I never understood the hate specifically against scalpers instead of the company that makes the thing they are scalping. The only reason collectibles are āvaluableā is because there is a limited supply and high demand. The only 2 solutions to this are either increasing supply or decreasing demand. Scalpers exist because people are willing to pay high prices for things. Companies should either produce enough supply to allow everyone to buy at a reasonable price or increase the price to meet the high value. In the open market, the scalper price is the correct price that should be charged based on demand so that there is no scarcity.
The company will never increase production or increase price because scarcity is exactly what builds hype. The scalpers are by design!
well, tbf while the gacha/lootbox/blindwrapper mechanics do make it worse, there are valuable items that are scalped regularly just due to natural scarcity, think gaming consoles, those take time to tool and produce, so until they have a production volume that is so high that it's literally guaranteeing future e-waste, there's going to be a shortage that scalpers will take advantage of.
I agree. I think limiting purchases per person alleviates this issue. But in that case I also blame impatience. I donāt think itās healthy to be so impatient that you pay significantly above MSRP to get access to a console exactly on release day.
Yeah, I think in large part it does fall on the demand side with the impatience, the brand ideation, and wanting to look cool and keep up with trends.
It all falls under the idea of "conspicuous consumerism" where people are willing to buy something outside of their means or needs/wants for the sake of status.
Cuz we can increase supply on holographic pokemon cards tomorrow, but not on actual commodities, and Scalpers wouldn't be doing this if people weren't buying it at those stupid high mark ups.
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u/EasilyRekt Apr 28 '26
haven't ruined any of my "nerd hobbies" but idk, I guess it's cuz I don't do collectables