When Collecting XD, don't be a SHMUCK!

Hollywoodkbl · Post by **Hollywoodkbl** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 5:53 pm

I was in Wal-Mart, approached the end cap with the XD,...new stuff... and this guy standing there saw me approaching and proceeded to dump all the figs in front of him, which were not hanging, into his cart. ALL OF THEM!!! My Walmart had the figures just laying on an endcap shelf, not on pegs! He then pushed the cart away to go through them! CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS HOLE!! His wife then told him they had to go, and he told her to basically shut up. The real stinker, the figures he didn't buy, he didn't put back...They were probably littered like bread crumbs throughout the store! I hope some of these STAR WARS HOLES aren't going to now wreck this hobby too! I quit Star Wars to get away from those types of people!

DocTodd · Post by **DocTodd** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 6:09 pm

That will really stink if there are a bunch of those hoarders that start doing that with XD. They kind of soured me on the Star Wars stuff too. I guess if these items continue to become more popular then maybe that will help 21st and they will continue making more-at least one would hope.

Post by **aferguson** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 6:14 pm

if he's getting them for himself so be it. If he thinks he's going to be able to make a killing selling them on ebay he's dreaming. At best he'd only make 2 or 3 bucks a figure and after ebay fees and paypal fees, profits would be pretty slim indeed.

These things will never sell like star wars figres or command high prices; there's just not the demand for them like there was with star wars figs. and loads of online retailers are selling them for only a couple dollars more than WM.

Let him buy them all up....WM will order more and that's good for everyone.

Website · Post by **Teamski** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 6:41 pm

aferguson wrote:if he's getting them for himself so be it. If he thinks he's going to be able to make a killing selling them on ebay he's dreaming. At best he'd only make 2 or 3 bucks a figure and after ebay fees and paypal fees, profits would be pretty slim indeed.

These things will never sell like star wars figres or command high prices; there's just not the demand for them like there was with star wars figs. and loads of online retailers are selling them for only a couple dollars more than WM.

Let him buy them all up....WM will order more and that's good for everyone.

mmmm, I dunno about that Andrew. I was doing a quick XD run on E-Bay and found the S1 infantry going for about $10 each, not too bad. The VN figs go for more, of course. These things age pretty well, IMHO......

Now for the dork with the cart, I would of belted the bastard. I hate people like that.......

-Ski

tmanthegreat · Post by **tmanthegreat** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 7:02 pm

Sorry that had to happen. Material desire often brings out the worst in us (there we go, I sound like some sort of philosopher...). I hate people like that too, though I haven't really encountered them first hand - only had to deal afterwards with what they took! Fortunantly, our toy soldiers don't command the attention that Star Wars figures might, so your sort of incident should hopefully be rare. Still, what a schmuck!

Post by **aferguson** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 7:04 pm

sure perhaps four or five years from now he can make a few extra dollars per figure, maybe. They may still be in production then though. Regardless that's a long time to sit on a bunch of figures in the hopes of making 3 or 4 dollars over what you paid for them.

The S1's and VN figures are unique because they are no longer available and in the case of the VN were made in limited numbers. That will change when the Platoon line comes out.

I think now that these figs are at WM there will be plenty to go around for everyone (except us poor canadians since WM STILL doesn't carry a lick of XD up here

).

immeww2 · Post by **immeww2** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 9:30 pm

I can't believe someone would do something like that!! Goes to show how childish some people are.

nomo4me · Post by **nomo4me** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 10:16 pm

immeww2 wrote:I can't believe someone would do something like that!! Goes to show how childish some people are.

Um, those collecting toys might expect to encounter childish behavior amongst their ranks from time to time.

Nomo

steelbonnet · Post by **steelbonnet** » Tue Apr 26, 2005 3:53 am

Only ever saw this behaviour with Star Wars figures.

One guy in particular went & cleared the Ep1 figs when they first came out at TRU`s (l`d got my fill with the midnight special,though was getting fodder figures the next day).
Thing is he & his daughter owned a collectible store & were selling them at a over priced mark up.

Shocking that collectors/dealers/scalpers truely don`t think of others sometimes

SB

WGP Klaus · Post by **WGP Klaus** » Tue Apr 26, 2005 4:57 am

immeww2 wrote:I can't believe someone would do something like that!! Goes to show how childish some people are.

Happens all the time, I've not only seen folks doing it with XD but mostly Comic book figures, GI Joe and 21st (1/6), Matchbox cars, etc. I've seen much more lately than in years past, and we can thank evilbay for that..lol
as everyone thinks they can turn a quick buck, and in most cases they actually do. Scalpers are the worst in my book. I've seen folks loading up carts are walmart with toys, and even popping cases that are sitting on pallets waiting to be stocked, in a frenzy, so I intentionally stare at them making it harder for them to do their job..lol they don't like being watched..lol I recall many years ago when I still collected Baseball cards and Topps released a high quality card that pretty much changed the industry (Stadium Club) and I was at Price Club (now Costco) and I saw the various owners of several Baseball card shops lined up to get their 5 box max. of this item, in which they returned to their respective shops and sold the packs for $5.00 ea and couldn't get enough. A friend who was asst. warehouse mgr at this store said these owners were paying employees that worked in receiving to buy cases for them (since the 5 box limit only applied to customers) and selling them out the backdoor as it were.

I must say that with scalpers has also come a new breed of trash, I kindly refer to as the "switcherooers". By that I mean someone who buys lets say a 12" GI Joe limited pieces (ie: Target exclusives and such) and takes the item home and swaps it out with some dollar store gi joe ripoff and returns it for a refund. I've seen this more and more recently. Sorry to come off as Mr Morality (as I'm really not..lol) but things like this dont set well with me, especially if I'm looking for something a scalper is hoarding to sell on evilbay..lol

<Off my soap box>

Website · Post by **Teamski** » Tue Apr 26, 2005 5:23 am

Who was it in CA that confronted several guys with a white truck clearing the S1 190s off the shelf at all of the regional WMs last year? Even on-line retailers can sometimes drop to scum level......

-Ski

Rogue · Post by **Rogue** » Tue Apr 26, 2005 6:06 am

That is why I quit collecting Hot Wheels, and that the First editions are now goofy pieces of crap.

Collecting is supposed to be fun!

Quixote511 · Post by **Quixote511** » Tue Apr 26, 2005 6:58 am

Collecting is supposed to be fun, especially toys. I think everyone here can agree, DON'T BE A TOOL! I sell 1:1 military on eBay now and then to help pay the bills. I get most of my patches and medals from estate auctions. Every now and then, there will be a kid at the auction who decided that he is now going to collect patches. I generally step back and let the kid at it. There are plenty of great patches that I have passed up because I follow the simple rule, DON'T BE A TOOL! You have to look out for the little guy every now and then. And that is what is great about this board, we tend to help each other out. So, to all the TOOLS out there, SCREW U!
Aaron

KAMIKAZE · Post by **KAMIKAZE** » Tue Apr 26, 2005 8:54 am

Keep your head Hollywood.Next time this happens tell the bozo that you just saw the new Avenger,Me262,and new Japanese infantry at another Wally World just down the road.Use his greed against him.It works EVERY
time with stupid people.This guy definately has no class.Teaching him a lesson would be fun!

Mark

Jesse James · Post by **Jesse James** » Tue Apr 26, 2005 9:48 am

Yeah, I'd like to say this isn't a "Star Wars guys are A-Holes" thing, so that's a slight bit skewed and offensive to guys who DO like Star Wars. It's a "Guys who sell toys on Ebay are A-Holes" thing. Often times they're guys I see buying up Hot Wheels as well, and Marvel Legends, and the htf LOTR figures/army builders, and of course the SW figures they think they'll make a buck on like exclusives and army builders.

They're buying up the XD stuff because they have seen some go for good prices on Ebay, and now they're trying to just make their extra McDonald's $$$ on Ebay with XD since other lines become less profitable. It's something people need to act on quickly and not with just one toy line. I've yet to meet a scalper who didn't delve into damn near every toy line he could get his fat fingers on. Everything from CObra Infantry 6-packs to the "rare" Die-Cast chase piece... These guys aren't specific to any hobby, they're just "A-holes".

Morian Miner · Post by **Morian Miner** » Tue Apr 26, 2005 10:38 am

Being an army builder, this brings up the tough question of how many of something do you buy. I don't mean this guy, who just sounded like a pud, or the die-hard eBayers like the Vagrant Collector we have in town here (long story)

But, the other day at Walmart in the early AM looking for halftracks and marines, I found 6 SW clone commanders and 4 SW clone pilots. Sweet! So, I threw them all in my cart. On one hand, it means I can stop looking for them like I have been, but then you feel like a jerk for cleaning out the store in one pop. I felt a little less guilty when two guys showed up looking for SW a few minutes later, and I asked if they needed any and they said no.

Hollywoodkbl · Post by **Hollywoodkbl** » Tue Apr 26, 2005 2:29 pm

I didn't say that ALL Star Wars collectors are HOLES, but here in Los Angeles we have plenty to go around. Most , and I do mean MOST , of them here are obnoxious, greedy scalpers looking to make a quick buck. They will push, shove, and knock down anyone who gets in their way! Again, this is why I quit collecting Star Wars items...it's just not worth it!

Jesse James · Post by **Jesse James** » Tue Apr 26, 2005 3:02 pm

Again, I reiterate then that they're not collectors at all, just opportunists.

Ask most "scalpers" a question about the line... To them, everything's rare, everything is tough to find, they will talk out their ass about stuff they are clueless on... I talked to a guy at C3 who was saying how they're making this and that, and how it's gonna have production runs of 10,000 (unheard of in action figures) and junk... People blow a lotta smoke and proves they're not actually "in" the hobby.

Your best bet in things like this is to go to a site, a reputeable one, and develope bonds and friendships where guys help each other out. I work for www.JediDefender.com and I'm also a member at GalacticHunter.com and Rebelscum.com (I'm a member elsewhere but not active). I trade and buy/sell stuff on all 3 because I can get things for cost from friends. Networking is the only way to keep up in the hobby and stay current.

Today I got my Target exclusive clones becaus a buddy tipped me off... I've got some exclusives I missed in the mail right now to me for their cost and not a penny more. You build friendships too, it's the ideal way to go.

The guy buying umpteen XD to turn around and resell (I dig army building too Moria, and I think that's a whole other carton of eggs that it's just a way people collect, and you blame the manufacturer and retailers for not meeting demand more than you blame the collector), or the guy buying a thousand clones because he knows they're "hot" and he can profit off them rather than open and enjoy them... Those guys arne't collectors, but just jagoffs who are taking advantage of people who just want to enjoy their hobby without having to be hounded by morons or in some "competition". Star Wars collectors (mostly) are great... I can only name 2 or 3 guys (out of thousands I've met) that I'd call A-holes. Anyone else isn't a collector, they're just a leach on the hobby trying to profit off another person's fun.

They're the same jagoff selling bottled water for $5 a bottle at concerts. Scum.

Hollywoodkbl · Post by **Hollywoodkbl** » Tue Apr 26, 2005 3:19 pm

Well, I do notice that you are in Pittsburgh. I have family there, and I think that your shopping experience is quite different from the mayhem we see here in Los Angeles. It doesn't matter which Target or TRU you go to here, in the morning there is always the same group of "Scalpers", "Collectors", "Holes" lined up to get in and mow down the moms and kids to get to the Star Wars and Hotwheels section. I never collected Hotwheels, but the Star Wars guys at all the stores were the same....Depending on where I worked over the 1997 to 2000 timeline, the experience was the same at every store in Los Angeles. A lot of these guys were dealers, because I would see them at their dealer booths the place I used to go....I'll leave it nameless. It really ruined the fun of the whole thing. I'm sure we have guys out there who help one another, as I see here in this forum, but it's not the guys I see outside those stores.

Post by **aferguson** » Tue Apr 26, 2005 3:20 pm

Well, profiteers have always been around and always will be. There's only one way to defeat them. Don't buy from them. As soon as they get stuck with product and aren't making any money they'll be off like a shot to try and profiteer off of something else.

Now this is also the same way to beat drugs, cigarette/alchol smugglers, bootleg pirates etc and it's a lot easier said than done. The fact is that people WILL buy from them and so the problem will never go away...

Toy scalping is not nearly the problem it was a few years ago. I remember when i first started collecting action figures around 1995, which was coincidentally when Hasbro began to make Star Wars figures again. I was into bigger figures such as Spawn etc so did not collect the star wars figures. I visited a couple of toy message boards on a regualar basis and almost every conversation was about toy scalpers, what scum they were and how to defeat them. Many ideas were proposed, none worked.

Limiting the number of items one could purchase at checkout didn't work, some people would go in and deliberately dog ear all the cards so they weren't re-sellable as collectibles and thus scalpers would not scoop them up...this of course had a lot of drawbacks to it; and a zillion other ideas were proposed and tried.

In the end it was the manufacturer increasing production that solved the problem. So many were made that they were easy to find and even if they weren't there were so many scalpers trying to sell them that prices dropped rapidly.

Toy scalping will never be a big problem in our hobby the way it was in the early days of star wars. There will always be a bit of it but as i said above the best thing you can do is not pay jacked up prices and just be patient until you find what you want at a realistic price...

To be honest the people who pay jacked up prices are just as bad as scalpers, in my view.

gustav · Post by **gustav** » Tue Apr 26, 2005 4:37 pm

Wow, if I saw someone besides myself eyeing up XD my first inclination would be to start a conversation with him. I would simply be shocked at the sight of another XD collector in person.

The surprise, however, would turn to anger at seeing the person sweep everything into his shopping cart. What a loser! All we can do is refuse to pay the high prices on ebay. I think its the uninformed impluse buyers who drive the prices up on auctions to the enjoyment of the scalpers laughing their way to the bank and then back to WM.

I mean, look at all the Mark IVs labelled "super rare" and "hard to find" on ebay right now. I feel bad for the poor idiots who buy them.

Hollywoodkbl · Post by **Hollywoodkbl** » Thu Apr 28, 2005 12:38 pm

Ha, my Wal-Mart just restocked within less than a week of several more cases of XD figs! I wonder how long before he returns them all! Just keep'em coming is all I have to say!

tmanthegreat · Post by **tmanthegreat** » Thu Apr 28, 2005 4:22 pm

I think you'll get your vindication when he tries to sell them on ebay, and with all the charges and other junk, doesn't make up for his expense!

Small Scale Military Headquarters

When Collecting XD, don't be a SHMUCK!

When Collecting XD, don't be a SHMUCK!

I agree