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But Can You Eat Them? by James Waikle Published 5/2/02 Just Say No To Scalpers |
It's that time again.
On the shelves of stores across the nation there are Star Wars figures in abundance. But wait, how come I can't find Yoda or a Royal Guard or some of the others? How come you see them on eBay and at comic shops at a price that makes your Visa run away and hide for days at a time?
Sometimes it seems you have to have a friend in the back room, or you have to camp out over night and be the first in the store to get what you want. The scalpers buy all of the figures that are short-packed and either sell them on eBay or pawn them off on dealers who bump the price even higher. Then some people who can't afford to buy all the short-packed figures get what they can and then damage the packages of those that are left so no one else can get a mint-on-mint-card figure of whoever is short-packed.
Another thing that baffles some of us mere mortals is how the new figures that have been on the open market for just over a week can be worth twice as much on eBay already.
Well, the fact is that we live in a society that wants everything right now. We don't want to wait; we want our news, weather, traffic and sports in 30 seconds in words of two syllables or less and we want it now. For the most part, we get it.
The irony of it all is, there were no short-packed figures this time around. Go look at the case allotments, or read #6 on today's Yakface Q&A. The new figures either came one or two to the case, with the exception of Clone Troopers who sometimes come three to a case. So what's up?
Partly it's timing. Some of the cases with certain supposedly rare figures are just now shipping. But mostly it's greed. Greed that is enabled, even encouraged, by collector stupidity. After all, if people weren't gullible enough to pay $50 for a $6 figure, the scalpers would have to stop the insanity.
Can anything be done about people hoarding figures? Not in the free market that we enjoy in Canada and the USA. It's first come, first serve. The only choice we have is to refuse to pay the high prices and hope we can complete our collections at a later date at a reasonable price.
"But that's impossible!" some of you are screaming. No, it's not. Granted, certain figures are harder to find, and we have to pay the high price to acquire them, but most of the time if we just have a bit of patience, figures that are going for $50 from collectors and dealers can be had for "cover price," so to speak. Slave Girl Princess Leia anyone?
If someone wants to be the first on his or her block to have the entire collection of figures and has no problem dropping $20 bucks (or more) on a figure, that's their right, and we can't stop them.
We can, however, laugh at them in a couple of weeks when we pay five dollars for the same thing that is suddenly in abundance because Hasbro changed the packing on its cases.
As for mint-on-mint-card figures -- come on, people, these are toys. They are meant to be played with. Open them up and enjoy them for what they were meant to used for.
The end result is that you can spend all of your money right now and have everything, but when supper comes can you eat your Star Wars figures?
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(James Waikle - "Impmeat" to message board regulars - really believes in right and wrong. When he was growing up his mother illustrated the concept of good and evil using Star Wars. When he was in Sunday School he had to draw a picture of someone doing something good, so he drew Han Solo shooting a stormtrooper. He had to explain that it was okay because stormtroopers were bad. They didn't get it.)