The Energon Pub

I've been collecting for about 7 years now, I have nearly every g1 toy, and quite a few of the other series. I love transformers. I am enjoying the generations line but the limited supply is making me crazy. It's making me so sad and annoyed that these amazon people and others are just buying up entire stocks online of the newest lines and basically holding them hostage. Elita One and Hun Gurr were on HTS for just a few hours and poof they are gone, but if I check amazon they have tons all with a huge markup. The same thing happened with Slugslinger. I know scalping will never go away, I just needed a place to vent my frustration. It's seriously making me want to just give up on this hobby. How do you all deal with these greedy "people"?

I just wait a bit. There hasn't been anything in the past few years that's not gone on sale or has been widely available online at some point.

Counterpunch wrote:I just wait a bit. There hasn't been anything in the past few years that's not gone on sale or has been widely available online at some point.

2nded. I fight my urge to "must have it right now!!!" and usually I save myself the money. Scalpers mainly cash in on people's impulsive reactions to a new figure or line. The way to circumvent them is to not give in to the impulse.

I'm multi-fandom when it comes to toy collecting in so far as what my budget allows for me to be I should say. For instance my priority is Jurassic Park/World, followed by my Star Wars collecting (though Imperials/favorite characters), and Transformers collecting with my Megatron focus and "neat" Decepticons or others I like or stand out to me from the media published.

I see scalpers in every single facet of my fandoms and honestly? It royally ticks me off. There's a fine line between selling something for 20-30% markup and selling something for 100-200% markup and taking advantage of people that don't know what the value of it would be. What sucks even further is that people eventually do follow suit with asking that much as well and it makes it harder for those like me that are limited due to a small budget for their hobby to get what they want. I try to starve them out, I don't go for it unless I absolutely have no choice in the matter. Sometimes even then? I don't go for it. Take the Star Wars 30th Anniversary Darth Revan figure that came out years ago (2007). It is insanely difficult to even find one under 60 dollars little alone any under 50. People are rabid with it and the markup for in the package is 200 and loose it is between 70 to 100 dollars itself. That kills the hobby for me as well because of how totally unreasonable it is and makes me just feel people don't understand the hobby is meant to be fun. What's worse in this case? That has been the asking price from independent sellers SINCE it was released way back in 2007 when the retail was about 7 bucks. It got pushed up because of scalpers/flippers and that's awful.

Scalpers aren't an issue for me.

It's no secret I've had trouble finding POTP around me, in fact, it's a problem country wide. Now that they're starting to filter out to other retailers like K-Mart I should be getting excited.

Nope. Because K-Mart have jacked the prices up to the point I seriously have to question whether I can afford to keep collecting.

Currently, "NO" is winning.

Counterpunch wrote:I just wait a bit. There hasn't been anything in the past few years that's not gone on sale or has been widely available online at some point.

Titans Return Deluxe waves 4 and 5 disagree with that statement. I've never seen those two waves on sale and definitely never seen them widely available online for anything less than $20 marked up and in short supply. I sure would like to know who's warehouse they're clogging because it isn't Hasbro's/HTS's or TRU's since neither of those stores ever got them.

Emerje

Emerje wrote:

Counterpunch wrote:I just wait a bit. There hasn't been anything in the past few years that's not gone on sale or has been widely available online at some point.

Titans Return Deluxe waves 4 and 5 disagree with that statement. I've never seen those two waves on sale and definitely never seen them widely available online for anything less than $20 marked up and in short supply. I sure would like to know who's warehouse they're clogging because it isn't Hasbro's/HTS's or TRU's since neither of those stores ever got them.

Emerje

Slugslinger was readily available on Amazon and Hasbrotoyshop: https://www.seibertron.com/transformers/news/hasbro-toy-shop-restocked-with-new-and-old-titans-return-figures/40422/

Wave 4 is a fair exception, but that seems to be more of a distribution hiccup than anything. New stories show them in bountiful supply in Hong Kong and Canada. I found them personally on shelves in Target here in the US (on more than one occasion). Until recently, they weren't commanding a premium either.

I won't point out that all three figures have superior LG versions out or coming; all of which end up being only marginally over online retail.

Sparkimus Prime wrote:I've been collecting for about 7 years now, I have nearly every g1 toy, and quite a few of the other series. I love transformers. I am enjoying the generations line but the limited supply is making me crazy. It's making me so sad and annoyed that these amazon people and others are just buying up entire stocks online of the newest lines and basically holding them hostage. Elita One and Hun Gurr were on HTS for just a few hours and poof they are gone, but if I check amazon they have tons all with a huge markup. The same thing happened with Slugslinger. I know scalping will never go away, I just needed a place to vent my frustration. It's seriously making me want to just give up on this hobby. How do you all deal with these greedy "people"?

Hey Spark, if you are in the US try TFsource.com, I am really happy with them. Fair, not over inflated prices, close to retail.

Even after shipping, same price as retail.
"Transformers Power of the Primes - Deluxe Wave 2 - Set of 5
$89.99"

Elita is not much over retail.

Also BBTS.com is excellent.

Good luck

Counterpunch wrote:

Emerje wrote:

Counterpunch wrote:I just wait a bit. There hasn't been anything in the past few years that's not gone on sale or has been widely available online at some point.

Titans Return Deluxe waves 4 and 5 disagree with that statement. I've never seen those two waves on sale and definitely never seen them widely available online for anything less than $20 marked up and in short supply. I sure would like to know who's warehouse they're clogging because it isn't Hasbro's/HTS's or TRU's since neither of those stores ever got them.

Emerje

Slugslinger was readily available on Amazon and Hasbrotoyshop: https://www.seibertron.com/transformers/news/hasbro-toy-shop-restocked-with-new-and-old-titans-return-figures/40422/

He's wave 6, I saw him a bunch of times at Walmart which is ironic since the whole point of him being the sole new figure in the wave was because of likely limited distribution.

Wave 4 is a fair exception, but that seems to be more of a distribution hiccup than anything. New stories show them in bountiful supply in Hong Kong and Canada. I found them personally on shelves in Target here in the US (on more than one occasion). Until recently, they weren't commanding a premium either.

Wave 4 on the aftermarket benefited from 3/5 of the wave being released in other waves and revisions, but Perceptor and Topspin were hard to find for under $20 at a time when normal retail was between $15 and $16. I consider that a premium. I think most of us just assumed they'd show up and be plentiful at B&M stores considering the saturation of previous waves (the Walmarts and Target around me stocked nothing but wave 3 from November 2016 to October 2017). Some people were lucky and found these waves at regular retail, but the vast majority of us did not and by the time we realized they weren't coming the online prices had sky rocketed.

I won't point out that all three figures have superior LG versions out or coming; all of which end up being only marginally over online retail.

Which is the rout I've taken since if I'm going to pay a premium I'm going to get a premium figure.

Emerje

Toy scalpers deserve to have their fingers run over with shopping carts and have their bank cards blowtorched in front of them, and that's just for starters. They piss me off so much. I've seen a few blatant cases on eBay where I had to fight the urge to message the seller and tell them to go f*ck themselves. I remember back when I was collecting Hasbro Revenge of the Sith toys, having to get Anakin and R2 from a collectibles meet (Anakin at like 3x retail price) because scalpers routinely scoured the retail shelves clear of most of the main characters. I was in middle school at the time.
And that's one of the reasons toy scalpers piss me off so much. They're an extreme pain in the ass for adult collectors, which is bad enough on its own. But they reeeeeallly screw things up for the children the toys are mainly aimed at. Can't find that thing you painstakingly saved your allowance for, worked your little butt off gathering the household recycling for for weeks, or asked and prayed for as a Christmas or birthday present? Sorry kid, some soulless heartless jerkface bought every one to sell off at double or triple (or even more times) the original price!

Also, regarding this "just wait" strategy, how long do you think the wait will be for Combiner Wars stuff to go down in price?

This topic is a toughy to me. I know there are scalpers out there, you can find evidence of it online. Yes, it's such a terrible thing to do in most/all ways, but if so many are doing it, it means it works. For whatever reason, be it ill-informed shoppers, desperate shoppers, or people with cash to burn. I personally don't tend to buy from these people, unless I'm seeing that it is a decently standard price across the board, and then I really scour the web looking for the fairest price within or lower than a 10-15 dollar range of that.
Mostly I try to find my toys online from retailer sites, yes, they mark up prices a bit too at times, but hey, profit is king.
The other side of that coin isn't some random scalper coming in and clearing a shelf into their cart, but the lack of decent wave assortments and possibly poor inventory management. As has been stated on this site, and the podcast, sometimes when a new wave comes in, we collectors flock and tear it apart. The store gets excited at the quick sales and orders another set of said wave, once agian, collectors who missed the first time swoop down. YAY! more sales! They get over-eager and order too much of that wave and then slow down on the rest because, well, hey...now they aren't selling. Now we don't get the same availability with the next few waves because said retailer thinks that (according to sales and inventory) these items are no longer selling.
Thankfully, I don't see this too often until roughly wave 3 around me, then we start getting shelf warmers in most the shops I frequent.
I really am not disagreeing that scalping happens, and when it does, it bites hard. And yes, when they do scalp things off, it's generally the shortpacked item. But as most of you have said, shopping smart as best as possible, patience when necessary, and sometimes luck, will win the day over the scalper or several.

Let me ask this. When is it really scalping though? Maybe this would be a good op-ed article, because it's definitely subject to some interpretation.

The initial example was Hun-Grrr and Elita-1. Right now I see Elita-1 available through a Prime Retailer on Amazon for 36.99.

Let's assume this particular vendor bought at the typical price of 24.99.

Now, this is a FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) Prime Seller, basically anything that says "Sold by <COMPANY> and Fulfilled by Amazon". This means they buy the product, ship it to Amazon's warehouse, then it get's in Amazon's system and on the website, then it can be sold and Amazon handles the Fulfillment.

Here is where it gets tricky. This is not a free service, you have to pay for Shipment to Amazon, Storage at Amazon (monthly at a minimum), and Fulfillment.

So let's do some cost breakdown:

Let's say they bought the toy for 24.99 + tax to start:
Price: @24.99
Tax (avg in the US is 8.45%, so let's say 8%): $2

Shipping (to AMZN): ? (they offer discounted rates, but I am not privy since I am not a vendor). Let's call it $2 (I bet it is more than that, but most ship in bulk).
Storage (@ $0.64 per month): $0.11
Fulfillment Cost (let's assume it's between 1-2 lbs): $4.71

So the total for them to sell on Amazon is: $33.81

So really we are nitpicking over $3.18 of profit from this vendor if they were going the "scalper" route (buying from a retailer then reselling on Amazon.


Ebay works a little different. Basically they charge about 8.24% for "Top Rated Plus" sellers, and 9.2% for non-Top Rated Sellers.

So, there is an Elita-1 on ebay for 35.95. Not a top rated seller.

Figure + tax: $26.99
Shipping (from Ebay's calculator): $10.80
Ebay's Fee: $3.29

Total for them to sell on Ebay: $41.08

So I don't think this vendors are scalpers. I think they are getting boxes from distributors and selling them. And, unfortunately, don't have the size of large vendors to mitigate all the costs. So I am guessing they are probably bringing in $5-$10 profit per sale for a voyager figure priced around $36. Not scalper money to me (maybe decent money, but not scalper), but maybe I am missing something.

Someone care to offer a counter point here? Before you think I am defending these prices, I will say, I personally would not pay the price they are suggesting for the figure. So far I have paid $25-26 plus tax for voyagers at max.

mordhelm wrote:Let me ask this. When is it really scalping though? Maybe this would be a good op-ed article, because it's definitely subject to some interpretation.

The initial example was Hun-Grrr and Elita-1. Right now I see Elita-1 available through a Prime Retailer on Amazon for 36.99.

Let's assume this particular vendor bought at the typical price of 24.99.

Now, this is a FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) Prime Seller, basically anything that says "Sold by <COMPANY> and Fulfilled by Amazon". This means they buy the product, ship it to Amazon's warehouse, then it get's in Amazon's system and on the website, then it can be sold and Amazon handles the Fulfillment.

Here is where it gets tricky. This is not a free service, you have to pay for Shipment to Amazon, Storage at Amazon (monthly at a minimum), and Fulfillment.

So let's do some cost breakdown:

Let's say they bought the toy for 24.99 + tax to start:
Price: @24.99
Tax (avg in the US is 8.45%, so let's say 8%): $2

Shipping (to AMZN): ? (they offer discounted rates, but I am not privy since I am not a vendor). Let's call it $2 (I bet it is more than that, but most ship in bulk).
Storage (@ $0.64 per month): $0.11
Fulfillment Cost (let's assume it's between 1-2 lbs): $4.71

So the total for them to sell on Amazon is: $33.81

So really we are nitpicking over $3.18 of profit from this vendor if they were going the "scalper" route (buying from a retailer then reselling on Amazon.


Ebay works a little different. Basically they charge about 8.24% for "Top Rated Plus" sellers, and 9.2% for non-Top Rated Sellers.

So, there is an Elita-1 on ebay for 35.95. Not a top rated seller.

Figure + tax: $26.99
Shipping (from Ebay's calculator): $10.80
Ebay's Fee: $3.29

Total for them to sell on Ebay: $41.08

So I don't think this vendors are scalpers. I think they are getting boxes from distributors and selling them. And, unfortunately, don't have the size of large vendors to mitigate all the costs. So I am guessing they are probably bringing in $5-$10 profit per sale for a voyager figure priced around $36. Not scalper money to me (maybe decent money, but not scalper), but maybe I am missing something.

Someone care to offer a counter point here? Before you think I am defending these prices, I will say, I personally would not pay the price they are suggesting for the figure. So far I have paid $25-26 plus tax for voyagers at max.

I think you might be missing my main complaint about this practice. The point is these people are going into brick and mortar stores and buying what's there just to relist online to make a profit. They could just as easily leave them in the store for people like me to purchase them. The worst offender in this regard are the ones that buy directly from amazon and relist it on amazon with the markup. They are literally doing nothing but creating an artificial demand for the product.

I'll go back to my earlier example of Slugslinger. He was shipped and sold by amazon, I had him in my cart and before I could complete payment he was sold out. Magically he appeared on timmy's toy box as available with a hefty markup. These are the people that make me want to stop collecting. They have no interest in the actual toy, they just want to make money.

I'm not saying that buying a few of some toy to relist on ebay is bad, as long as you leave a few in the store. It's the bulk buyers that drive me crazy and they know exactly what they are doing.

It reminds me of a couple years ago, when I was interested in buying a NES Classic Mini. RRP £49, reasonable. Now only available via Scalpers, the price ranges between anywhere from £150 to £300. Utter scum

Counterpunch wrote:
Wave 4 is a fair exception, but that seems to be more of a distribution hiccup than anything. New stories show them in bountiful supply in Hong Kong and Canada. I found them personally on shelves in Target here in the US (on more than one occasion). Until recently, they weren't commanding a premium either.

I won't point out that all three figures have superior LG versions out or coming; all of which end up being only marginally over online retail.

You meant Wave 5 right? The one with Twintwist and Windblade? It does have better Legends version (while Wave 4 was not plentiful elsewhere and its LG versions werent all superior, like Perceptor which was basically the same)

Also, several other toys never made it to US big box stores like:

TLK Cogman
RID Legion HeatSeeker and Cyclonus
TLK Legion Dragonstorm (or was it Hound? I know one of them didnt see distribution)
RID Weaponiser Minicons

Sparkimus Prime wrote:I think you might be missing my main complaint about this practice. The point is these people are going into brick and mortar stores and buying what's there just to relist online to make a profit. They could just as easily leave them in the store for people like me to purchase them. The worst offender in this regard are the ones that buy directly from amazon and relist it on amazon with the markup. They are literally doing nothing but creating an artificial demand for the product.

I'll go back to my earlier example of Slugslinger. He was shipped and sold by amazon, I had him in my cart and before I could complete payment he was sold out. Magically he appeared on timmy's toy box as available with a hefty markup. These are the people that make me want to stop collecting. They have no interest in the actual toy, they just want to make money.

I'm not saying that buying a few of some toy to relist on ebay is bad, as long as you leave a few in the store. It's the bulk buyers that drive me crazy and they know exactly what they are doing.

If you believe that Timmy's Toy Box bought from Amazon direct your unfortunately do not understand how Fba Business works.

Before I go any further, let me say I do not condone the excessively high pricing practice, be it scalping or otherwise. I am just trying to educate.

Fba businesses have rules that prevent them from buying from amazon then relisting.

1. No Prime account can purchase an item with the intent to sell as an Fba item. Strictly Verboten by Amazon

2. Anything bought via Prime must be shipped to a physical address. You cannot tell them to restock it under my warehouse info.

So to do what you are suggesting a business would have to (mind you this is bending the rules severely if not breakingn but amazon does not crack down on this from what I know):

1. Have a totally separate non prime account to buy from amazon.

2. Using said 2nd account, have price alerts set up and buy a toy (possibly in large quantities) the second it gets at or below msrp threshold.

3. Wait a few days for delivery.

4. Send it back to amazon at your cost using your primary account.

5. Once its back in the warehouse, you are all set to sell.

Do people do this? Yes. Is this what happened when the item you wanted sold out and Timmy's listed for substantially more? Nope, sorry cannot happen. Just an unhappy coincidence.

Scalpers have been around forever and they aren't going anywhere. It's best to get used to it, or work around them. The only reason to ever buy from a scalper is because you want it NAOW. Patience wins out every time for me, and it's not often I actually complain about the cost of things.

Only recently have I done so with the TF Vinyl OST, sold for 30 bucks a pop and now being scalped for almost 10 times more. But you know what I'll do? Watch and wait

shajaki wrote:Scalpers have been around forever and they aren't going anywhere. It's best to get used to it, or work around them. The only reason to ever buy from a scalper is because you want it NAOW. Patience wins out every time for me, and it's not often I actually complain about the cost of things.

Only recently have I done so with the TF Vinyl OST, sold for 30 bucks a pop and now being scalped for almost 10 times more. But you know what I'll do? Watch and wait

I totally agree with the notion that the reason scalpers exist is because we (fans) let them.

If nobody bought from them, and everyone waited, they wouldnt exist. But alas you can easily find fans within this community who dont want to wait, this is from the Studio Series thread on TFW:

Scalping isn't the same as gauging. While there's certainly scalpers going into stores and selling what they find on Amazon, many Amazon sellers, usually the ones that are priced closest to Amazon's price, have legit Hasbro accounts and buy and sell in bulk. They may be selling much higher than MSRP, but they aren't scalpers.

william-james88 wrote:Also, several other toys never made it to US big box stores like:

RID Legion HeatSeeker and Twinferno

You mean Heatseeker and Cyclonus (wave 12). Twinferno (wave 13) was available at US Retail. Just another case of the last wave being the easy one to find and the next to last being elusive.

Emerje

Emerje wrote:Scalping isn't the same as gauging. While there's certainly scalpers going into stores and selling what they find on Amazon, many Amazon sellers, usually the ones that are priced closest to Amazon's price, have legit Hasbro accounts and buy and sell in bulk. They may be selling much higher than MSRP, but they aren't scalpers.

william-james88 wrote:Also, several other toys never made it to US big box stores like:

RID Legion HeatSeeker and Twinferno

You mean Heatseeker and Cyclonus (wave 12). Twinferno (wave 13) was available at US Retail. Just another case of the last wave being the easy one to find and the next to last being elusive.

Emerje

Yes, thats what I meant, I will go edit my post.

Sparkimus Prime wrote:I think you might be missing my main complaint about this practice. The point is these people are going into brick and mortar stores and buying what's there just to relist online to make a profit. They could just as easily leave them in the store for people like me to purchase them. The worst offender in this regard are the ones that buy directly from amazon and relist it on amazon with the markup. They are literally doing nothing but creating an artificial demand for the product.

I'll go back to my earlier example of Slugslinger. He was shipped and sold by amazon, I had him in my cart and before I could complete payment he was sold out. Magically he appeared on timmy's toy box as available with a hefty markup. These are the people that make me want to stop collecting. They have no interest in the actual toy, they just want to make money.

I'm not saying that buying a few of some toy to relist on ebay is bad, as long as you leave a few in the store. It's the bulk buyers that drive me crazy and they know exactly what they are doing.

I had this exact thing happen to me with TLK Wave 3 Bumblebee. Sold out as I was attempting to purchase it. This was months ago and the figure still hasn't returned back to retail price. It's always going for $35-$40.

Burn wrote:Scalpers aren't an issue for me.

It's no secret I've had trouble finding POTP around me, in fact, it's a problem country wide. Now that they're starting to filter out to other retailers like K-Mart I should be getting excited.

Nope. Because K-Mart have jacked the prices up to the point I seriously have to question whether I can afford to keep collecting.

Currently, "NO" is winning.

I always find it funny when Americans complain about the pricing they pay for TFs. Come to Canada, or Australia, or the UK, then you have the right to complain about prices.

Galactic Prime wrote:

Burn wrote:Scalpers aren't an issue for me.

It's no secret I've had trouble finding POTP around me, in fact, it's a problem country wide. Now that they're starting to filter out to other retailers like K-Mart I should be getting excited.

Nope. Because K-Mart have jacked the prices up to the point I seriously have to question whether I can afford to keep collecting.

Currently, "NO" is winning.

I always find it funny when Americans complain about the pricing they pay for TFs. Come to Canada, or Australia, or the UK, then you have the right to complain about prices.

I hope you realize that Burn is in Australia.

mordhelm wrote:

Galactic Prime wrote:

Burn wrote:Scalpers aren't an issue for me.

It's no secret I've had trouble finding POTP around me, in fact, it's a problem country wide. Now that they're starting to filter out to other retailers like K-Mart I should be getting excited.

Nope. Because K-Mart have jacked the prices up to the point I seriously have to question whether I can afford to keep collecting.

Currently, "NO" is winning.

I always find it funny when Americans complain about the pricing they pay for TFs. Come to Canada, or Australia, or the UK, then you have the right to complain about prices.

I hope you realize that Burn is in Australia.

He does now.

mordhelm wrote:

Galactic Prime wrote:

Burn wrote:Scalpers aren't an issue for me.

It's no secret I've had trouble finding POTP around me, in fact, it's a problem country wide. Now that they're starting to filter out to other retailers like K-Mart I should be getting excited.

Nope. Because K-Mart have jacked the prices up to the point I seriously have to question whether I can afford to keep collecting.

Currently, "NO" is winning.

I always find it funny when Americans complain about the pricing they pay for TFs. Come to Canada, or Australia, or the UK, then you have the right to complain about prices.

I hope you realize that Burn is in Australia.

I took it as him agreeing with Burn and adding to it. I agree as well. While the US does skip over some toys it is still the best place in the world for collectors in terms of all the channels available for product and cheaper prices.

Anyways, scalpers are never the problem. Their customers are.