Market Prices

Random rant post about local prices. Wall of text alert.


There's been some talk about eBay 'flippers' on the forums and Facebook groups recently after the Johan incident. A number of folks were unhappy that they, the collectors, missed it, while the profiteers a.k.a. flippers, got their grubby mitts on it and were reselling it for high prices.

There's a lot I could say about the dynamics of that, but I digress. Just found it coincidental that I made my way down to the local toy collector hub today to find discover how badly I've been scammed the first and last time I bought from a shop. The so called 'tuition fees' I paid when getting into this whole hobby. Yeah, I'm still paying them occasionally, but hopefully at not so high a price.

The local hub is full of toy stores and flea market stalls as well, although the ones with 3A toys that I spotted were all in the shops. In one of the first few shops I entered, I saw the same guy who sold me my Bramble MK 3 in another shop. So apparently he owns two to three shops!

The ironic part is, the price tag on the Bramble in this shop was a good $50 cheaper! I'm not sure if the prices are fixed, but that thought alone made me sick. Yeah, I understand that local stores have to pay rent, so they mark up prices a bit, but the difference is ridiculous here.

Yet, this sucker has three stores at least, that means people are buying and they are actually doing pretty well. I'm really dumbfounded when I see these kind of businesses. Are we locals that gullible or that rich? It only took me a short while to realise I was paying over the top prices at local stores, so surely the rest would too? Or perhaps it's only the 3A toys that were jacked up, but the rest of their toys were reasonable? I have no idea, although their Gundam prices, something I'm familiar with, were no better.

I've heard from another collector that local collectors set their prices high in hopes of snaring newbie collectors entering the hobby. I find that thought really sad. Profiteering by taking advantage of others. And it's apparent when you look at eBay. There's a great disparity between the prices for the same items. There are some local collectors who price their items double of others! Either they don't do market research or they don't care, knowing that once the cheaper ones get snagged, buyers are left with the super expensive one again.

Back to the local stores. The rest of the stores had pretty much standardised pricing on their items, maybe a different of $10-20 max. Some were reasonable, some were a little over the top, especially for limited items. That said, none were within a price range I could stomach. I had a number of decent deals from friendly collectors, so I managed to get quite a bit at retail cost or just slightly more. Maybe I was just lucky.

When it comes down to it though, it's all about greed. Would I price my item for as high as possible when I sell them? Perhaps. But most times I price my items to move, not to rip people off. With the current 3A climate, perhaps trades might be a better idea than buying and selling. Something I'll just have to wait and see.