You and me against The Scalper.

Well my friends, I think it's time we got active in opposing The Selfish Scalping *******s.

The tales of a now notorious Facebook Scalper and the ends he'll go to in order to create false scarcity and rip off fellow hobbyists has got my dander right up. Right up.

There's a little over 150 folk in my Facebook group now (wooo! and see my sig!) and I figure that's a good start for an organised letter writing campaign to Games Workshop and Forgeworld, making our distaste and displeasure at the Scalpers Market known, and asking their collusion in trying to nip it in the bud at source. And I'd like to invite everyone to join us.

Now I'm quite sure we're all perfectly capable of putting pen to paper, or hands to keyboard, but I'd like to cover off some points which might help.

1. We all pay to get into events, and usually gladly because there's lot to see, and some shiny new toys to get our grubby mitts on. But finding someone else got there first and snaffled the lion's share sucks arse.

2. Ultimately, it's eating into their bottom line. Consider that the Custodes Contemptor retails for £56, and the aforementioned bellend was selling them on for £95. That's £39 some poor sap has paid out their hobby budget - and £39 FW/GW get not so much a sniff of.

3. Limited Edition models really need to be a maximum of one per customer on pre-order and release day. Remember Space Hulk, when it was first re-released? Our Local Bellend bought *12* copies. All on eBay as soon as it sold through worldwide. Doesn't matter that he rinsed his credit card, he still made a killing. It's not as if they'll struggle to sell them after all, so there's no real excuse for people buying multiples.

So I ask, beg and implore you to join in this campaign, and get as many of your fellow nerds and hobbyists to do likewise. It may very well come to nothing, but it's at least worth trying :)

My trade group I run has over 300 members and I have a no Scalping rule.............Seems to make it more fun for everyone :)

Yup. Please see if you can get that group on board too. I'd hope 150 members of a Carey-Sharey group all writing would make an impact, but this is definitely a case of 'the more the merrier' I'd wager.

I feel your pain guys, but up here in Canada scalpers are a necessary evil.
I can't make it to Warhammer world so if I want that shiny new Blood Bowl Ogre, off to eBay I go!
Threw away my Bertha Bestafrung when I hit puberty, lucky for me there's a guy in Serbia recasting old Mordheim models.
I don't mind paying a bit extra but yeah the guys out there selling Bertha's for $50-$60 that grinds my gears.
There's always going to be dickweeds out there, the guys that buy multiple copies of the game and charge double for it but then there are people that will buy the extra goodies and sell them for a fair price, those are the scalpers I'm thankful for. Its always the guys that set it up like they have a "company", the gent scalping tickets in front of the stadium always gives me a fair deal but the guy at "my super mini eBay store" finds a justification to up the value by 50%.
Plus I'm sure those scalpers selling stuff at high markups need that extra cash, it helps fill the void in them where their humanity used to be. and pay for those sheet cakes they devour while crying themselves to sleep because they have no friends...

One seems harsh Mystery, I like to buy two or three so I have a BNIB one for my collection, one for painting(I will paint things eventually) and if it's something I really like one for converting.

Though certainly limit it to a single one at pre-release events.

Sadly I don't think you'll ever see an end to scalpers flipping items to make an obscene quick cash-in. I also collect Masters of the Universe figures, and there are several chase figures or whatnot that have peppered the line which when they would come up for grabs, they would be snapped up in seconds (and even sniped from your cart if you weren't quick enough). The sad thing is, you could log onto ebay straight away and see all the people listing the items at twice and sometimes even three times the price, with large quantities on hand (with a caveat that this was a 'pre-order' and that the item would ship once they received it in hand).

There is a part of me that would say that it's not in GW/FW's interest to worry about this, as long as they've shifted the units and made their money, that's what matters. Mattel didn't see a problem with people scalping their stock as they believed the secondary/aftermarket is what drove the interest in people subscribing to the line, so they wouldn't miss out on anything in the future.

That said, in order to show willing, I'd say that it would be a good thing for them (GW) to at least put some sort of limit in place so that everyone gets a fair bite of the cherry. Whether it's a limit per ticket or something, I don't know, but it would be nice. I've seen scalpers be the reason that some people have quit the hobby (like the MoTU line) simply because they can't complete their collection without paying extortionate amounts of money.