I hope most of all that maybe you meet one of these struggling families one day and you have to stare into the face of those whose opportunity to give their kid a happy Christmas you stole. Maybe that might make you finally have some self-reflection. Because right now you are not a part of humanity, you are simply a leech that feeds of it.
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