GuyIncognito wrote:
That's "cutting off your nose to spite your face". It's not like your stand against scalping is going to stop the practice. Someone else will buy it if you don't. So you're only hurting yourself by denying yourself a figure you want based on some fuzzy principle.
I say it's a fuzzy principle because the line between scalping and legitimate retail/resale is fuzzy. Either way, someone is buying products at one price, selling them at a higher price, and pocketing the difference. In a way, TRU is just a huge scalping organization, especially when it comes to exclusives - they corner the market and sell at exorbitant prices.
Guy, the whole first paragraph in your post just says that you're part of the problem and not part of the solution. These are toys that I want to have not HAVE to have. I can't take them with me when I die. They are an optional luxary in life not a mandatory necessity. If my display shelf is smaller than yours because I am tighter with my money and I buy based upon principles, I'm totally fine with that.
What may be a fuzzy principle to you is rock solid to me. I don't like the act of scalping. It ruins the hobby. It certainly steals some of my enjoyment when I go to a store multiple times and never see a hot figure once yet they are all over ebay at 1.5-2 times the price. I chose to combat this by not buying scalped figures because I refuse to play a part in the scalping process.
Like it or not, when you buy a scalped figure, you have contributed to the scalping cause. You have made it profittable for a scalper to scalp and enabled him/her to continue to scalp. I can say that not one scalper has stayed in business due to my money. Can you?
This board is full of collector's who complain about scalping yet constantly contribute to the cause by buying their scalped figures. If you buy a scalped figure, you should lose your right to complain about scalping, since all you did was enable the scalper to continue his business and set every other collector back in the wallet.
If I'm the only one who takes this stand, I'm fine with that. Somebody has to be the one. If we all took that stand, scalper's would go away. Once they start taking baths on the figures they are trying to hawk, they'll start to think twice about scalping more.
At the end of the day, maybe I'm just a different, more disciplined collector than you. I can say no. I'm fine with saving my money on principles. If my shelf isn't as full, I'm fine with that. My face doesn't feel spited at all.