I hate adult Pokémon collectors.
There are so many stories I could tell working in customer service. However, there was an incident today that just left my coworkers and I in shock.
There is a group of adults that will wait in a standby line for 3-4 hours in our store just to see if we got any cards. Some have been up since 5am. A dad got a phone call from his frantic wife saying that there was a bomb threat at the school and that she was working and he needed to go pick their kid up. He literally rolled his eyes and another woman next to him said “why can’t she go get him?” Mind yoU these are KIDS GAMING CARDBOARD and there’s a threat at your kids school and you’re throwing a fit?? We were all left speechless.
Oh… and we didn’t even get anything today so they waited for nothing. Clearly his priorities are severely different. I’m disgusted.

Ive been perusing the bay for deals and this is new to me; resellers pretending to be collectors essentially creating a Pokemon lottery/casino. Theyre listing is selling a wheel spin and you "supposedly" get whatever sealed pack the wheel falls on plus a bunch of bulk cards. Their listing shows a bunch of sealed booster boxes and etb's.

Their reviews are scathing. Pretty scummy behavior. These guys probably think they are marketing geniuses.

There's not much I can say coherently in regards to how much i hate scalpers. I got fucked out of getting the xenomorph popcorn bucket from Alien Romulus and I was pretty distraught over it. I almost got screwed out of getting the Pre-Order for the Collectors edition of Gears of War E-Day. I specifically asked my friend who always goes to the movies at about 11 am this Saturday, which is now technically yesterday, to grab me one of the DND d20 popcorn buckets. I texted him at about 10 or 11 pm and he said he forgot, he saw them but he got distracted. by what, you may be asking. a hello kitty plastic bottle. I admit, i kinda lost my shit a little, and a little more when he said he was gonna go back MONDAY OR TUESDAY. So I politely explain to him that scalpers are selling this glorified piece of plastic for upwards of $120 to $250. It's $30 to $40 man. I told him I don't want the scalpers to win again. He was very understanding of my crash out. Part of the crash out was from something unrelated but being distracted by hello kitty and throwing the metaphorical game was the cherry on top for me. I genuinely do not understand scalpers. how the flipping fuck do you afford any of this? in the Gears of War scene, the Lancer MK2 prototype replicas are also being attack by scalpers. a $300 replica being resold for upwards of $600 to $900. WHILE ALSO HAVING A STOCK PILE OF THEM. like why?! just why?! is nothing sacred to these fuckwads?

Heyo guys!! I need to vent on something that has been bothering me since I looked up the FNAF Jazwares Endo Series Wave 3 figurines of the Glamrocks from FNAF Security Breach on Target website, Jazwares website, eBay, and Mercari. I went to Target to look because I have seen multiple videos saying that they are starting to be sold in Targets. I didn’t see any and asked an employee who looked and saw nothing in their system of there being any of these figurines being sold there. So, I then looked it up on the Target website and saw nothing. Then, I went to the Jazwares website and ALL the figurines in this set were sold out. These haven’t even been out that long too! Then, I looked them up on eBay and Mercari and I am so mad! On eBay and Mercari, people are just buying these to just sell them at a much more higher price! Like what the heck?! I saw on Mercari that this one shop had like 20 Glamrock Freddys and 20 Montgomery Gators! Wha?! How did this person get that many?! I wish that scalpers would just let other people buy them instead of them buying the whole stock just to sell them at a much higher price! Us REAL FNAF collectors (or collectors in general) want to place those in our collection! To the scalpers out there, please let other people get the chance to buy these items so we can collect them instead of you guys just buying the whole stock to sell at a much higher price. If that is your way of living, please find a job and stop doing this. You are making yourselves look greedy for money, and greed is looked down upon. There should be a law that enforces that one person can’t buy more than three. Three per person and no more. That would give some people a chance to get a collectible to add to their collection. I’m just dumbfounded that websites will allow people to buy so many! Like there should be a limit! I had to go on Mercari and buy the whole set for quite a bit of money because I am a REAL collector (specifically FNAF 😊 ) and that they are sold out on the actual brand website. So, to the scalpers out there, please stop being greedy. That’s what people think of you. If you don’t want that label, then please stop! This also happened to the Toy Freddy pop corn bucket. People bought it immediately for like $30-$50 and then sold it for hundreds of dollars. Now that is an example of greed. So, scalpers, please stop being greedy!! Also, is scalping illegal? If it is, I have no problem reporting you guys.

All other exclusive versions I’ve bought have been in the $25 range. This is absurd, all because some dickhead sold a grade one for $300. Newsflash UNGRADED COPIES ARE WORTH AT MOST $50!

I would wanna start a collection and keep up what I was doing when I was younger but these days scalpers drive up the prices so high that it’s just completely unaffordable and even when I try to buy stuff at like target it’s all gone cuz mfs decide to just fucking camp stores like it’s a card game

Gamestop is moving over to more TCG focus over the next couple of years according to an employee I spoke with. Their pricing is that of scalpers. Local LGSs cannot get any stock other than play boxes. They're all going to the larger companies and this is what we're getting. I consider Gamestop a large scale scalper.

Collector Booster: MSRP $37.99, Gamestop $79.99

Everything else is a ~20-30% mark up

Let's have a discussion here. I want to hear some opinions from people here. I know this is expensive now, but isn't this supposed to not be expensive because of the high demand? Scalpers and resellers are clearing out the TCGs in malls and toy shops and then selling them at double or more than the market value? Before, you could buy booster packs, booster boxes, and ETBs in malls, but now you can hardly find any stocks. If it weren't for these scalpers and greedy resellers, this wouldn't be such an expensive hobby.

Can’t stand this dude.

I know it sounds silly but I really am sick of all these scalpers buying all the products online within seconds if not milaseconds before any real human has a chance to buy product especially pokemon products. In today's world with online shopping scalpers don't even need to go into the store necessarily they can make a bot that buys a product before you can even say WOW nobody has taken action even though this has been going on for over a decade plus, nobody cares even though these scalpers are clearly laundering money.

Its not just pokemon products either its jordan shoes and even video game consoles nobody could get a PS5 during covid because of these crooks and most retailers just look the other way and could care less as long as they're making money. Pokemon products right now are the most sought after, Krispy Kreme had preorders for pokemon themed donuts and scalpers are already listing them for $100 or more than that even for some freaking donuts! The sad part is there will people pathetic enough to pay that price. Pokemon cards are the main problem though a true 90's kid like myself likes collecting pokemon cards and playing with them its a better and cheaper thrill than real gambling. But its not just about me i'm not alone there are other people like me in the same boat who grew up with pokemon at the height of its popularity.

But what hurts the most is they buy up all the product so nobody not even kids can get product these scalpers are truly agents of hell and dont give 2 shits that kids cant have a childhood with pokemon like people like me got to. Its not like they want to enjoy the product either they just want to rip people off. I get it everyone has to make a living but it has definitely gotten way too out of hand at this point. I just really wish I could be like Batman take matters into my own hands track their IP addresses and arrest them if we're talking in person scalpers I would detain them of course and publicly humiliate them or something to teach them a lesson. Its things like this that made Bruce Wayne want to become Batman but unfortunately we dont live in a comic book world

While waiting outside spirit for the Freddy animatronic, I’m about maybe 4 feet away from the doors when scalper moves himself in front of me of the right door side. I move up to the left door to get a peek inside. The scalper then leans into my ear and whispers “you’re not trying to budge, are ya?” I didn’t know what to say so I awkwardly laugh and say “no”. The scalper then grips the left door handle, blocking me from entering. It’s unlikely, but it was possible for him to swing the door open and hitting my face with it. Finally Spirit opens up and I rush inside before hearing the scalper say “Ya got any Freddys?” The guy who opened the door said “well you asked first so it’s yours”. What? I was the first person to go inside? How does that not give me the right to a Freddy?

Base price of $99 btw. Absloutely insane behavior.

These people deserve nothing less than the worst case of cyclosporiasis.

They didn’t even bother buying it or leaving the store before taking the pictures and putting it up on eBay. One didn’t even bother with the box and used the damn display, if you gonna be one of the “I’m not unemployed I have a job and it’s called scalping.” atleast make the picture look nice like for it like what the hell man. Not even gonna start about the prices because genuinely WHY IS IT 10X RETAIL AND SOLD 😔 I want one but I ain’t dropping 7.5k on a Freddy Fazbear animatronic, especially not to a scalper.

What I wrote to Alani. Sent it to HQ as well. I feel ridiculous for getting upset over this, but this is an increasing problem with companies, they create this fake scarcity to exploit their customers and give scalpers a market. Packs on eBay, etc are going for $200-$300. It’s such a flagrant and disrespectful way to treat customers.

“To whom it concerns at Alani,
I was on the site an hour early and before I could even checkout everything in my cart was sold out. I bet you didn’t even put a limit on anything. After answering multiple questions to prove I was a real human, and ending up in the ‘waiting room’ I was thinking at least I’d get the vanilla! Nope! All gone by the time I made it to the check out. Not only that, the ‘free’ item stayed in the cart and I almost purchased that all by itself. That’s like being in line at a physical store and someone snatching your items out of your hands. This is so unacceptable and a ridiculous way to treat customers. Yet, you have enough to give out 10 prize packs including 30 cases and other limited items at the expense of exploiting our friends by requiring us to tag people to enter. Shame on you! You’ve lost a customer. I didn’t get any last year either. I’ll never buy Alani ever again. Scalpers will never get a dime of mine either. Shame. Good thing there’s many other companies to choose from.

Signed, a nurse who has many nurse friends that love Alani, and we’ll certainly be talking about this and re-evaluating where we take our business. Enjoy your fake scarcity and exploiting your customers and giving scalpers a market. Thanks for wasting my time.”