Mysterious Army Builder...

[Death_at_Midnight]

Greetings brief mortals!

Has this ever happened to you? You make your way to your favorite store that stocks the latest Joes on a regular basis only to discover someone has gotten there before you and nearly cleared out all the new stuff? Looking around you find by chance a misplaced Joe here, there, in another isle maybe. And this experience has been happening more often, and in other stores around town?

It's been happening to me recently. And I am suspicious that there is an army builder in this town. Well, other than me, that is. There's an arms race in central Texas it seems.

[Trench-Viper]

Just buy directly from the hasbro webpage.

[Bayer]

[QUOTE=Trench-Viper]Just buy directly from the hasbro webpage.[/QUOTE]

What he said. It does eliminate the frustration. But, if you're like me, the discovery is sooo sweeet.

[Da Talent]

at least you are sometimes finding new stuff.

[Tracker]

It's a sign that you have scalper in the area.

[Death_at_Midnight]

What exactly is a scalper? I've heard the term mostly at HissTank, and that they are lower than scum. Something about someone repackaging?

[Trench-Viper]

A scalper is someone who buys popular figures en masse and sell them on ebay to non Americans on Ebay for a tidy profit. They are like guys who buy up lots of concert tickests and then sell them at triple price.

[Black Knight]

Yeah, locally scalpers are the army-builders worst enemy. International army-builders love them.

[Trench-Viper]

Love?
No.
Need?
Yes.
I have contacted Hasbro corp and sent them requests and joined with questions which goes from this site in hope of getting them to start selling to international customers. How difficult could it be to get ONE person to send out some orders in a factory? So far nothing. Also on Ebay there are a LOT of peple who sells their personal collection because they need the money or they are just getting rid of things they dont like. Prices on ebay goes up and down at an outstanding rate and unless a scalper hits a lucky streak I doubt they earn that much money compared to the time and effort they put in. The only ebayers I think are professional scalpers are the ones who tries to scam you on the shipping charge. They sell the figure for very low price. Like a dollar and then charge twenty five dollars for shipping. Off course I dont deal with them. For residents in the USA shipping costs are usually pretty low however so I sincerly doubt that most of the people I bought from on ebay or amazon are scalpers.

[Black Knight]

Sorry... "need", not love.

I have a local scalper here, only mine is the worst kind. During X-Mas season I was working for TRU, I kept asking about our GI Joe supply, since it was X-Mas and we didn't have any, so the manager checking the "roster" and it claimed we had a total of 60 single carded figures... Come to find out after inventory that one of the night-stocking guys was steeling them by the box. They caught him, and arrested him.

[vespapilot79]

Hasbro will only allow me to buy 1 EEL at a time!!! UGH!!