Ever go to the local Target looking for a toy only to find a ton of the one you already have, that your kid is not playing with anyway? This typically happens with the “hot new toy” or item in a line of toys relating to a hit movie, Cars (from Pixar) being a prime example.
While researching cool websites for toys I found this post on a site called ToyBender.com. It is basically a blog written by a toy collector. The blogger is a male who collects, from what I can tell, action figures ranging in price from retail to obscene. He also posts neat classic ads for toys like commercial and comic book ads.
He recently posted an article called “Toy Collecting is for Losers: Defending Toy Collecting.” The article is about how toy collectors are not all like the 40 Year Old Virgin. Ok, that’s fine. I believe him even though ALL the toy collectors I have ever met are in fact freaks who do still live with their parents. However, given the size of the toy collecting industry I can believe that there are some socially, well-adjusted toy collectors.
Anyway his site got me thinking about my intense hate for toy collectors and toy traffickers. Let me define both, from a parent’s perspective, and then explain why I hate each. Toy collectors are people who (obviously) collect toys. The collector enjoys owning an array of toys from new to vintage. The former is where the problems start. The good part about toy collectors though, is that they genuinely love toys and thus have a right (strictly in my opinion) to buy toys and create a scarcity. I don’t have too much of a problem with that. Toy Traffickers on the other hand buy (mainly popular) toys strictly for the purpose of reselling them at a significant profit. These are the people who exploit a flaw in the toy market and create scarcity. These are the true enemy of a parent.
Toy Collectors create a small scarcity of toys in my experience. Since they are into toys because they love them collectors will not, typically, buy up every cool Star Wars figure leaving you, the parent, with nothing but a shelf full of Jar Jar Binks figures. Toy Collectors only need one or two of each figure to survive. Toy Traffickers on the other hand are the villains. They will buy up every popular toy from a specific line with the intent on selling them on Ebay or Amazon’s Z Shops. They are locusts who will strip the shelves clean of all great toys to feed their addiction to Ebay selling.
Here’s a perfect example of the evil Toy Traffickers at work. When my wife was at the Target she was looking for a Mater (from Cars) for my son. We were using Cars as bribery for potty training. There was a woman standing by the Cars toys looking at several Cars, each of which was the last one of a certain character. She turned and looked at my wife and asked which one of these, she was holding Doc, Lightening McQueen, and Mater, was the hardest to find. My wife not knowing she was in the presence of pure evil, innocently replied “I think Mater.” Into the woman’s cart went Mater and my wife’s hope to give that vary car to our son. There is no doubt that this woman was buying this Car to sell on a site somewhere.
The above scenario happens all the time. Look at Cabbage Patch Kids, Tickle Me Elmo,, and Furbies. All of these were bought on masse when they came out by people looking to make a buck off desperate parents. You can barely ever find any of the good action figures right when the come out unless you are willing to look on Ebay and pay twice what they are worth. Which brings me to my next point. Ebay the facilitator of evil.
When I was growing up the Toy Traffickers had no way to make money on the scale they can now, because where was no Internet. I’m not saying that the Internet or Ebay are bad, it’s just that they are used by bad people. With the Internet Toy Traffickers can now buy up huge quantities of toy, again creating scarcity, and sell them online for a huge markup.
All of this sounds like the rant of some cheapskate parent who isn’t willing to pay a price for their child’s happiness. Not true. I do go to Amazon and Ebay and pay $14 for a toy, worth $7 so my kid can have it. That’s what we do a parents, I just hate doing it. Furthermore I hate all the Toy Traffickers out there who make it so I have to pay them because in the end, as a parent, you really have no choice.
ToyViews.com » A Potential “Father Son” Moment Busted Parents Profiling Toys responded on 02 May 2007 at 2:40 pm #
[…] original TMNT’s in the package from the last time the were popular. Yes, I did do a small bit of toy collecting in my youth. I quickly checked Ebay to see if I was about to destroy hundreds of dollars of […]
Paul responded on 10 May 2007 at 8:57 pm #
Thanks for visiting my blog. I’m really sorry you’ve had a lot of negative run ins with toy collectors. I believe that there is a “silent majority” of toy collectors who are the normals. We don’t stick in peoples minds because we really don’t engage in the activities mentioned in your post. I think though, that you are right and have every reason to be mad at those you call Toy Traffickers. Collectors call these people scalpers and we dont’ like them just as much as you don’t. When there is a percieved notion that you can make money on something easily, people will do it. In the case of Cabbage Patch Kids and Tickle Me Elmos, it was the general public who became greedy. In the toy world it’s toy collectors or those that prey on us. I knew a guy through someone else that would visit every retail store in the city I lived in every day at least two times looking for figures so he could stock up his secondary toy shop. It drives me crazy that people like this are around.
Kenny responded on 18 May 2007 at 12:31 pm #
I don’t get it, since you admit Toy Collectors only create a small scarcity (if any at all since I think children > collectors), why then do you hate collectors? Because the one you’ve ever met are freaks? If so, then that’s abit harsh.
In anycase, yes, Toy Traffickers aka Scalpers are the real enemy. They are everywhere even here where I am in Singapore, and the way they go about conducting their business is just plain unethical. The Toys R Us here have even implemented a scheme whereby customers can only buy a maximum of two pieces of toys that are deemed popular, but even that has not solved the issue.
The sad thing in the end is that there is no law against what they are doing and in the mean time, it seems that there is nothing we can do about them.