I totally agree with the majority here that repackers are far worse. Like joemichaels70 said, what they are doing is fraud. I may not like scalpers, and it seems sad when you think about some of the tactics that they employ, but what they do is perfectly legal.

Agree with most here. One is an opportunist, the other a thief. Where the scalper crosses the line into the thieving arena is when they do the not-so-honest practice of paying for a case that is meant of the shelves, and the store policy is to buy it from the shelf, but instead are being sold by dishonest employees at the freight loading dock. Having seen some employees do this, make me a bit leery of both. A legitimate scalper who buys a case and sells it at mark-up percentages as others have said, is just skilled/lucky enough to do so. The back freight dealer is as much thief as the repacker.

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I don't know. I hold both in the same light. Scalpers will stomp the heck of a package to "devalue" it then take back to a store if the item doesn't sell on Ebay. They also buy case lots and "return" the figures that don't/won't sell to a store that allows them to return without a receipt. Also I have been told that some scalpers will pull figures and repack another figure, then sell that original on Ebay as a loose item. No matter what it sells for, they get full profit.

Then with a repacker, they are just fully stealing. Repack a figure they do not want for a figure they want. But it pretty much stops there with them. While it's theft, it's not the full variety a scalper potentially can create theft. Plus if stores were a little more attentive to their products, this could be minimized. Many times the package usually looks tampered with. But this is how we end up with the bricks in Playstation boxes. Employees not checking, and also stores putting items marked return back out on the shelf.

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Re-packers are worse. They are committing a crime. Scalpers are doing nothing illegal. Hell, I'm sure a number of people would label me a scalper for picking up extra convention items to offset the cost of the convention which is VERY expensive. If that is what people want to call me, fine. But it's ironic that the majority of people that say that are the ones that didn't pony up the money to attend the convention and expected to get the convention exclusive items at regular price via the club website. Personally I think the term only applies to retail which I never do. It's not worth the hassle!

I seem to have gotten up on a soapbox. Sorry about that, stepping down now.

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I wrote up a whole big, long thing about this, but it appears that it got eaten during the spam assault. You're not missing much, but to sum it up: as pretty much everyone has mentioned, repackers are objectively committing the worse act, because what they're doing is inherently dishonest and, at best, questionably legal. But I dislike scalpers more, because they're actively taking away (albeit in a small way) from my ability to enjoy the hobby as much.

I used to frequent Targets and Toys-R-Us-es around opening time for work reasons, and I got an up-close look at the extremely committed scalpers in the L.A. area. No matter where I went in the city (and I've probably done this at 90% of the stores in the region), there were always at least a few scalpers lurking around before the doors opened, and they were usually very open amongst themselves about their business practices. It was always obvious that they didn't actually get any enjoyment from the things they were buying; they just viewed them as small-scale investments. The joylessness with which they speedwalked to the toy aisle once inside, usually casting a few glares my way until they realized I wasn't trying to out-scalp them, and the fact that they turned something that, for a lot of us, is a fun hobby into a thoroughly depressing business didn't sit very well with me. I'm not surprised that this "business" exists, nor would I dispute their legal or ethical right to engage in it; I just think it's kind of a bummer. But I'm sure I've bought their wares on eBay at one time or another, so it's not like I haven't contributed to the situation.

Scalpers led to that other odd animal...the card bender. There was a person doing that around here some years ago, mostly to Star Wars figures. Were they a scalper devaluing goods or a person who hated scalpers?

I hadn't heard of scalpers stomping on or otherwise intentionally devaluing and returning products that didn't sell. Is there a documented instance of that or are we kind of turning them into an inhuman boogeyman here?

As for instances where a repacker sells the stolen figure loose for a profit, i suppose they are technically scalping but they were repackers first, and that is what makes what they are doing wrong/illegal. If they were selling a loose figure that they came by legitimately for a profit, they'd be completely within their rights.

I feel like a lot of the ire toward people who acquire and resell rarer items at a profit is really misdirected sour grapes. Again, if Hasbro would put more thought into case assortments and production numbers, sales would be more balanced and stores would likely order more product.

But for Hasbro to do the former would require them to admit that joe is predominantly an adult collector brand and that they don't need to push the same core characters in every wave to appeal to kids. And good luck getting Hasbro to give up on the golden fleece/holy grail that is the kid market. They'll let Joe die again before they admit they need adult collectors to keep it alive.

I don't understand this. You can make a lot more money in the commodities market, and you aren't limited to just toys.

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I've returned shoes to Walls-Mart, and they didn't even look in the box. It's not surprising people would take advantage of the general ignorance and apathy of the returns department. Doesn't justify it, but its easy to get around somone who doesn't know what they're looking at.
I've seen lots of repacks; GI Joe, Star Wars, Marvel Universe, HotWheels, etc. I've seen alot of cardbenders, too. Everyone's a jerk!
Back when I had money, I knew where the scalpers would stash stuff at Wal-Mart and always check there for HotWheels and POTF2 figures. If it was somethign I wanted, I would buy it, if not, I'd put it back on the pegs.

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Just think of the guys who "repacked" erasers and bricks for I-pads. Repacking is a crime.
Scalping could be reduced with proper wide distribution of product. If the product is hard to get, it encourages secondary markets.

You and me both. It was obvious that at least a few of these guys relied on this as their primary source of income: I heard a couple of them mention that specifically, and others clearly spent the majority of standard working hours canvassing stores. Considering the amount of time invested and the relatively low profit margin, it hardly seems worth it; they could have put that energy to much, much better use in any number of different, more profitable ventures. I have noticed fewer of them in the last year or two (although I'm not in a position to see them as often, either), so maybe that line of work (if you can call it that) has dried up. Maybe they chose to concentrate on toys because it was something they knew about or something they had enjoyed as a hobby at one time, but they managed to turn something theoretically fun into something practically depressing. When you come away from a store furious because you didn't find a McQuarrie Boba Fett and might not be able to pay your rent this month (a paraphrase of an actual quote I overheard, by the way), you've made some poor decisions.

I don't even know how to look something like that up. All I can tell you is all the years of collecting I have seen it. I have seen countless packages that obviously look stepped on. I have seen people post on boards (including this one) about it. I have worked at KB and know known scalpers bought certain items that were sort of a good seller on Ebay, then return it 2 weeks later in a condition that looked like it was stepped on. There's the known case where Target years ago used a hole puncher on packages trying to "devalue" toys even. That's about where this started.

Trust me, I know it sounds like a lunatic raving. There has been a lot of crazy crap over the years. I'm just stating what has been seen. It probably would have made a good book to write if someone were to have documented stuff over the years. A sequel could be made of what's still to come.

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I agree wholeheartedly with the insane business model of an even distribution. I hate to say it, when there are those that have issue with them as a company, but the way Mattel is handling Monster High is proof positive that a fair distribution of figures works. So far, the Mrs. has found nearly every single figure save the "Make your own Monster" pack that featured a Harpy set of parts. Even when Ghoulia Phelps was not even part of the available lineup, and only a SDCC figure, she was more than plentiful both on Ebay and Amazon, which is where she got her first Ghoulia. If the other companies would just consider the mindset of a fair and even distribution in a case assortment, the whole need for scalping due to rarity might cease some. Hell, look at the figure that they figured no one would ever want, Yarna D'al Gargan. Many here and elsewhere poo-pooed the idea that the "dancing fat chick" would ever sell, let alone clog the shelves.

Do you really see any lying about buried with the Clones?

I guess that is why I kind of miss the older fledgling companies that tried to hit our market, like Palisades, Play Along, and early Galoob. I managed to get nearly all of the Army of Darkness, including their harder to find "blind box" varieties. Play Along before the Jakks reorganization/attrition supplied a wealth of the Lord of the Rings figures, having only about two that never got made in amounts(the Pippin with the palantir for one). I know I am not the only one here with a closet full of Galoob Action Fleet StarWars vehicles, figures, microsets, and so forth, where even ones like Xizor's Virago were fairly easy to locate.

Now nation distribution, I will NEVER understand fully who holds the keys to that kingdom. It is unreal how I can't find certain fairly easy to find figures, in an area with at least 8 different large chains, including two TRU's (if you count Wesley Chapel) and three cities within a short ride to each, yet my buddy Rob in the mountains/hills of Pennsylvania can often find rare and gold items clogging a shelf or two. Part of it is the scalper issue, given how many of what I was looking for may be a Tampa or other Florida reseller. The other part is that the product is just not supported in any amount as opposed to the aisles of full things like the Cartoon Network lineups, the walls of Spiderman/Ironman, and the whole wrestling/UFC aisles.

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Scalpers over charge. Don't like the price, don't buy the item. Sure they might create some rarity when they get all the rare figures they can get, but like it was said, it's nothing proper distribution could take care off.

Repackers are just stealing.
That and they might also break the hearts of children.
Imagine a kid hoping with all his heart to get the latest figure of his favorite character. Here comes granny with the special gift.
The packaging is right, but, wait a minute, inside there's a dollar store version with 5 only poa instead of the advertised super articulation and glow in the dark feature! Hope is lost. Enough with action figures, the kid turns to video games and cell phones for his entertainment. Another brave soldier lost.

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