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I thought GW's attempt to kill of scalpers was called Dreadfleet.

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

Davor wrote:
I just wanted to say and if he could pass it up the line. He said he would and was very pleasant as well.

Snipped and highlighted for focus.

I severely doubt he did so. I really, really do. He will tell you that to give you the desired "customer experience" slot on his call (which is requested from his superiors if his call is selected for analysis) which is designed to make the customer feel as though you were listened to and taken into account. In the end, I doubt he even noted down what you said.

Do note that my cynicism is not directed at you, Davor, just at that specific procedure itself.

It's actually just as likely he did. Not every customer service agent says meaningless platitudes to get the call done. The thing is, though, "passing it up the line" doesn't necessarily mean it goes to the ears it actually needs to reach. I know I would tell my supervisor something a customer asked me to, but then it was up to him if he wanted to continue passing it up, or bring it up in a meeting, or implement a solution himself if he could. I did what was asked by the customer, and it's just as likely this customer service rep did as well.

Good luck with this.

As a fan of live music, I have an intense, deep-rooted hatred of scalpers. The old "blame the company that made it limited" canard holds no water when we're talking about finite venue spaces.

To be honest, if scalpers are even partially to blame for helping stock run out, then that argument still holds no water. They're not providing a "service" if we would have been better off without their interference.

Excellent idea. Death to scalpers!

(Or at the very least a massive drop in their sales)

Joined.

Why all the hate for 'Scalpers'? This individual has done nothing wrong, they’ve supported the original creator, providing their asking price for a product. Should they then sell that product at a higher price, then so be it. This is what a Supply Chain does, everyone supports it every time they buy anything from anywhere other than the original producer. You don’t accuse WallMart of ‘Scalping’ because they mark up a product to sell at retail for more than they actually paid for it?

If I buy a mini at $25, and then am able to sell it at $50 due to its limited run or whatever, I’d argue that I’m selling it on at market value (because that’s what the market will pay). The original seller, should have sold their product for more than $25, as the market will pay for it at that value, or, created more Product. It’s all about Supply and Demand. The original seller can curtail this a bit by not allowing people to buy multiple copies of the same item.

If you don’t wish to support someone making extra $$$ on stuff, then simply don’t purchase from them. Then its over. If no one buys from the Scalper, then Game Over for them.

Here’s another example. Someone selling a rare Star Wars toy for $5,000. That’s the market value for this collectable. Are they now a ‘Scalper’ because 30 years ago, they only paid $2 for it? Should they now just sell the item at the value they paid (plus escalation)? So is everyone who sells an item on for more than they paid for it a ‘Scalper’? If you wish to stop this practise, then there are 3 ways.

1. – Don’t buy it. Seller is lumbered with something they can’t sell and losses $$$.
2. – Original retailer sells more of the same product, thus eliminating the 2nd hand market.
3. – Original retailer increases the price of their product to what the market will pay.

The Scalper is not the source of the problem, so why demonise them? It’s the limited supply, and the high demand to buy that is. The Scalper will always be present, only when the Supply is increased or the Demand reduces will the Scalper be defunct. If no one re-sold, then it still doesn’t help the “Waaagghh I want one” crowd, because of the limited supply and the demand. If the creator of the Product didn't create the 'limited' supply environment, the issue goes away. The point is, it’s the product creator, or the demand for the Product which creates the environment for the Scalper to operate in.

I don’t criticise the Scalper. They are providing a means for someone to purchase something that they would not be able to do. The problem is with the Limited Supply, or the society which demands it. Again, take away the demand, or increase the supply, and the Scalper fails to operate.

^ That star wars toy one may be a bad example. SW collectors got bitten bad by a repacking scam.

One of the "valuers" used by collectors and some cronies had found a pile of unused Kenner cardbacks and blisters, and was putting out-of-box merch back into them, after a touch up - and artificially inflating the values (selling NIB stuff as MIB).

Part of the problem, though.

If someone is reselling merch from X, and the price is not unreasonable, I'll pay the price if I want it.
If it's too high, I don't.

Admittedly, I sometimes do my part to drive up the prices of LE stuff. I've melted down LE metal figures after removing bits for conversions. There are now fewer of them, so the value of the others does go up marginally.

Playing Malifaux, I buy from 'scalpers' occasionally, since Wyrd do a lot of LE models all available in various ways.

I paid $110au for Santana Ortega. I got a Through the Breach Kickstarter Exclusive Hannah model in a larger set of stuff, but she would have cost double that by herself. Neither of these are available anymore.

I bought various other LE models - Miss Terious, alternate Bayou Gremlin, alternate Performer, Amelia Bathorys (alternate Nicodem) from various people on eBay or at my FLGS. Miss Terious because she is always immediately sold out in their sales, and the other three because they were rewards for spending certain amounts of money during Black Friday which was just too rich for me (IIRC they were rewards for spending $300).

I recently bought a set of 5 'guilders', which everyone gets for playing in official Wyrd tournaments, which can be traded back to Wyrd for LE models that you can only get this way. My FLGS doesn't have official events or a henchman to run them, so I have no way to get these guilders.

I'm honestly not seeing what the problem is. They're limited edition models that people have either bought intentionally to resell, which hey, more power to them, or people got rewards they didn't want and sold them on for make a bit of the money they spent back.

Like chromedog says, if the price is too high, I'm not going to pay their price. But if I don't mind the price they're asking, and I have the money, I see no issue with the secondary market reselling LE models.

 chromedog wrote:
^ That star wars toy one may be a bad example. SW collectors got bitten bad by a repacking scam..

The fact that the goods being sold were dodgy in that specific example doesn't change the point, though, which is simply: how long do you have to hang onto something for before it stops being 'scalping' and starts being 'selling a collectible'...?

I think this is more aimed at the people that go into a store (or online) and buy up every pack of dice/LE models/etc. knowing that they will then be able to sell these on instantly at an insane profit, thus denying other hobbyists the chance of owning said items for retail value.

If you buy a model and sell it for a huge profit in XXX years because you held onto it, that's clearly not scalping. That is either luck or incredible foresight.

Scalping is knowingly and purposefully buying more items than you need, purely with the intention of profiteering.

 Pumpkin wrote:
Good luck with this.

As a fan of live music, I have an intense, deep-rooted hatred of scalpers. The old "blame the company that made it limited" canard holds no water when we're talking about finite venue spaces.

To be honest, if scalpers are even partially to blame for helping stock run out, then that argument still holds no water. They're not providing a "service" if we would have been better off without their interference.

(I don't mean to target you, Pumpkin, but you just happened to have a nice post that summarized a lot of the points I wanted to discuss, and on the last page.)

There are a few problems with this argument, but not the post that makes the argument so nicely, that I want to address.

1: Finite venue space is tricky, but that is not the only lever ticket sellers have to see that the people who demand tickets the most get those tickets. The other is price. Raise the price, and people who don't want to go as much** stop wanting tickets, leaving more for everyone else. Ticket sellers do this to a point, charging more or less for better or worse seats, a form of bundling/price discrimination, but over all the value of a sold out show is apparently greater to the seller than the lost revenue from exactly matching supply and demand.

Scalpers then don't make stock run out; it was going to run out in any case. Scalpers rather take on part of the distribution role, selling high to people who value** the tickets more. Their own prices fluctuate based on demand and supply, and they only make money if demand is quite high.

2: The "we" in your sentence "They're not providing a "service" if we would have been better off without their interference." is incorrect. That is to say, you are breaking the world up into sellers, scalpers and buyers, but buyers in this case is a more heterogeneous group, one that competes against itself. If we consider buyers who have time to camp the limited edition items and those who don't as two different groups, that competition becomes clear. Those who camp have more time than money in some sense, and so are better off if the price is low but they have to spend time camping the site. Those who have more money than time, however, are made worse off, as they would happily pay more for the item but can't spend the time. Scalpers help the low time group a great deal, as evidenced by the higher prices they receive.
(That assumes that everyone values the item the same. There is also the question of those who don't really care about the item vs those who value it a lot. Unless having the time to camp the site correlates perfectly with how much you value the item, it is likely that there will be a loss in well being there too.)
Now, that does put a small premium on those who spend money instead of time to get the item. That is very often a problem not matter what, although price discrimination gets around it sometimes. P.D. doesn't work though with things like tickets to a concert that are so easy to trade.

So, yea, scalpers (or any sort of reseller/retailer) are not the problem when it comes to scarcity. If anything, they help reduce scarcity by increasing the cash price of the good which serves as a signal to any manufacturer paying attention that there is much more demand than supply. One feels a bit for those who spend time instead of money or other physical resource to get things, but it is important to remember that the time "spent" isn't received by anyone else, it is just lost. Waiting in line is one of the least efficient ways to determine who gets something, as the suppliers are not made better off, and so have no more incentive to produce more.
Now, perhaps ideally limited run items would be auctioned off in a discriminatory price auction, or perhaps a Vickrey-Clarke-Groves auction. Really, any auction that allows buyers to 1: set their desired price per unit, 2: set desired units, and 3: allowed for the top X bids on X items to be accepted, where X is the number of units being sold. Then you could have people who are willing to pay 100$ for the item get it, as well as those who want to pay 30$, so long as there are enough units to cover all those folks. At least then the company gets to retain all of the earnings from selling the items, instead of middle men like scalpers. The company also gets a really nice set of data representing the demand curve for their product, which is basically what you pay marketing companies millions of dollars to do.

Edited because I forgot this part:
** "Value" or "want as much" is tricky. In economics it means "willing and able to pay", whether that be money, time, effort, or whatever else paid. In some ways that makes a lot of sense. If my friend and I want the same model but don't have enough money on hand, but my friend is willing to sell his PS4 in order to use the money to buy a model, whereas I am only willing to use the spare change in my couch, it makes sense that he gets it if he has more cash now. On the other hand, if he just doesn't have the resources at all to buy it, even after selling his stuff, and I have lots of cash, I will get the model, even if he was willing (but not able) to pay twice as much as me. That's a really awkward problem, that goes in a lot of strange directions, like philosophy and ethics, that are way, WAY off topic.
However, for things less than say 200$, that are probably luxuries (concert tickets, miniatures), it seems reasonable to say that willingness to pay money is the best way to distribute them, as most people have that kind of money to spend on a luxury they really want, even if they have to sell other things they don't want as much. If they don't have those resources, they probably shouldn't be spending 200$ on a ticket. In other words, for relatively low priced luxuries relative to personal wealth, willingness to pay dollars is probably equal to the value in dollars of the utility it brings you.
In any case, no matter how you decide the best method of seeing that people who want something the most get it, it still stands that the producer should just make more of them

 D4V1D0 wrote:
I think this is more aimed at the people that go into a store (or online) and buy up every pack of dice/LE models/etc. knowing that they will then be able to sell these on instantly at an insane profit, thus denying other hobbyists the chance of owning said items for retail value.

If you buy a model and sell it for a huge profit in XXX years because you held onto it, that's clearly not scalping. That is either luck or incredible foresight.

Scalping is knowingly and purposefully buying more items than you need, purely with the intention of profiteering.

You've missed the point of the question. I get that's what people are talking about. I'm trying to establish where the line is drawn.

How long does your person who walked into the store and bought up all the limited stock have to hold onto them before he stops being a dirty scalper and starts being a smart investor?

 insaniak wrote:

 D4V1D0 wrote:
I think this is more aimed at the people that go into a store (or online) and buy up every pack of dice/LE models/etc. knowing that they will then be able to sell these on instantly at an insane profit, thus denying other hobbyists the chance of owning said items for retail value.

If you buy a model and sell it for a huge profit in XXX years because you held onto it, that's clearly not scalping. That is either luck or incredible foresight.

Scalping is knowingly and purposefully buying more items than you need, purely with the intention of profiteering.

You've missed the point of the question. I get that's what people are talking about. I'm trying to establish where the line is drawn.

How long does your person who walked into the store and bought up all the limited stock have to hold onto them before he stops being a dirty scalper and starts being a smart investor?

I'd say if someone goes in and buys up all the stock with the idea of reselling they're always a dirty leech, it's just the faster they do it the more obnoxious it is, there is no line.

If you bought a box of Blood Bowl Skaven dice and, as a collector, decided not to open it and 10 years later it's worth $100, that's fine, you're just a collector selling off part of their collection. A collector doesn't need to go in and buy up as much stock as they possibly can.

The dirty rat is the one who goes in and buys out all the stock.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 D4V1D0 wrote:
I think this is more aimed at the people that go into a store (or online) and buy up every pack of dice/LE models/etc. knowing that they will then be able to sell these on instantly at an insane profit, thus denying other hobbyists the chance of owning said items for retail value.

If you buy a model and sell it for a huge profit in XXX years because you held onto it, that's clearly not scalping. That is either luck or incredible foresight.

Scalping is knowingly and purposefully buying more items than you need, purely with the intention of profiteering.

You've missed the point of the question. I get that's what people are talking about. I'm trying to establish where the line is drawn.

How long does your person who walked into the store and bought up all the limited stock have to hold onto them before he stops being a dirty scalper and starts being a smart investor?

I'd say if someone goes in and buys up all the stock with the idea of reselling they're always a dirty leech, it's just the faster they do it the more obnoxious it is, there is no line.

If you bought a box of Blood Bowl Skaven dice and, as a collector, decided not to open it and 10 years later it's worth $100, that's fine, you're just a collector selling off part of their collection. A collector doesn't need to go in and buy up as much stock as they possibly can.

The dirty rat is the one who goes in and buys out all the stock.

Where does the line get drawn though?

Someone buys two or three. One to use, one or two to hold on to to see if it appreciates in value. They're not buying all the stock, but they're doing it for future monetary gain.

Something comes up, bills need to be paid, and within a couple of weeks, they need to sell them. You don't know their personal story, you just know they've got two limited edition models on eBay within weeks of them selling out, so they're filthy scalpers.

Alternately, they bought them from a filthy scalper, decided they didn't want it after all, and decided to on sell for what they paid. Are they the filthy scalper? How would you know?

Selling miniatures online isn't as easy to label people as people standing outside of a venue selling overpriced tickets.

 -Loki- wrote:
Where does the line get drawn though?

IMO there is no line. I guess if there is a line, the line comes from intention rather than numerical quantity. Doing it because you love the product and are a collector? Fine. Doing it because with you're bulk buying you intend to make money of it? That's what puts someone in to "leech" territory to me.

I think if you're going in to the purchase purely for the sake of monetary gain then I reckon it's a bit of a prickish way of making money.

If someone is a collector and they just love Space Hulk so much that they buy 7 of them because they intend to paint 4 sets, give 1 to a friend and keep the other 2 sets on their shelves for later use, cool, whatever, they just really love Space Hulk and I'm happy for them buying 7 sets. However if someone just bought 5 sets when they intend on only ever painting one and selling the other 4, that person loses my respect as they're contributing to less people being able to enjoy Space Hulk or having to pay much more money for a meagre*** monetary gain.

Kind of like how if you walk down the street and accidentally bump in to an old lady and knock her down you aren't an evil arsehole, but if you intentionally go around tripping over old ladies because you enjoy the sound of bones breaking you might just be that evil arsehole

So if there's a line, it's intention based rather than numerically based.





***I say "meagre" because doubling the cost of a $100 wargaming item to $200 is likely to put it out of the reach of many hobbyists' spending money, but the profit doesn't actually go all that far to, say, paying the rent. It's a small chunk out of someone's total paycheque but a large chunk out of someone's final spending money after they've paid for their essential living costs.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
Where does the line get drawn though?

IMO there is no line. I guess if there is a line, the line comes from intention rather than numerical quantity. Doing it because you love the product and are a collector? Fine. Doing it because with you're bulk buying you intend to make money of it? That's what puts someone in to "leech" territory to me.

I think if you're going in to the purchase purely for the sake of monetary gain then I reckon it's a bit of a prickish way of making money.

If someone is a collector and they just love Space Hulk so much that they buy 7 of them because they intend to paint 4 sets, give 1 to a friend and keep the other 2 sets on their shelves for later use, cool, whatever, they just really love Space Hulk and I'm happy for them buying 7 sets. However if someone just bought 5 sets when they intend on only ever painting one and selling the other 4, that person loses my respect as they're contributing to less people being able to enjoy Space Hulk or having to pay much more money for a meagre*** monetary gain.

Kind of like how if you walk down the street and accidentally bump in to an old lady and knock her down you aren't an evil arsehole, but if you intentionally go around tripping over old ladies because you enjoy the sound of bones breaking you might just be that evil arsehole

So if there's a line, it's intention based rather than numerically based.

This is the point I was trying to make. Yo've got no idea about the sellers personal situation or reason for having said item, or even if they had 10 of said item and you're buying number 8. This threads OP started this as 'I'm sick of people scalping LE models, someone should crack down on them', but it's just not that easy. You don't know if someone bought multiple to intentionally sell at an inflated price, if it's someone who only bought one and changed their mind, a collector who had a sudden financial situation come up, or anything really. Not everyone buying multiple LE models, or those selling LE models even close to the original release, are scalpers. If someone has an LE model for the price I'mw illing to pay, I'm not really going to be too concerned about their intention.

On top of that, some people rely on resellers, scalpers or not, to be able to get access to LE models they want to actually play games with. I simply wouldn't have the LE models I have for Malifaux if it wasn't for resellers, because I never spend enough in their sales to reach their target levels for free models and missed out on some of their other LE models by starting to play their games late. If someone has an LE model for a price I'm willing to pay, their intention isn't my primary concern, it's buying it before someone else jumps in.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I think if you're going in to the purchase purely for the sake of monetary gain then I reckon it's a bit of a prickish way of making money.

That literally the trading and collectibles industry summed up. The problem isn't so much that people are buying stuff to collect and sell later, it's that GW is producing the artificial scarcity that results in short term gain for a few whilst driving prices up. But it's actively encouraged by GW.

Sure, it's a bit gakky for someone to walk into a FLGS on a launch day, buy all of their LE stock and stick it straight on eBay, but that's not the fault of the buyer for being a chancer, and entirely down to GW for allowing it. Most of them have a strict limit until some time (like 2/each until noon).

The only way to counter the industry is to not buy the inflated goods.

I find it a bit different when it comes to genuinely limited items, like concert tickets, because that seems to be done using automated systems in collusion with the suppliers, and it's genuinely a restricted resource. That said, I won't buy overpriced concert tickets either, and if people want to do so then that's up to them.

Personally, I've got enough choice in the gaming and entertainment spheres to be too bothered about something becoming too expensive on the 2nd hand market. Admittedly, GW do a terrible job or running essentially limited production runs of core game essentials. The LE stuff I've got from everyone else is kinda cool, but completely irrelevant to the actual game (like the alternate sculpts from Wyrd).

Am I a scalper in these 2 real examples:
1. I buy all sorts of LE minis, but keep them in packaging until I'm actually ready to do anything with them, with a view to selling later if I change my mind. I've sold off about 90% of my LE stuff this way in the last 2 years.
2. I've bought a more or less complete set of the Star Wars: Force Awakens action figures, and have them in a crate in the attic, where I'll either pop them open for my son in ~5 years years, or if he's not interested, I'll sell them on. Again, I've kept them NIB.

I did try buying-to-resell straight away, from one of the games days, and lost a small fortune (bought a book for about £15 and it sold for £5), so I've given up on that. I'm happy enough to buy local-restricted stuff to sell on for a tiny profit though, but in that case I view it as providing a service.

 TheSecretSquig wrote:
You don’t accuse WallMart of ‘Scalping’ because they mark up a product to sell at retail for more than they actually paid for it?

No, because WalMart actually provides a useful service in getting the product from the manufacturer to a retail location where you can buy it. Without that link in the distribution chain you would have no (practical) means of getting the product. A scalper, on the other hand, provides no such service. They just beat you to the purchase and increase the amount of money it costs you while adding nothing in return. The $25 miniature direct from GW is actually a better product than the $50 miniature from the scalper (who is much less trustworthy), and costs half as much. So, where WalMart continues to sell plenty of stuff at marked-up prices even though people could attempt to buy from the original manufacturer, the scalper's sales would drop to zero if GW announced an unlimited production run of the item.

Here’s another example. Someone selling a rare Star Wars toy for $5,000. That’s the market value for this collectable. Are they now a ‘Scalper’ because 30 years ago, they only paid $2 for it?

No. An important part of scalping is the immediacy of it. The scalper gets the limited-supply item and then immediately exploits the shortage they created to make a profit. Selling something 30 years later is completely separated from the original transaction. New price, new potential customers with new reasons for buying.

If no one re-sold, then it still doesn’t help the “Waaagghh I want one” crowd, because of the limited supply and the demand.

This is not true. It's significantly easier to get limited-supply items when scalpers aren't buying up large quantities for resale, especially when the scalpers are using automated systems to buy the entire supply before a human can complete the checkout process.

(Not saying that's the case with GW stuff, but good luck getting concert tickets if the scalpers have targeted that show.)

 -Loki- wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
Where does the line get drawn though?

IMO there is no line. I guess if there is a line, the line comes from intention rather than numerical quantity. Doing it because you love the product and are a collector? Fine. Doing it because with you're bulk buying you intend to make money of it? That's what puts someone in to "leech" territory to me.

I think if you're going in to the purchase purely for the sake of monetary gain then I reckon it's a bit of a prickish way of making money.

If someone is a collector and they just love Space Hulk so much that they buy 7 of them because they intend to paint 4 sets, give 1 to a friend and keep the other 2 sets on their shelves for later use, cool, whatever, they just really love Space Hulk and I'm happy for them buying 7 sets. However if someone just bought 5 sets when they intend on only ever painting one and selling the other 4, that person loses my respect as they're contributing to less people being able to enjoy Space Hulk or having to pay much more money for a meagre*** monetary gain.

Kind of like how if you walk down the street and accidentally bump in to an old lady and knock her down you aren't an evil arsehole, but if you intentionally go around tripping over old ladies because you enjoy the sound of bones breaking you might just be that evil arsehole

So if there's a line, it's intention based rather than numerically based.

This is the point I was trying to make. Yo've got no idea about the sellers personal situation or reason for having said item, or even if they had 10 of said item and you're buying number 8. This threads OP started this as 'I'm sick of people scalping LE models, someone should crack down on them', but it's just not that easy. You don't know if someone bought multiple to intentionally sell at an inflated price, if it's someone who only bought one and changed their mind, a collector who had a sudden financial situation come up, or anything really. Not everyone buying multiple LE models, or those selling LE models even close to the original release, are scalpers. If someone has an LE model for the price I'mw illing to pay, I'm not really going to be too concerned about their intention.

On top of that, some people rely on resellers, scalpers or not, to be able to get access to LE models they want to actually play games with. I simply wouldn't have the LE models I have for Malifaux if it wasn't for resellers, because I never spend enough in their sales to reach their target levels for free models and missed out on some of their other LE models by starting to play their games late. If someone has an LE model for a price I'm willing to pay, their intention isn't my primary concern, it's buying it before someone else jumps in.

Of course you can't judge the intention of an individual selling a single item on ebay. Though sometimes you can get a pretty good hint (If it says they have 10+ of an item and have already sold 20 of them or have a sales history full of nothing but limited edition stock, they're probably one of the aforementioned dirty leeches).

But you asked for a line and I gave it. I never said it was a line of practical use for buyers, simply that you insisted on one.

Personally I'm happy with anything that drives down the value of the 2nd hard market other than true scarcity.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
Where does the line get drawn though?

IMO there is no line. I guess if there is a line, the line comes from intention rather than numerical quantity. Doing it because you love the product and are a collector? Fine. Doing it because with you're bulk buying you intend to make money of it? That's what puts someone in to "leech" territory to me.

The number of people I've known who go to an event, and pick up two of an event only item, one for themselves, and one to put online to cover the cost of the double purchase, is not small. Yet they're 'leeches'?

Blimey mate, that's a pretty hardcore moral compass you've got there.

They've got the money, and go to the event. They put it online for more than they paid for it, and now people who didn't/couldn't go get the opportunity to buy the model. That means that they get their own copy a bit cheaper. Who's suffering? If they didn't do it, all those people who didn't go to the event just wouldn't get one, period. Is that really the morally superior option here?

Herzlos wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I think if you're going in to the purchase purely for the sake of monetary gain then I reckon it's a bit of a prickish way of making money.

That literally the trading and collectibles industry summed up. The problem isn't so much that people are buying stuff to collect and sell later, it's that GW is producing the artificial scarcity that results in short term gain for a few whilst driving prices up. But it's actively encouraged by GW.

Sure, it's a bit gakky for someone to walk into a FLGS on a launch day, buy all of their LE stock and stick it straight on eBay, but that's not the fault of the buyer for being a chancer, and entirely down to GW for allowing it. Most of them have a strict limit until some time (like 2/each until noon).

I never said GW was in the right for creating a system where scalping is encouraged, but that doesn't preclude me from disliking the people who take advantage of it.

Scalping might just be a way of making money that has been encouraged by GW's business practices, but that doesn't make it a respectable way of making money and no body has said anything that has remotely gone towards making me respect people who try and make money through scalping.

Am I a scalper in these 2 real examples:
1. I buy all sorts of LE minis, but keep them in packaging until I'm actually ready to do anything with them, with a view to selling later if I change my mind. I've sold off about 90% of my LE stuff this way in the last 2 years.
2. I've bought a more or less complete set of the Star Wars: Force Awakens action figures, and have them in a crate in the attic, where I'll either pop them open for my son in ~5 years years, or if he's not interested, I'll sell them on. Again, I've kept them NIB.

As I said before I don't think there is a line in the sand here. I'd say it's a sliding scale and unless you're buying out large quantities of stock then you are way down the small end of that scale.

As I said previously, if there is a line, it's based on intention rather than quantity. I'm not going to try and judge the intention of some random dude on an internet forum, you can judge yourself and decide if I think you're a leech.

 Peregrine wrote:

No, because WalMart actually provides a useful service in getting the product from the manufacturer to a retail location where you can buy it. Without that link in the distribution chain you would have no (practical) means of getting the product. A scalper, on the other hand, provides no such service.

You're assuming that everyone is able to make the purchase, due to either time or location.

The leech provides a service to those who can't get to a location (convention only minis, new store openings), or can't get there whilst there's still stock, or don't want to do the things needed to get the item (spend over $x in the webstore, take part in an intro campaign).

In that regard it may be no different to hiring a personal shopper or a courier for the afternoon, except it's likely done speculatively.

I'll probably buy the Warlord Games LE guy from the store opening (because I didn't want to buy anything else online at the time and I'd rather pay a scalper than make an 8 hour & $200 round trip).

 Ketara wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
Where does the line get drawn though?

IMO there is no line. I guess if there is a line, the line comes from intention rather than numerical quantity. Doing it because you love the product and are a collector? Fine. Doing it because with you're bulk buying you intend to make money of it? That's what puts someone in to "leech" territory to me.

The number of people I've known who go to an event, and pick up two of an event only item, one for themselves, and one to put online to cover the cost of the double purchase, is not small. Yet they're 'leeches'?

Blimey mate, that's a pretty hardcore moral compass you've got there.

I didn't really think it was all that difficult a concept to grasp. I used the term "leech" for a reason. Are your intentions parasitic? Then you're a leech.

If we're talking SPECIFICALLY about an event specific item (that I assume is unlimited at the event but completely unavailable outside of the event) then sure, buy lots and on sell them.

Why doesn't it make you a leech? Because you are adding value to the product. A leech means you're a parasite, parasites suck out without giving back. Buying an event specific item to on sell it, you aren't sucking out of the community by providing a product that previously wasn't available, at worst you're sucking out of the original manufacturer/publisher/retailer by devaluing the event.

If you went to an event and bought ALL the exclusive items then you'd be falling back in to the parasite territory because you're back to depriving other people at the event from buying it. But from my understanding most events don't let you do that and have limits on how much you can buy early on so everyone has a chance to buy it.

Event Exclusives is another area where FW are streets ahead of GW proper.

Im not sure that I would call selling FW event exclusives " scalping " , as it is not possible to buy them all out.

If they run out at the event, you can order more and they will cast them up and send them to you the following week.

You can techinically scalp on Event and WW exclusives.

Via my little group (nearly 250 members now!), I'm reliably informed that getting hold of Grak and Crumbleberry for Bloodbowl is tricky, because there's locals in Nottingham who'll go in and buy out the stock, then whacking it on eBay.

Which is a pain - because for most of us, a trip to WW is a once-in-a-while, if not once-in-a-lifetime treat, especially for those who's pilgrimage has involved international travel.

In response? WW have now limited it to One Per Customer. Despite that somewhat putting the brakes on my group's intentions, I fully applaud that. It's meant to be a bonus for those getting to WW, not a get-rich-quick scheme for the unscrupulous. And it is being treated as such. I mean, just look at those prices

We can still do our re-distribution thing though - for instance when I go up in June, it's for a long weekend (four days), so in theory I'll be able to pick up a maximum of four - one for me, and up to three 'slots' for group members to bag one (I won't max out potential purchasers without buyers in the wings) We may not be able to reach everyone, let alone satisfy all demand, but I can hope our collective efforts make it far less of a sure thing for Scalpers, discouraging them from taking that financial gamble.

Then you have the FW store - I've seen with mine own eyes that they have, out on the pegs, Event Only models of yesteryear. That's handy, and a good way to defeat the aims of Scalpers who bought in bulk, and held off selling until the model was ostensibly OOP. Next visit, I'll be creating a spreadsheet of what's available, and how much, because there's more there than they're letting on

I dont agree with buying out all the limited edition stuff and then selling boatloads of them, like the BB dice and the pitches, I could not live with myself doing that.

I dont see anything wrong or unscrupulous with those FW LE auctions, my brother and I sometimes sell the FW stuff, I start the auctions at £5 more than the cost to cover my expenses and then whatever happens happens.

Its the buyers that push the prices that high, not the sellers.

I think it is unfair to blame the sellers, its capitalism as far as I am concerned.
Not everyone is capable of working full time and this is a way for some people to make a few quid, my brother for instance has learning disabilities and this was actually suggested to him by a GW employee, in fact you will find that at these events FW openly encourage you to buy more than you need.

I have noticed that a few buyers buy out his cheaper priced LE items and then resell them at a higher price, but again, is that not just capitalism ?
Afterall the buyer is willing to pay that much.

As for the redistribution thing, I have been doing that a while, I just dont make it public because you tend to get inundated with requests. Good luck though, I feel sorry for those on the other side of the globe that GW is holding to ransom.

It's not capitalism. It's sheer, naked greed by engineering false scarcity.

And for the most part, the victims of scalpers pay their insane markups because they feel there's no other way to get the toys they want - often because said same scalpers swooped in to ensure they're now the only avenue to get said toys.

Thankfully, GW do seem to be trying to tackle this. Dwarf Dice and Dwarf/Skaven board are no longer listed as 'no longer available', instead being 'email me'. So we can reasonably assume there'll be at least one re-stock - and we can but hope they become permanently available items from GW direct (I mean, who wouldn't want a pitch and dice to match their chosen team?)

Where do you draw the line though ?

It does not seem that straightforward to me, it definitely does not seem fair to label everyone that resells a few Items as a scalper.

Most of those people selling the Items via ebay auctions are not creating false scarcity.

They are just buying a few extra items at the events and reselling them to supplement their spending.

Buying a few extra items at events, preventing others attending said same event form buying those items, because they've been sold out.

I saw it first hand at the first HH weekender. Sad little neckbeards waddling off from the sales stands with bulging bags, then plumping down in the bar to put it all on eBay....

That's just not even remotely cool. At all.

Essentially, stop and consider - if you were next in the queue, and saw me doing that - would you, or would you not, be angered by my selfishness?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Buying a few extra items at events, preventing others attending said same event form buying those items, because they've been sold out.

I saw it first hand at the first HH weekender. Sad little neckbeards waddling off from the sales stands with bulging bags, then plumping down in the bar to put it all on eBay....

That's just not even remotely cool. At all.

Essentially, stop and consider - if you were next in the queue, and saw me doing that - would you, or would you not, be angered by my selfishness?

It depends on if there were still enough left at the event for everyone else who wanted one to get one. If so, then who cares? If not, then that would be quite irritating.

This is why companies would do well to not limit them by production quantity or limiting them geographically by only selling them at events. Sure they can only bring a select amount to the convention, but they should be selling the items on their website for the duration of the event as well. Geographical rarity sucks hard - I'm not flying to the UK to go to Warhammer World to buy a single miniature. If it was something I wanted I'd buy it off their online store that weekend, however.

Event exclusives that are not also sold online for the duration of the event being scalped at super high priced are the fault of the the company selling the model, not the consumers. The company itself is driving the third party price up by introducing artificial rarity and geographical rarity.

This is 2017. We have a global economy and multitudes of ways to pay for items online. Use it to make more money.