Flippers. We all “hate them”!
Even though there is one in all of us.
You have been in front of your computer for the past 2 hours. F5ving the shit our of what ever collectible website is about to release a Mega Super Hardcore Limited Edition run of a certain figure you want, and you know you want it. Why? Because its very limited? Because you can trade it later for something better? Or you genuinely want it. What ever the reason is, everyone feels the same: THEY NEED THIS!
The Email gets sent out that the product is ready for order. Every one on the forum is freaking out! Tweets of “Its UP, Its UP!!!!” are blasting your feed. You F5 again and BAM! there it is. You get pumped and fumble the mouse. You start screaming in your best Arnold voice. You finally get a hold of the mouse and proceed to place the order. The site is lagging because everyone and there mothers (and sometimes grandmothers, true story) are trying to order the figure. You manage to add to cart and while checking out the worst thing that can ever happen, happens. Its sold out. But it was in my cart?!
You are confused and pissed off. Arrrr! You scream out in fury in your worst Arnold voice. You go back to twitter and the forum where you see people celebrating that they got the figure before it sold out in less than a minute which angers you more because you know one of those douche bags has to be a flipper. Yep. A flipper got the one i was about to order. So what do you do now? Obviously go on a novel sized rant about how flippers can suck your balls.
We as collectors immediately default to blaming flippers when we don't get what we want, where ever it is we are trying to acquire a collectible. Flippers seem to be everywhere hiding in camouflage at the ready. Those douche bags don't even collect, right? All they do is sell those figures for profit. Who does that? Well to be honest i would say about 95% of collectors at some point flip something.
See, its OK when i do it. But when someone else does, hell no! This is one of those things that is part of the hobby and will never go away. For better or worse it will stick with the hobby as long as profits are possible. What most collectors frown upon -from what i have witness as a collector for 15 years- is flipping in less than a month after acquiring the collectible. But lets say you know a certain collectible will be valuable down the road and you end up selling it a year later, that's fine. You probably wont have anyone bitching you out.
Now, there are flippers like in everything else that take it to the limit and really mess with the hobby. People who bring entire families (yes that's right, every know relative they have) to wait in line in order to score as many collectibles of a rare offering as they can and literately have them up on eBay before they even have the product in hand. That to me is excessive. And counter productive to the hobby.
I wish everyone who wanted something could have it with no problems. But reality isn't like that, especially when you talk about edition sizes lower than 1000. Some one will be left out and many other will be trying to profit from it. Be it by selling or trading. Its the circle of life. It sucks when you are in the back end of it, and it is awesome when you are able to sell a figure for twice or triple the profit and buy something you previously couldn't cause you didn't have the funds.
We also forget that it is not all the flippers fault. What about the buyers paying crazy prices for this collectibles? No one has a gun to their heads making them do it. Supply and Demand, as long as there are collectors ready to spend crazy amounts of dinero on collectibles, flipper will flip.
