Not specific locations but in general where do you get your 25th Joes from? Online? Friends or Retail?

I looked at my current collection. It breaks down like this:

Online Contacts: 5%
Big Box Stores: 63%
Specialty Stores: 5%
Online Stores: 10%
HTS: 15%
Other (Stores you don't expect and Exclusives like Doc): 2%

Even through Big Box Stores is where I brought most of them that trend is starting to change. As I haven't seen any current figures since wave 7.

95% Retail
5% Online Friends (CHIEF!)

Nearly everything I have has been bought at local retail stores. TRU, Wal-Mart, and Target mostly.

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Big Box Stores.

I know that may seem incongruous with my statements concerning availability, but I don't see it that way. Most of what I own, I've gotten out of pure luck; if I'd not been at a given store shortly after stock went out, I wouldn't have found a lot of things. The 25th line has never reached "saturation" here. Unlike other lines - TF, MMPR, Marvel Legends all come to mind - there has never been a point where the 25th figures were "readily available" around here.

I'm thinking, though, that since I haven't seen another TF Flint wave, I'll start pre-ordering what figures I want online. I'm tired of hunting for figures that aren't there.

~Marduk

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I was almost exclusive at stores, but since I've been having problems finding new stuff I've resorted to online for the last couple of waves. So in the past year I'm about 50-50 between stores and online.

Interesting that you ask, because my purchasing habits have changed dramatically in just the past few months.

1997 - 2007:
60% Retail stores, (but not local, I travel a lot for work and tend to score better in other towns than my own)
30% eBay
10% Other (flea markets, fellow collectors)

2008:
45% Retail
25% JoeArmory.com
25% Hasbro DTC & Mastercollector (I've given up on Retail)
5% eBay (I've given up on eBay)

I gave up on eBay in 2007, it's just not cost effective for what I need. And sellers tend to piss me off with their zero-customer service, greed, and cluelessness about the products they sell.

John @JoeArmory, pretty much completed my collection for me this year, with about 40 figures I bought from him during the convention, and a hundred+ accessories I'm buying from him now. John, I think, is the best source for vintage items on the net price and dependability wise. There hasn't been a better source for figures since the backpage of Cotsworld Collectibles in the late 1990s. You could say I'm biased since we're friends and neighbors, but if I felt otherwise I'd say so or say nothing at all. Anyone that knows me knows that I'm a bitter grudge holding bastard who will call out my own midget mammy if she gave reason, so there is no bias when I say "Shop at JoeArmory, he does you right."

About two weeks ago, I decided to give up on retail for good and ordered everything I could online from DTC and MasterCollector. The thrill of the hunt was the best part of the hobby for me in earlier years, but when I have to go to six or seven stores twice a week and still come home missing items, that's absurd!

I used to go to four or maybe five stores tops in one afternoon, maybe twice a month, weekly at times but not regularly. Two weeks ago I hit a dozen stores between Houston, Texas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, including stops in Baytown, San Jacinto, Beaumont, Lake Charles, Jennings, & Lafayette, and still faced empty pegs from city to city - Target, TRU, and Wal-Mart. A woman at one Wal-Mart in Houston refused to open for me or sell a case to me that she had out to unpack that night. The next Wal-Mart up the road had half of the latest wave. That's the best I did. So when I came home I pre-ordered everything coming out this year online. BUT I couldn't get everything I wanted online, so I still had to get my 25th anniversary vehicles (still looking for the HISS) from Target. And my wife bought me every exclusive from TRU as a surprise.

In 2009 my shopping will look like this:

100% Online

-CJack

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Wave 4-got from a friend, but everything else that has been released at retail, I've bought at retail(saw the dvd packs, but haven't got those yet or the recent sightings of wave 5 comic packs).

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95% normal retail, mostly my comic shop of late.

98% retail
2% online

I've gotten just about everything lately at retail, (though it never seems to be the same store twice) with the exception of two figures I got off the 'bay, and a couple I've picked up from other collectors.

quite frankly,.. wherever i can find them....

I cant give you an exact percentage, but I have gotten joes from Retail, Online stores like Joearmory, Mastercollector and Small Joes, Ebay and other auction sites, trades from websites and chatsites, Conventions, Flea markes and thrift stores, even found some stuff lying at the curb on Trash Day!

For me, I like te thrill of the hunt, and I NEVER go home hungry, even if I don't end up buying the EXACT figure Im looing for (took me two months to find Snowjob), I end up buying mre CObra troopers, Vipers or more Stormtroopers, so its never a total loss.

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Last year for me it was probly a 50/50 split between retail and online. Of the online, it was mostly from deals through forums, some ebay, a little less from online stores. My purchasing was a lot more active, too, especially while Sigma and 25A were overlapping.

This year, my buying's slowed down with Sigma phasing out, and now basically just collecting 25As for kiddo. I have practically no retail availability, so I'd say probly 80% of my Joes have come from online (Again mostly forum deals, more online stores like BBTS and HTS and less from ebay).

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Stop & Shop — $5.99 (cheapes tprice!)
Walmart
Target
Toys R US

75% online stores
15% ebay
10% online friends

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99.9% retail

.01% online retail stores

The only figure I have gotten online was my Beach Head (from Toys R' Us.com) Everything else comes from retail stores, which (with the distribution in this area) explains why I have only gotten like 4 GI Joe figures this entire year, thus far.

I already use the internet as my only means to get other items that I can't get at U.S. retail, such as Godzilla and Aliens items, along with other Japanese exclusive items.

I refuse to pay any online mark-ups or shipping for GI Joe figures that I should be able to find at retail. So if I don't see them in the store, then I simply don't get them. Which is one reason that seeing new Joe items shown off at JoeCon or SDCC doesn't get me very excited anymore, even if I think they look good, because I doubt that I will ever see them.

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25th Anv.
60% Target
12% Big Bad Toystore
12% Walmart (I hate to admit it, because I hate them)
5% Kmart
4% Toys' R Us
3% Second hand dealers
3% ebay
1% Master Collector

Rah, New sculpt, and International (non MC)
60% Ebay
30% Joearmory.com
10% Board Trades

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Modern Joes-
85% HTS.com
12% Target
3% Online contacts.

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