darkSpyro

My Dad liked these Jim Beam whiskey decanters, the ones in the shape of antique cars.

But he found out that the market got saturated, and the ones he didn't want to keep wouldn't sell.

This is still true, at eBay people are selling the decanters for $50, $75, $100 and up.
And are getting no bids.

The ones being bid on are $20 or less.

I hope this happens to the Skylanders figures scalpers.

You don't have to worry about that, the market will crash for these eventually. Just not right now. I do believe though that it had it's peak (at least for the already released figures) and the market is driving the prices down right now.

Quote: skyp1e

You don't have to worry about that, the market will crash for these eventually. Just not right now. I do believe though that it had it's peak (at least for the already released figures) and the market is driving the prices down right now.

*nods* I've been seeing many figures cheaper on eBay for a while now, managed to get a 10p! bid on a Bash, not sure how it still stands :/ Not had anything saying I've been outbid or anything

You can already observe that prices go down. 150$ on legendary triple pack was nothing special month ago, now it hardly reaches 100$. People are getting bored of waiting for new stuff and change games. Hype is calming down. But needlessly to say, there are still people who go to the shops and buy out whole shipments and resell them. That's a fact and only way to act against it is being patient. They will break anyway.

Quote: ArkeyanForce

Skyple change your pic!!!

This avatar was one of the available default avatars for this forum. I fail to see how you have any right to stalk me from thread to thread DEMANDING that I change it.

Quote: ArkeyanForce

Skyple change your pic!!!

Dude, give it a rest. No one is going to listen to you so just stop.

The Scalpers have nothing to loose. At the very least they will get back the money they paid. I don't really understand why so many have such an issue with it any way. They can't make a dime off of any of us if we're just patient. Enough said on the issue, let's put it to rest.

It's called, cause and effect, Morgan.

Observe.

Scalpers find and buy new figures > one impatient person buys it on Ebay > people see this and want a piece of the pie thus becoming a scalper themself > stores dry up > more people buy due to uncertainty on availability > more people start showing up at stores, only to be met with no new figures (my TRU got in 84 single packs today. ALL WAVE 1... AGAIN) > more people get impatient and go to Ebay > stores continue to remain dry > rinse > repeat.

Fact is, humans are impatient. We are an inferior species, or we wouldn't be doing stupid **** like killing one another, robbing, backstab and whatnot. I would love to see scalpers not make a dime off of things, but it will happen, especially if Activision keeps fabricating this shortage to create demand.

Fundamental economic theory dictates that the optimum pricing point is derived from the intersection of the supply and demand curves.

Because of this scalpers do risk a loss - there is a certain point where they can't even sell their goods at retail as people don't want to spend the extra few bucks on shipping, etc.

Another good example are Wave 3 figs appearing on Oz EBay. People have bought them at inflated prices to try to resell at a further inflated price. This will only work while Wave 3 is not available here in Australia and then the sellers will be left holding stock which they cannot sell.

I will also clarify that Activision has nothing to gain by artificially short supplying. The choice is between selling more stock now or risking selling less stock later (as consumers either moved on or got fed up waiting). The premise of trying to instigate hype does not have a sound footing in business accumen - the proof of this is based on how many people are complaining about the short supply and threatening to stop further purchases. People may be willing to spend more for figs at the moment but that does not improve Activision's bottom line, only the resellers'.

It is wise to remember that all decisions made by Activision are rational. Sure, not all decisions were correct - in 20/20 hindsight they should have upped production earlier rather than be adverse to the risk. However, the decision was rational and not emotive so always have a clear focus of maximising profit by established business means. In conclusion, shortages do not sell more product and only ever risk selling less.