Went to Canada, via Walmart.ca and nothing more of it. Never came here, which disappointed me, because I would've bought it at a reduced US pricing level rate. (The Canadian pricing was expensive even for us and them.)

 

Agreed.

Anyways, I went and looked up a sighting of it, and sure enough it seemed to be $69.

 

I bought that when it came out, terrible colors and chopped stacks were a huge turn off. I regretted buying it.

 

yeah cab was light pink, trailer color was bright. Put it next to other G1/reissue Optimus, you will see colors are way off. At the time $50-$60 will get you Encore or Commemorative, which makes pinkmus very unattractive. But when pinkmus was on clearance at K-mart for $25, i couldn't resist and bought one.

 

Thank you for finding that. I stand corrected.

Thing is, adjusted for inflation, Optimus should have just cost about $52. So Hasbro apparently thought the extra goodies were worth $17. I guess that's not too bad...but considering it was only six years prior when the TRU version came out for $40, it felt like Hasbro was trying to charge twice that for the goodies (which, in a sense, they were).

 

Finally found my Hot Rod in store. Was truly a beautiful site seeing all those Hot Rod toys on the shelf. I love it. It's great to have a brand new one, since my 30+ year old original is in pretty sad shape.

 

I finally broke down and bought an Outback on Ebay. There were only three that I could see. Two were $40 shipped and one was $50 shipped. I offered $30 shipped on a $40 one and it was accepted. There is edge damage but I am just glad to have one at this point. It bums me out that I had to pay a 400% markup and that was a “deal”. Canadian shipping is really expensive too.

 

Yeah, I never saw the minibots in store. Saw the others.

 

1 starscream instock

 

I still need a tailgate so i can finish my g1 set of the 7 figures. I guess i probably won't find it but that is ok. I'll get that figure someday i hope.

 

The minibots are starting to show up “out of stock” on Brickseek in the US. They might be coming here.

 

what zip code?

 

Still showing "No results found" near me (in SoCal).

 

It's not 400% markup.

The price is $11 (sales tax at purchase). Shipping at another $6 minimum. So $17 to $30 is more like 85%. Even if you discount shipping, which you would've paid below a threshold anyway, $11 to $30 is still only 172%.

Now, this seller was on eBay, so the fee on $30 was close to $5. So for jumping through the stupid hoops Walmart put everybody through, this guy cleared maybe $8. If this was $8CAD, it's like $6USD. There are easier ways to make six whole bucks than flipping these.

 

Outback is $7.99 on Walmart’s website. I paid about $32 after the exchange rate. $8 x 4 (400%) = $32. Regardless of the transaction nuances I paid a 400% markup over buying on line with Walmart. Simple.

 

That would make it a 300% mark up.

$8 original price
$16 = 100% mark up
$24 = 200% mark up
$32 = 300% mark up

 

I can see this and go with 300%. Thanks for the post.

 

You are correct that regardless of the ins and outs you.paid a 300% markup. I think what @RKillian was saying is that the scalper who sold it to you was not making that much off the transaction. Something scalpers need to think about.

Maybe irrelevant to you since your bottom line is that you paid $32 for the toy because Walmart is making it so hard to get them, and that is perfectly logical, but Rkillian does make an interesting point on how you really can't make money scalping these.

Ya hear that scalpers? Lol.

 

not like there's anything to scalp. imagine trying to scalp these? they're so rare there's nothing to scalp.

 

No, the markup is the difference. So triple price is 200% markup. If it was 400%, minibots would be an insane $50. We didn't even pay that in the 90s before reissues! So don't feel bad, $30 isn't that big a ripoff considering the price of shipping these days...

But it's absolutely true that scalping these is a fool's errand.