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The Community Perspective on Reselling
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Also if I'm posting a deal it's because I hope a lot of people will each be able to get some of the consumer surplus, not a couple of people take all of it. The other side of a few "full cart" resellers trying to maximize profit is the near complete shut-out of:
1) AFOL's trying to spend as little of their hard earned money as possible;
2) Small time resellers trying to earn some income as well.
Plus, on the part of the retailer, isn't some of the intent behind a sale to draw in as many customers as possible with the expectation that they will buy non-sale items? If it's alright to think that bypassing that intent is okay because the retailer lets you get away with it, is it also alright to think that it's fine to remove minifigs from a set and return it at full price if the retailer lets you get away with it?
Not really "on sale" per say, but still, that is a good choice on both of their parts given the demand and resellers for a "current set".
Clearance, is another beast. The whole point of clearance is to make the inventory go away as fast as possible, which is why there is very seldom a limit to clearance prices, even on [email protected] they often lift the 5 or 10 items per customer limits, I've seen them perfectly happy to ship me 50 of something on final clearance. No, because the former is just annoying, the latter is outright theft and fraud and if caught, the police can be called if the retailer so deems it worth their time.
One is a criminal act, the other is not.
My guess is that for the most part, buying out all the stock of something on clearance ties up a bunch of capital for a lengthy period of time, as most items on clearance are things that haven't been moving, presumably because people didn't want them at RRP, so the reseller is going to be sitting on them quite a while.
Yes, there are things like the UCS Falcon that were clearanced out, and which have since skyrocketed -- but there are far fewer sets being sold each month. Brickpicker shows a grand total of 9 new and 13 used 10179s sold on eBay in September, for instance.
Probably more typical of your general clearance is an 8484 (Ultimate Build Lightning McQueen, a Cars set EOL since Jan 2012), which sold 6 new and 1 used on eBay in September, all at RRP or below.
And you're right, I still have a lot of that in stock, including over 100 copies of 8085 Star Wars Freeco Speeder, and many other PQ and Atlantis sets, nearly a year later.
Almost none of which are even back to RRP, much less "profitable". Sure, I bought them at 50% off, so I can get my money back, but on a lot of them, they were terrible investments and I would have been better off leaving them there.
Were there hits? You bet, Mace Windu's Jedi Starfighter was a hit, buying all those was smart. Most, but not all, of the Ninjago stuff at 50% off was a winner. However I bought over 50 copies of 2506 Skull Truck, which hasn't budged an inch and is still on the wall at my local Lego store.
So was it worth it? Meh, kinda sorta... I'm trying to buy smarter, not harder, now... :)
To be honest, I am always beat to the punch when it comes to sales to post on the forums. You guys are too fast for me :) The funny thing is, my mother works for Walmart and I never get to see any of these wonderful sales. Maybe the Lego was already cleaned out or maybe it's up to each store what gets discounted. I read that a lot of people picked up Helms Deep for $89, so I had my mother look and it was still on the shelf for full price. It's not fair ;) I have even asked her if she has seen people with full carts of discounted Lego and she never does. My father used to work in the toy department at Walmart, which he hated and he too never saw it happen either. Maybe it's like the Loch Ness monster or the Chupacabra. Only spotted by a few :) If a reseller falls on a box of Legos in the woods and nobody is around to see it...
Everyone has had their bad experiences with people from all walks of life and because of those experiences people tend to generalize or stereotype. I'm sure there are some awful resellers, but I'm sure the good far outnumber the bad.
Peace
Take for example Comic Con. Some people were offering $20 to little kids for the exclusive Super Heroes. One could argue that the kids should be informed and that it was their mistake, but I call it stealing candy from a baby. I no doubt that there were people using less than ethical approaches to acquire NY TMNT yesterday.
The other issue is insider trading among employees. I know there are perks with working at some place, like first dibs or employee discounts. Unfortunately exclusive products sometimes magically appear as extra inventory that finds it way to insiders.
Obviously stealing is bad. Returning items to get promotions.
Items on clearance are fair game and have been for months if not years. Not all clearances are made equal.
I admit I go to Comic Con and have an affinity towards Super Heroes. I even bought several SW Tins to resell with no intention of keeping or building. But I did wait in a long line like everyone else and bought the items free and clear. What I do with them is up to me. I also buy Lego during Lego promotions and sometimes sell the promo to further fund my hobby, but I do it under the conditions that Lego offers.
My other hobby of collecting action heroes (Marvel UNIVERSE) is in my opinion more dependent on resellers. Unlike Lego the figures can sometimes be very rare and people actively hunt for such items. I love collecting them with a passion, but it is much more frustrating than Lego can ever be since most regular sets can easily be had and usually at a discount.
Reselling is fine and necessary, most of the time...
As @Amberyl said earlier, my argument comes from the fact I tend to put much more weight into social good over economic good, especially when the economic good is much more weighted into a single person. I enjoy my Lego, but if there was a single set, and it was between me having it and a kid having it the kid deserves it every single time in my book. The way I was raised and the way I have chosen to live greed is just this incredibly foreign concept to me. I can understand striving to better yourself, but I cant understand doing it at the expense of others and in a very unilateral way.
I dont think they are bad people (most at least) but I just think thinking solely of self financial benefit over the concept of trying to share and give more benefit to more people is wrong. One thing is my "lil Jimmy" argument is glossed over as theoretical. Probably 90% of arguments are theoretical. Hell you buy the lego on the theory that you can turn them for a profit. Just because it's theoretical doesn't mean it isnt valid. It's just being used as an excuse to dismiss and ignore an issue.
Also, @legofantexas I am sorry if my last reply came across bad but the poor us resellers getting attacked by the masses thing just doesnt fly with me. In this thread there are more people that agree with you guys them me or @cheshirecat. You guys are not being picked on by the majority. A post made in dripping amounts of sarcasm was used as an example of the hate. Like I was told with the dead horse and doodad stuff, its funny and a joke, so that means it;s seemingly ok. If it's ok one way, then its ok both ways, if not than that is a hypocrisy.
¨You guys are lucky to be living where you are. Today I discovered how badly Utah sucks when it comes to Target clearance. I think I just got lucky finding stuff at Wal-Mart because there are so many locations to pick from and I chose wisely. I have uncovered a "ring" of internet dealers that like to hit Utah Targets HARD when clearance hits 50% and 70% off. Moms and Dads and LEGO fans that are just looking to pick up a few deals have almost no chance at anything unless they are willing to be at the store right at opening and RUN back to the toy section. I've mentioned seeing the moms with 1-2 full carts of clearance toys on here before. But it turns out its MUCH worse and more competitive here than I thought. I never saw anything like this when I lived in Washington (I moved down here to Utah not too long ago for work reasons).
Here is what I saw at the 2 Targets I went to this morning: teams of 2-5 people working together, filling cart after cart with the entire clearance section. Just grabbing everything they could grab. At the first Target, I arrived only 3 minutes after opening and there were already 3 moms each with a full cart and a team of 3 others (later I figured out to be from an internet company - two employees and a boss). This "team" already had 15 carts full, plus Target employees had brought them about 20 more empties to fill. I was at this store 2 days ago and they still had 5 City Harbors. I wanted 1 so thats why I came to this store this morning. Well, this team already had 4 Harbors in their carts, along with all the other clearance LEGOs. I asked the woman if those were all her carts and she said yes, then I asked if I could possibly have one of her Harbors. She says, "ask him" and points towards a guy. So I did and he said "its not up to me, ask him". I assume the third man was the company owner. Before I asked "the boss" I saw a Harbor on the endcap City display, unstickered and apparently unnoticed by this dealer team, so I lucked out. While checking out, I inquired about the craziness back in the toy section. The cashier said "they are internet dealers that come every year and spend like $10000 on toys. That's their trailer out in the parking lot (HUGE trailer). There is nothing we can do about it to limit their quantites, clearance is a free-for-all. The manager doesn't really like their methods of leaving nothing for anyone else, but it clears out alot of stock for the store"
At the second Target I went to, there were 2 different internet dealer teams working, both also with tons of full carts of identical merchandise, and all the LEGOs of course. I actually asked one of the workers if she was a from an internet company and she said "yeah, we have 4 teams of 2 out working the other Targets today" Their trailer had Idaho plates. So they came all the way to another state just to get cheap toys in bulk? Doesn't the cost of gas eat into their profits? Not to mention having to pay the thuggish "cart guards" they hired. The "team" leaders I saw were all on cell phones, communicating with outside contacts, asking "is ______ (name of toy) good?" as in is this toy profitable enough to buy for resale?
What I am curious to know is if anyone else in any other state notices this kind of stuff going on at Targets across the country? Or is it just Utah?¨
End story.
Efficiency of scale and economy, in full flower.
Apologies, I truly was tired (as in, I went to sleep within seconds after posting) and it was a terrible attempt for me to spew humor onto the topic. It was an exaggerated, sarcastic way to inject my stance into the thread which is that I think resellers are healthy for the hobby and I almost can't believe that any animosity towards them actually exists.
I guess I could see it if you were in a LEGO aisle and you spied a reseller dumping clearance sets into their cart by the armful and they wouldn't let you have even one of them. That would be most frustrating.
The only difference between their behaviour and the Tottenham rioters last year is these guys took the trolleys through the checkouts first.
Maybe clearance sales just bring out the worst in people.
As of this post, there are 315 posts in total in this particular thread. A 1:9 ratio would mean 35 reseller posts against 240 anti-reseller posts. Since you're one of the more vocal resellers, I clicked on your profile and started counting how many comments you made in this thread alone - since it would a represent a large part of the reseller's posts. You have 35, maybe I'm off +/- 1, it's early on Sunday morning. Since you're not the only reseller on this thread, I think you may need to revise your ratio. Or is my math off?
¨I was talking to an old friend who happens to be a regional Target rep and was able to obtain more info. on these dealers/hoarders/scalpers whatever you want to call them. Apparently this is a very widespread business for at least one of the dealers. They park one of their huge trailers at every Target in their region on 2 Thursdays per year, one in late July for the summer clearance 50-70% markdown and one in January for the after-Christmas clearance 50-70% markdown. That's right: EVERY Target in their particular region (in my case, Utah/Idaho/?). Their teams spend thousands of dollars buying up as many of the hot and profitable toys and then deliver them all to one giant central warehouse. Then they mark them back up to retail price or higher and re-sell them online. And apparently they are not very nice fellows, often being rude to other customers and shouldering their way through the toy aisles. And yet Target does nothing to stop them or limit their quantities. Some stores even have overflow clearance in the back room that they wheel out on pallets for these dudes. Store employees don't even know what week the final markdowns are happening until that day usually, but somehow these guys know the exact week's Thursday to set up their trailers in the parking lot of every store. Makes me wonder if there is someone on the inside of the Target company who is working with the dealers and tipping them off. Or maybe they are just calling stores everyday and figuring it out, who knows.¨
End story
@vwong19, the guy in Utah touches about the insider dealing, that someone at Target is ¨tipping them off.¨ He doesn't know for sure, I don't know for sure, who knows for sure, but I do know this: you don't put out the boatload of money needed to rent a fleet of trailers, hire enough people to work in teams and do guard duty, hit several stores in several counties on the exact days when clearance hits 50%-70% and call it a happy accident.
Coincidence? I don't know. I don't think I want to know.
I agree with the theme over the recent posts in this thread - insider trading is unfair, but picking up clearance or other deals is perfectly fine even if you fill a train of shopping carts. If I were filling a cart and someone asked, I would give them something out of my cart.
This thread hasn't touched much on Black Friday. But the same concepts apply. For the past two years IIRC Target had a EOL set that you could pick up with a hefty discount over RRP. These weren't even shelf space sets, they would just roll out a pallet. Those disappeared within hours. Same story with the XXL brick box at Walmart last year. For some reason "hoarding" deals on BF is socially less acceptable than clearing out a clearance section. Even though BF is engineered to create scaricty and competition.
Earlier this year, Target was having one of their clearance sales. I was working and had to wait until after 5 pm. I wasn't expecting much and in the 2 local Targets I went to, there were only one or two sets left.
I decided to drive 40 minutes to one out of the way and as I walked in the store (it was 8 or 9pm at this point), I saw a shopping cart piled high with Lego at the customer service desk. "Yay!" I thought and made a beeline to the cart. It was filled with clearance sets - Ninjago, Star Wars etc. I started to pull a few out that I didn't have and that's when a Target employee stopped me.
Apparently a reseller had been in the store earlier that day and cleared out the shelves but they didn't have room in their car or all of the funds to pay for all of the carts of Lego. So a Target supervisor agreed to HOLD the cart of clearance items (which were not paid for - this was confirmed) until they came back. For hours.
They refused to sell it to me. The supervisor came over with a security guard to explain the situation to me and then she had another employee take the cart of Lego into the back room.
Yup. No collusion there.
In this particular scenario, most of my ire is at the Target employee. Although, I wouldn't be above giving the finger to the reseller as well. I'm a petty person, what can I say?
The interesting phenomenon by me is that Lego are being bought at 15% discount, so there isn't much left when they go lower.
Tammy
After all, the alternative is that Target could simply officially wholesale to resellers at clearance time, and never make the clearance available to consumers at all. It's probably too inconvenient for Target corporate HQ to do that, so managers who have resellers in their area simply do it unofficially. Or if that behavior is particularly common in Utah, there may be a Target area manager who works with resellers across the multi-store region he oversees.
It's true that a cartload of Lego isn't as much Lego as you think. During the TRU B2G1, six sets filled my cart.
Of course it is always sad when folks rock up 2 hours later and everything is gone but if you are not going to put forth any effort to show up at opening time then you have to expect you may miss out.
Backroom deals between store employees and resellers? Resellers having access to LEGO store stockrooms??? Guards giving you the staredown if you even look at their cart?
Intimidation? Collusion?
Equal opportunity, you say? Illusion!
Even before the word ¨Go¨, the average person never stood a chance.
If you have $50,000 to spend, you'll get better access than someone who has $500 to spend.
This is true at all levels, and shouldn't shock anyone. After all, Amazon, Walmart, and Target pay less for LEGO than most of us do, outside of clearance events, because of their volume.
They have better access, due to the size of their checkbook.
Watch Shark Tank sometime, people come in there all the time hoping the shark's "better access" can get them distribution into retail. A recent show had a lady talking about wanting to get into Walmart, Daymond commented that last year he did $500 Million with Walmart. I'm willing to bet Daymond has the clothing buyer for Walmart in his phone's speed dial and probably plays golf with him (or her).
No one walking into the Shark Tank has that kind of access, that is why they are there.
All of the stories shared above are ancedotal, unscientific in scope. But I believe the Utah guy, I believe @littletoki , @doriandsdad, @DadsAFol, and anyone else who cares to share information. And each story creates another layer of data, and then another layer, and another....
I don't believe in Santa, but I believe in the members of Brickset.
There is nothing magical or mysterious going on when people are "Johnny on the spot". They talk to people, build relationships and network. Anyone can do this but most do not as its a lot of effort and probably not worth the time for a few purchases.
Let's bring it down to practical level. He knows his clearance day? Check. He gets to the store at opening? Check. And yet he walks away with one set, because 3 minutes after opening, 18 carts are already filled with toys.
Help out here. Give some useful advice. What could he, or I, ¨ the average AFOL¨ have done on that morning to secure a better chance of buying more LEGO?
That is the part that makes it unequal, he has developed a prior relationship that took time and effort, to make that happen.
If you are interested in spending $10,000 and filling 18 shopping carts, I have no doubt you can develop a similar relationship with a store manager.
Honestly though, there are so many deals to be had before any of this stuff ever gets to clearance. Anyone waiting for clearance day to score a good deal is really taking their chances.
There is nothing wrong with feeling frustrated. It does not mean I hate resellers, though.
On the flip side, I sure do not buy into this fallacy of not a chance for the average person.
I am a stay at home mom now, and I have found plenty of deals over the years. Why? Because I spend the time and effort researching and making sure I find good deals. This applies to Lego or American girl or any high priced toy item.
If I do not get one deal, I am sure I will find another. I found several this week.
What I do, most people could.
I completely understand that the "average person" doesn't want to hear about it, it probably rubs them the wrong way. No one wants to hear about how someone else paid less.
If all the cars sold at a car dealership had the prices paid published at the end of each month, imagine how people would feel finding out they paid $2,000 more for the same car as someone else?
The system will not change, but it interesting to know that my suspicions may be correct about how business really works.
As far as access to a Walmart. 90% of the US population lives 15 mins from a Walmart. I live 15 mins from 2.