I can’t imagine it would make a significant difference. No way I could get down to $84 USD, that’s for sure.

 

I have not seen dick in Delmarva, I live in the VA area but travel up to Salisbury and to NJ regularly. I saw a few things at the Target in Salisbury that I had already got via Online. Heck I rarely see anything of note in NJ when I go up there. Definitely never a Galaxy Shuttle or a Cosmos. lol.

 

I'm over here building fake doors in my mind palace.

 

There was no genuine retail US sighting, he was online only.

Literally nothing. This toy costs around $90 CAD including taxes. Looking at the prices on e-bay, any canadian selling at those prices would be losing money once shipping and e-bay fees are taken into account.

Yes, but remember, Canada has a 10th the population of the US, so one tenth of collectors as well. That low number means there are higher odds of seeing an item of this price range not selling right away since it's easy to overestimate demand with such a smaller population.

Shipping loose changes nothing. The biggest factor is weight and that won't change much. The way canada shipping works is you have a shipping cost + fuel surcharge based on location and right now fuel surcharges have sky rocketed.

In the end, while this item is available in Canada, it seems demand from Americans is too low for this item to be worth reselling. And there is no scalping going on with this item either.

 

So you're telling me that all I gotta do is go to Canada.
Guess my next question is whether Amtrak covers Canada.

 

Or wait for them to go on clearance in Canada and then have a Canadian sell it to you for $75.

 

Now that's the kinda thinking I like.

 

Aren't the buyers paying for the shipping? For Canadian buys, you got to worry about are the taxes on the item.

 

I mean, the buyer is paying for all of it. It’s just that it all adds up to be more than most of those eBay auctions and more than most are willing to pay.

 

But of course.

 

Canadians: how many Galaxy Shuttles have you seen on the shelf at the same time at your local Walmart? Six (three cases)? Has anybody seen eight (four cases)?

There are 402 Walmarts in Canada. It shouldn't be too hard to ballpark estimate how many Galaxy Shuttles got shipped to Canada.

 

Yes. Funny enough, there is a Maple Leaf train that gets you to Canada. But if ever you attempt that to get yourself a galaxy shuttle (I'd assume as part of a trip to so something other than that) check with the sightings pages on the Cybertron.ca site to see/ask which walmarts still have galaxy shuttle. Not all walmarts still have them. Also waiting for clearance may be a fruitless endeavor.

You'll have to be a bit clearer with your question and why you are asking it/what is confusing you.

Let's say what you saw is the most a store would get, and the least would be none, then it averages out to at most 1200 Galaxy Shuttles for Canada. Which in the grand scheme of things is very little.

 

I'm acting like I actually have the cash to get a train to Canada.

 

If you want the toy, best just pay the $100 USD on e-bay. You are basically buying the item at cost of it getting to you.

 

You Oniconvoy?

 

Basically same economic model of online shops. We pay for shipping so we skip the search all over the city physically. Only in ebay there is indeed some mark up over the initial PO offering price like Amazon, BBTS, Amiami, hlj(at least on PreOrders). So moral of the story, PO as soon as offered(and you have available disposable cash of course).

 

1200 in Canada would be an average of three per store. Presumably a store in downtown Toronto would get more than a store in [insert smallest Canadian town with a Walmart here]. Assuming a production run of 10,000 (based on Hasbro Pulse selling 500, 5% of 10,000), that would leave 8800 for the rest of the world. Had all of those been shipped to the U.S. (which we know isn't the case), it's not quite enough for two Galaxy Shuttles per store.

So the next question is for the Europeans: where is Galaxy Shuttle available there, and how many have you seen? We're looking for a rough estimate of how many stores carry him and how many each store received, on average.

I'm wondering if it could be as many as 4800. Because then 10,000 - 4800 - 1200 = 4000 that were shipped to the U.S. Then subtract Pulse's 500 and you end up with 3500 that went to some U.S. customers who placed online orders, and the rest of the orders were canceled.

Ultimately I think we're trying to get to: does 3500 sound reasonable to account for U.S. customers who had their orders fulfilled? Is a guess of 4800 to Europe way off the mark? Is it possible there are pallets of unsold Galaxy Shuttles in Walmart's distribution network that will end up at Ollie's/Ross, or have we accounted for enough of them to eliminate that as a possibility?

 

Not to mention Japan getting their quota officially. Velocitron is a TTM exclusive if I heard correctly yet still not solicited. Thrust internationally was released around December 2020 then TTM around May 2021. Still no word yet as of this writing April 2023.

 

I think the big problem with Walmart handling these lines is that they're having trouble with the stores as of late, on top of the person in charge of ordering/making deals doesn't know what they have/what to do with it all.

Between rising theft and underperforming stores, they're closing locations left and right in larger cities and some smaller ones. The theft has gotten so bad that they're giving out treats to people who actually *did* pay for their items. (No joke. Cookies and cupcakes for showing their receipts and proving they paid for everything and stole nothing.) They're letting people off the hook for the thefts if it's under a certain amount, but that's adding up fast. And the stores that underperform really underperform. It also doesn't help that they have multiple stores literally just down the road or the next town over. I mean...this isn't Walgreens. lol

The Youngstown metro (where I and several others are) is not exactly large, but it's not small, either. Between Hermitage, PA, as well as Cortland, Austintown, Youngstown, and Boardman, there are FIVE Walmarts within a 2-18 mile radius. The cities are all crushed together and blend into each other, you can't tell where one ends and another begins. (Well, short of the blight...) Now, we're getting THREE Meijers. And Austintown's will be the biggest/flagship store for the company.

With competition like that, with theft, with underperforming stores, and with Hasbro having ridiculous requirements to sell their items (and yes, Walmart does have to honor that contract to some degree), it's no wonder Walmart is a mess right now and nothing's on the shelves and nothing new is selling. I mean...waves 2 and 3 of Legacy are just *now* showing up. Mixed in with Evolution, here and there.

I want to make it clear, I'm not defending Walmart, nor do I think they're a good company. That said, they *do* employ people, they give small towns a store to go to, and they do carry these exclusives that seemingly no one else will. We can bitch all we want, but ultimately the consumer is at fault for all of this. We demanded more and more and they (retailers/Hasbro) gave it to us. We got what we wanted until we're sick of it.

We wanted Takara-Tomy products instead of Hasbro, we got 'em. Now, we complain about the prices and so on. We wanted more oddities and rarities (generally available only through exclusives), we got 'em. Now, we complain about 'em.

Past a certain point, Walmart's at our mercy and whims just like Hasbro is. It would help if Walmart did their job better, they'd retain customers and a lot less thieves. Corporations are why the economy is tanking. They all made record profits during all of this mess. But we let them. We walked right in the door and we let them do it. I'm one of those people, that's why I'm not pointing fingers when 3 are pointing right back at me.

We're all in the same boat.

 

Nice to see a fellow collector in the area.
Stay out of my aisles!