How many times have you gone to your Big Box Retailer in search of the latest figure or vehicle you've seen or heard about on Joedios and have been screwed by the local Scalper. Who will then nail some other collector on-line who can't find the same thing you've been looking high and low for. I know of two scalpers in my area that clean pegs of any decent figures or vehicles, all of the time. I have three Walmarts and two Targets within a three mile radius of where I live and a population age of over 65 that outnumbers me 10 to 1. I've never seen Grampa in the store snatching up Shock Troopers to help his 35 year old kid with some army builders. Well to make a long story short, all of my recent finds at Ross and some of the other close out retailers have one thing in common, Packaging Flaws! The Scalpers won't touch anything with a bent corner or missing peg holder etc... The contents are fine. I don't care if the packaging is a little rough because I'm going to tear into it and remove the contents anyways. Of course after I pay for it. Not that I'm advocating people should go out and mangle packaging to piss off the local scalpers who in turn piss us off. But keep that in mind, when you find more than one Destro with money or Low Light that some greedy scalper hasn't snagged. SCALPERS HATE BAD PACKAGING!!!!!!!

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Help, I've fallen and I can't get up!.

The Official "atjoe1972" Theme Song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2NnnzhJ6nA

I really can understand how mad you are, since I would be there too. And the idea is good =D.

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Thank you Tone Guns! You probably laugh at us in the States complaining about getting our Joes. I can't imagine what you go through to find your stuff. Are GI Joes pretty easy to find in Brazil? Or do you really have to hunt them down?

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Help, I've fallen and I can't get up!.

The Official "atjoe1972" Theme Song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2NnnzhJ6nA

I agree. It's always been a problem and what's funny is that they buy a lot of crap no one wanted at a clearance price and then sit on it for months trying to sell things like the Snarler Cycle online. I think the actual collecting community goes out a little more now, looking for figures and we're able to keep scalpers from being too productive in some markets, but they still f*#k us in others. The bent card is pretty funny

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Oh, it's all right. I'm sure that we can handle this situation maturely, just like the responsible adults that we are. Isn't that right, Mr... Poopy Pants?

Dan, I made this discovery this weekend when I was looking at my latest haul of goods from the Plastic Mecca. The scalpers hadn't touched most of the stuff they were selling. But I did notice all of the items still leftover had packaging flaws. I'm guessing that's the only reason they hadn't snagged the rest of the stock.

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Help, I've fallen and I can't get up!.

The Official "atjoe1972" Theme Song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2NnnzhJ6nA

You can go too far with this and become a bender (Not the Futurama robot).

Some stores near me 3 or so years ago would have the backer cards bent...severly....mostly it was done on Star Wars. And truth be told, I didn't buy them. A crease/wear is one thing, the entire corner bent to the state that the cardboard was torn...like buying second hand goods. I do like to keep the backer cards, so damaging packaging affects some collectors, too.

Let's say it costs a lot to get Joes. The Brazilian mades are very expensive, so I always miss them. Buying from US it's cheaper, even with shipping when compared to brazilian figures. However it is still expensive, specially vehicles.

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That's interesting you can buy your GI Joes cheaper from the US, than the ones from Brazil. I guess we don't have it so bad after all.

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Help, I've fallen and I can't get up!.

The Official "atjoe1972" Theme Song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2NnnzhJ6nA

It's one of the two evils isn't it?
Luckily I think i live in an area where this doesn't happen so much, at least not in my town.

On the one hand you have a well known way of deterring scalpers from making money, on the other hand you have a problem if it effects collectors.

Because every collector wants something different its hard to find a balance, I still blame the manufacturer for 2 reasons.

1. They get greedy with the item price from the outset, in todays market more so as most countries are supposed to be in a recession and unemployment seems to be very high.

2. By making 'rare' limited run figures it only makes people outside of the hobby greedier. They find the figure thats most sought after and buy as many as they can.

To a degree if your in it for the collecting its fine and it really is fun to find the rare or chase figure (i've done this myself with Sota Street Fighter) but this obviously has a knock on effect in terms of price hiking on other collectors. In most cases i'm not bothered about the packaging either but that's just my own humble opinion, I know plenty out there that are very specific when it comes to packaging defects.

The solution would be to make the same number of figures for each character, but the manufacturer knows in advance which figure they'd need to produce more of? Why is it no matter what happens theres never ever enough army builders to go round? Yet they always make trillions of a 'one character' figure like duke or baroness. I sometimes think the people at these major toy manufacturers don't know anything about the product they are selling and are more interested in the stock profits on the market, which is most likely the case. They are businessmen after all.

*rant over*

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Hey how come its always scalpers thats taking to the rep!?! How come it cant be us hoarders!!!! Huh? I bet those scalpers just hate us hoarders. We are in it for ourselves, how cares how much a Shock troopers is worth, we own them all!!!! Muwahhh ha haaaaa. Take that scalpers and slow pokes, get on the ball with your Joe hunt and quit crying!!!

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Whos Da Masta

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