Treasure Hunt: Limited quantity (often times 1 per case of 72 cars) and very sought after. Exclusive decoration (paint, decals, ect.) and roll on better rims and Real Rider Tires (actually rubber!). Its like a very elusive variant of Hot Wheels. Some people can find them easily and some can't. Still a $1 car, but often worth it's weight in gold to some collectors. I myself own 2 Treasure Hunts. One was given to me by a co-worker (2007 T-Hunt Nissan Skyline) and I found the other at an Autozone (2006 T-Hunt Asphalt Assault). I purchased another at Advanced Auto (2007 Tooned Chevy Camaro Z28) and have since traded it to someone who wanted it more than I did.
I hit the stores every morning looking for Star Wars figures and I've befriended a few of the Hot Wheels guys. They are very territorial, going as far as to claim stores. Heck, one guy doesn't think twice about threatening other collectors with a knife.
I worked in the Hell Hole known as KB Toys for 4 Years. During that time I held every positions @ the store except Store Manager. Boy do I have stories. Here are a few We would get our truck "delivery" at different times through out the year, well we had a certain collector that would memorize this schedule and would end up there every time we had our truck. If the truck was to get there at 7:00 AM, she would arrive by 5:30 - 6:00 am and be waiting. She even got a job at the mall to be closer to us. The "Cinnabon Lady" is what we called her. She was just there to get her hands on any hot collectible item. [] Then we had one lady that if she didn't get the Sports Pick figure she wanted, she'd call Home Office and complain. Not all McFarlane cases have Variants but she would blame us that we would keep stuff. We had to implement a list. The list was in the order they arrived they would get their shit. She even got in a fight with a little girl over a football figure. The little girl was buying it for her father and this SOB came and made a scene, made her cry. She stopped coming after that. [] Then their was the DPS pilot and the "Rich" store owner that got into a fight over a box of Hot Wheels. Now that one was funny. Two grown men fighting over cars, lol. It started with words then upscaling with fists. I mean come on, can't they just share. DPS guy was a nice guy with a collection and "Rich" guy was a local mall store owner that would mark-up the prices on his toys. Big time Scalper. Well they ended up leaving with nothing to buy and left a mess. Some how the DPS guy's boss found out what he had been doing and moved him to another location. [] Christmas was the worst, especially Green Friday. Women fighting for Barbies, pulling hair fist fighting and men cutting lines. When we would open the gate for people to come in, I swear it felt like a herd of cows were coming. Theres more horror stories but not enough time.
Two more (not exactly collector related), and I'm out of good stories: Late last year... standing in line at my local comic shop on a Wednesday after picking up my TF titles. Guy behind me (extremely overweight in black trenchcoat) says, "Transformers, huh? Did you hear they're doing a movie?" Laughing to myself, since we've all been living the movie stuff for the last couple of years, I just smiled and said, "Yeah, I've heard that... sounds pretty cool." He continues, "Yeah, I've got all the details on it--all the main guys will be there and they're going to have all six of the dinobots." At this point, knowing full well there are five dinobots, none of whom will be appearing in the movie, I said, "Wow, sounds like you know a lot about that." to which he replied, "Yeah, I know a guy that works for the company that did all of the CG for Lord of The Rings--they're going to be doing Transformers, too. I've seen about five or six full scenes of test footage of them transforming. It's going to be awesome." It was 100% BS, all of which I could have destroyed with facts, but didn't feel motivated to do so. Another one... overheard in the toy aisle, two guys talking about TFs: "The G1 toys used to have better articulation." "Yeah, well, you know they design them all in Japan and send Hasbro the ones that suck, right?"
I had some friends that were big time SW fans, too bad we dont still keep in touch, I'd love to hear if they had any similar stories, although along those lines one of them(not really a friend so much as a work acquaintance) went with me to some type of antiques store, I remember him asking some chick about hot wheels, and then walking away thinking he was a pimp because she talked to him(the guy was about 6'2, 300+pounds and had some fucked up teeth and was sporting walmarts clothing from long past).
As long as we're collector bashing, how about we go ahead and add a few of the disgruntled Transformers fans that have bragged about bitching out store managers for not being able to buy movie toys before release date? We all know the release date, yet some of us insist on trying to buy them early and then turn into crazed madmen when we're told no. I've run into my share of idiots in the toy aisles. There's the TRU guy who's an employee and thinks he has the inside scoop on all things Transformers who just bugs the crap out of me every time I'm there because he knows I'm into TFs and he tries to feed me lines of BS that no one who's spent any time researching TFs online would ever believe. There's the couple who I've seen at Target and TRU with a shopping cart full of nothing but various toys that carry around a notebook marked up with toys and values I'm assuming they've pulled off of eBay. I only had one real problem with them and that was the day I got to the toy aisle before them and had a toy in my hand that I'd been wanting for months and had just happened to pop into the store that day and found it. The lady walks up and acts like she's going to grab it right out of my hand. Apparently she thought better. She turned and walked away, her hubby/boyfriend/whatever gets a whispered earful, he walks over to me, I give him one of my "F-U" looks and he goes back to her and gives her a whispered earful then they moved on to another aisle. I'm 6'2" and around three hundred pounds, so people tend to think about it before they go out of their way to piss me off. However, I've also run into several confused moms, grandmas, sisters, brothers, dads, etc, etc, etc, obviously shopping for younger folks and I make it a point to help them out if I can. I even went so far as to hand someone a toy I had in my hand because I saw it was on the top of their kids birthday list. I'm over thirty. Toys are a fun deal for me. But to a kid that same toy could be a life and death thing, and I try to keep that in mind when I run into either kids themselves or people shopping for kids. I do happen to know a guy who's been both a Star Wars and a Hot Wheels collector and he told me himself he doesn't know what it is about Hot Wheels but when he's into them it becomes this massive obsession that just drives him to the brink of insanity. Something about the super low price combined with the difficulty of finding certain pieces just makes him do wild things and think about doing even wilder things. He has a wife and kids and said he's actually considered giving up food money for a few days to get some rare Hot Wheels he's looking for at one of the upcharge places. That's all well and good when you live alone, but not when you've got kids. He said he gave it up when he and his "buddies" got kicked out of Walmart for making a mess in the toy aisle. . . three times in a week. He said they were just pulling things off the pegs as they looked through them and tossing them on the floor because they "weren't the important ones anyway." Idiots.
I have one of these! It even came from last Botcon! So I'm riding the elevator down. I had a long ways to go. In the elevator was this family with two younger brothers that were the obvious geeks of the tree. One of them goes into this incredible tangent that I just had to sit back and take in. "Yeah, they're reissuing the Fortress Maximus this year. I heard it from a Transformers messageboard, and they guy who said it was almost right about the classics Devastator, so this is probably going to happen." "Cool." "I don't know if I should ask the Hasbro people about it, because it might get the rumour man in trouble."
I play UFS at my local TCG/hobby store and the amount of people that appear like the person described is outstanding - its like been back at high school with the sheer amount of BS and untruths muttered about whether its about a collectible or a video game or say wrestling. Then again alot of arrogant people play there too so I don't go often. You just have to nod your head and smile even though you know what they are saying is pure crap.
I've never had any real interactions with either of these types of collectors. In my area, it seems it's just me that goes through racks. (I've been at the stores at all hours of the day). There was this one Toys 'R' Us employee saw me looking *at* the voyagers, I hadn't even started to dig through them yet, and he swooped over asking me who exactly I was looking for. I told him Scourge, and he said good luck. That was it. However, he and I got to talking, and I told him that I went to TFW2005.com for my TF news, and he scoffed and said this site sucked.
Well its not really a crazy collector story but I screwed over a scalper pretty good. I walk into wal-mart about a year ago looking for Alt Camshaft, well I didn't find him but I found Optimus and there was the always present Skids and Sunstreaker that had been there FOREVER!!!!!! Well he was asking about some transformers and he asked if any of them were rare and stuff cause he was going to save them for an investment..........his cart already was packed with tons of SW stuff.... so I pointed him right to those two figures. He thanked me, grabbed the figures and ran.............poor guy probably has to pay someone to take them.
During the closing days of Energon, I was thumbing through a rack of Bruticus (Maximus) components, at which point a staff member came over and we started talking about the new Gestalts. (Well they were new then.) After a minute or so of talking about them he told me the next gestalt in Energon would be Predaking......... I was fairly diplomatic about it, and said that i hadn't heard about that one... At this point however he said "Well fans like me have the inside track you know". I just barely resisted the urge to verbally maul him. Hey, they're probably rare somewhere.
The only story I have is some guy that looked like fat bastard buying up all the Marvel Legends that were on the pegs at Target.
You should have punched him in the throat. As far as odd stories go... I've met aksmth. Yup, you read that right. I was on ye' old toy run and saw someone trying hard not to look at the Transformers. I struck up a conversation to be friendly, as there's no real need to be evil to other fans. In the course of the convo he asked if I visited any boards, I said yes. He asked if I went to TFW, I said from time to time. He said his name was "Axemiff". I let him know that I was surprised, because I'm pretty sure that aksmth was my screen name, as it matches my real name. He tried to back out and say that he thought that I was "Axemiff". Then I told him that I don't generally try and pronounce my screen name, that I'll introduce myself as a k s m t h, but call me Aaron. He then "had to leave" and I've not seen him (or maybe I have and not acknowledged) him since. Otherwise I've just got the standard scalper/HW collector stories.
No crazy stories except for a friend who bitch slapped a scalper and book slapped a bunch of the Alt Decepticharges out of his hands to get one of them. My friend is a large guy, and if he asks you to give him one of the 10 figures you just cleared off the shelves that you plan on scalping, you say "YES SIR". I myself almost had a crazed collector incident when I very clearly claimed a rare TF I found in a case at a store "thats mine, I am going to get someone to open the case", I then went to go find the owner to open the case. The two guys standing next to me found a person that worked there while I walked away, had them open the case and took the item right in front of me when I came back. I gritted my teeth, walked up to my friend and took out the cash for the items. I fully planned on pounding the shit out of them in the parking lot, taking the toys, and shoving the money in their mouths for disrespecting me to my face. My friend latched onto my arm and cooled me down. They don't know how lucky they were that day, because I just don't give a fuck. I am still pissed about it, I don't get over stuff so i would rather settle things to my satisfaction right there.
man this thread is great, I would really love to work for like a couple of months at a big Us retail store. in sweden we dont have this thing here. I have by random luck found some stuff like numasked ML Wolverine and a Swerve. i sold one and created a competion for the other. I would love to see ppl try to put m in place if I worked in a store. Im 206 cm and about 128 kg and play soccer,go to the gym, run, and work as a correctional officer. oh so u wanan scalp through my stock room...wrong stockboy to f*** with. Keep these stories comming.
I'm a Hot Wheel collector, and I have to ask "why?". For a friggen 99 cent diecast car??? Are they even into cars?
