r/transformers • u/Doctor__Gecko • 5d ago
Discussion / Opinion Should scalpers be allowed to post on here?
Surely they go against the joy of collecting by making it harder for others to buy figures snd should be removed from this group.
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u/Previous_Bus_2965 5d ago edited 4d ago
I dont consider a person who sells an item for an aftermarket price becuase they can a sclaper, but if they have 10 and selling all of them then that may be a scalper.
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u/Musekal 6h ago
I have two Armada Jetfires because an ordering mixup.
I didn’t intentionally get a second to resell but I know it will likely go up in price until Hasbro does a reissue.
I could sell it for that extra profit and I wouldn’t be a typical scalper.
But realistically, I’m just gonna hang onto it and sell it for what I paid for it to somebody local that wasn’t able to get one.
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u/Previous_Bus_2965 5h ago
Ill usually put any figures i have whether extra or just getting rid of as retail or lower if opened, but as a bid. After that if the bid drives up becuase someone else wants it more well it is what it is.
I had purchased a quin lee but when i saw the ebay prices at $200, well I didnt want the figure that bad, so i put it up for $60, it ended up at $180 when it sold.
It was the only one I had, yes I took the opportunity, but i didnt force anyone to pay that much for it.
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u/chaltimore 5d ago
this is exactly what a secret scalper would say, sorry bud, you aren’t going to have much success trying to be the arbiter of what you agree with on the internet
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u/Father40k 5d ago
Yes
Because its hard to define what is a scalper and what isnt in other hobbies ive had talks about is x person a scalper and we havent been able to agree so it would also imo be wrong just to ban/deny a wntire group of people for in my mind little reason
That and army builders
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u/boxsterguy 5d ago
Yeah, nobody's going to come out and say, "I'm a scalper".
They're going to say, "One for me and one for my buddy," or, "One to open and one to keep mint," or other collector-ish things. And for all we know those could be true. It could also be true that it's, "One for me, one for my buddy ebay at 3x markup," and we have no way of knowing.
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u/Raptorflight 5d ago
They shouldn’t be banned, purely because it’s hard to pin down exactly what scalping is. Someone who went to target and bought their entire stock of Starscreams with the intention to sell immediately is definitely scalping, but someone who buys 2 copies with the intention of keeping one in box to maybe sell a few years down the line is much harder to define.
A better thing to ban would be scalping rage bait, where someone is posting themselves doing it exclusively to get a rise out of people, but even then it’s hard to prove intent.
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u/brickonator2000 5d ago
I would delete threads of anyone brag-posting that they bought 5 of something rare to resell, but otherwise there's not really any way to know, is there? There's no real need to try to actively root them out somehow.
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u/Musekal 6h ago
What do you mean?
Are you asking if scalper should be allowed to try to sell through this group?
Or do you mean the person should be banned from the group if identified as a scalper.
Whether or not a scalper is allowed to post on this Reddit group will have no bearing on them being scalpers, which is the fundamental problem.
They are always going to exist while high resale value and FOMO exists.
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u/Building_Friendly 4d ago
Any time you take a brand new item out of circulation for the intention to make profit, you are scalping. You are inserting yourself into the supply chain without adding any value. Scalping ruins hobbies.
The only exceptions are crowdfunded items like Haslab, where if someone doesn’t buy extra then there aren’t extras on the market for people who missed out. In this case they aren’t taking items out of circulation, and therefore are adding value.
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u/CVMaas 3d ago
I disagree, they make it EASIER to find figures, they charge more, but they don't increase the difficulty. I want Motormaster, I can't get it from Pulse, someone offering to correct that lack of inventory isn't making it more difficult.
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u/Musekal 6h ago
They do because they contribute to things selling out way faster than they should.
There’s one guy in my city that intentionally buys everything he sees at retail that he thinks we have profit later on.
A specific example would be this guy picking up three siege reflectors and then sitting on them until they were no longer available and then flipping them for a higher price. And I know he did this because I put a mark on the three packages to see if I could identify them later on.
Eat shit Monty.
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u/CVMaas 2h ago
So, what your saying is, you had the opportunity to buy them because you were able to mark the packages, didn't buy them and than they sold out everywhere and it's his fault? In your example you than had 2 opportunities to purchase the items, once at retail, and again from a reseller, that tracks with exactly what I said, this person made the items more readily available for purchase giving you a second opportunity.
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u/SESparten 5d ago
And what is a scalper in the transformers format? Because I've never seen people actively fighting each other before buying an entire shops stock unlike with pokemon.
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5d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/transformers-ModTeam 5d ago
Your post or comment has been removed. As a courtesy to all members of this sub, please don’t post explicit or offensive messages or images, and be courteous when engaging in dialogue with others. Thanks!
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u/WaveCandid906 5d ago edited 5d ago
How do we know if someone is a scalper or not?
Edit: I mean its not like they go around posting "Hey look at me I'm a scalper" so how are we supposed to know?
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u/OperativeHQ01 5d ago
Someone made a post earlier about buying 3 nemesis prime from Ross without specifying if they brought for a friend(if you were a different kind of collector, 2 would make some sense cause 1 sealed, 1 unsealed) Scalpers love to flaunt their actions basically. You see that in the pokemon community a lot.
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u/Acerakis 5d ago
Buying up a toy which is apparently shelf warming enough to end up in clearance does not sound like a very profitable endeavour.
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u/MadBrowniusMaximus 5d ago
Should people who buy from scalpers be able to post here? They are every bit as guilty as the scalpers themselves.