Yeah, Had long discussions on other forums about that in the past.

 

Ehh, when it comes to discs, "opened" = "used"

 

Look, I understand people are upset about ethics and morals and policies and how GameStop manipulates them. I've had a bad encounter with them in the past over the whole open vs used situation (I won, in the end) so I understand trepidation and anger...to a point.

I've bought collectibles from a few GameStops, I even bought a remote for my XBox One S and all of them were fully sealed, brand new and nothing was used or damaged. Just because they might not have the greatest methods in some areas doesn't mean they're evil and slimy in all aspects. No one is. Heck, it also depends on the person running the counter at a given time. Instead of just automatically hating this and the people behind it, why don't we give them a chance to screw up (or succeed, because it's possible!) before we automatically damn them.

 

For those prices, Guess where I won't be buying them unless they have a deal going on.

 

Eh, no thanks. I really don’t want to spend 5 dollars more than the actual retail price on GameStop, it feels off to me but I am happy we are getting more variety on more places to shop for Transformers.

 

Because it’s much easier to make everything as black and white as possible and damn Gamestop and assume everyone who works there is a slimy douche who takes pleasure in robbing us of our money.

Oh wait, should I have done that in blue text?

 

No?  

 

Amazing, glad to see someone else stepped up to over charge for figures in TRUs absence. lol

 

God, this price creep is genuinely threatening my ability to continue this hobby, and I have a decent paying full-time job.

Oh, you mean the line that shows up on Amazon right away, for two or three times the list price for the first four months? I've heard good things about that line...vaguely remember collecting all of them for nearly a decade, way back when...

 

Is FIO/RIM the new Rumble is Red?  

 

Yeah, back when I was doing caricatures full-time, my buddy tried to get me to understand this and pleaded with me to charge more because I wouldn't. It has something to do with customer's feeling like they got something of worth if they paid more for it. In these people's heads, if I paid more for it, then it *must* be of quality but if it's on sale then it gets degraded to cheap knockoff. I have a family member that's like this and it blows my mind when she blows big money on a product just because it was expensive. I was forever trying to tell her,"Hey, you can get this item or service for almost half that and more at this place" and it was always received like I was peddling cheap broken items to her. lol.

TLDR Yes, a vast majority of consumers are stupid.  

A bit more on topic:

I don't mind Gamestop getting TFs (the one by my house is run by good peeps) tho' I agree with some of the other posters that they'd be a good spot to sell MPs and other rarities. At least with the marked up prices you're getting something that's nowhere else. But when you can pick up the TFs listed for a couple of bucks less at Walmart and Target (especially since my Gamestop is literally across the parking lot from my Walmart), I'd end up just going there and getting them but for MPs I would.

 

2-3x list price? Exaggeration much? Amazon doesn't hike the price up that high. You are probably seeing 3rd party seller prices

 

Amazon does tend to have over-inflated prices that high though but then, so does Ebay. Difference being that, at least when it comes to TFs, Ebay's prices eventually drop down to normal once everyone can get them in store/common but Amazon tends to stay at the inflated prices. It's why I usually get my TFs off of Ebay/Sirtoys/other and Amazon is a last resort for me.

 

If Target and Walmart would let customers look up inventory for specific figures rather than just the inventory for the waves/sizeclasses/pricepoints they're in, GameStop would probably be the last store I check.

However given that Walmart/Target still only look up by wave/sizeclass/assortment and hasn't changed for years, I've been shopping at GameStop for toys more often.

 

I have NEVER seen amazon themselves sell something for double or triple MSRP- are you sure you weren't seeing 3rd party sellers that sell on amazon?

 

https://www.amazon.com/Transformers...5&sr=8-1&keywords=titans+return+optimus+prime

This guy is $22-$24 as a voyager and here it's $54 with other options at $41 plus $4 for shipping.

TR GAlvatron is $43 to $48.

But then Overlord is $30-ish so it's not all bad.   It really just depends on the Transformer. If I'm going online, it's usually for a TF I missed out on in-store so there's the usual rarity inflation for some of the stiff I'm looking for. But there are TFs that have pretty steep prices on Amazon.

 

Those are all 3rd party sellers though. None of them are amazon

 

The difference?

Edit: That's not meant to be a snarky "The difference?" that's an honest,"The difference?" since if they're selling on Amazon and that's the place I'm getting the figure from, it doesn't really matter to me who the seller is, just the price, particularly if those sellers are the only ones that have the figure.

 

3rd party sellers are essentially ebay, so they can set whatever they want as the price. Of course there is a difference.

Are you going to blame amazon if a 3rd party seller sells sdcc exclusives at an exorbitant price and amazon doesn’t stock them?

 

Well, I wasn't blaming Amazon and calling them "the great evil" or anything (I get killer deals on books from them all the time after all), I was pointing out that on Amazon, TFs prices for some figs are ridiculously inflated. I hope you're not taking issue with this statement in some weird "I need to defend the Amazon name" fixation because that's where you get your TFs and other good stuff because if so I'll just nope out of having this conversation. When I get into a conversation and someone gets into corporate brand gatekeeper mode, I just duck out (be it stupid Playstation-Sony/Xbox Microsoft, Apple, MArvel/DC, etc etc) because it's a silly conversation to have.