Seems like video games have become in many ways a scalpers paradise. Anyone remember the fiasco with the limited edition of Ni No Kuni? Basically some third party purchased nearly all the stock directly from Bandai and sold them for about 3 times original cost. Or over three times...

That was some years ago. Things haven't really gotten much better. Nintendo blew it with their limited edition Fire Emblem. Again scalpers striked like lightening. And I'm sure there will be more tales to tell now that the holidays are coming. I guess the latest is amazon's fault:

http://www.polygon.com/2016/11/25/13746 … uper-mario

"...he noticed that multiple versions of the 3DS were available through third-party accounts on Amazon for almost double the price."

Really amazon and ebay have become scalper camps. The way to get around this is to take pre-orders for limited editions where the number of pre-orders equals the number of games produced.

I think I wrote this in a thread here one time, but:

I believe it was maybe a decade ago. My mother approached me near the holidays and made the "suggestion" that we buy some of the popular Christmas toys and flip them,

I was like "No."

She said "why not?"

Which I replied with, "Cause I'm not evil!"

I mean yeah, I know you can defend this with the whole "it's capitalism at play, blah blah blah" but sorry, I'm not stooping to that freaking level.

Amiibos.

I hope scalpers are filing for bankruptcy over those things. I see a ton of them marked down. I picked up a few (Megaman of course!), but I figured the hype wouldn't last.

Here's a great recent story of scalpers getting their just desserts. If you're familiar with classic NES games and their scarcity/insane prices and you've never heard of Tim Atwood...then PLEASE watch!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS2X-YivEhc

Eh, I don't think all of them got their just deserts. There are certain amiibos that are still quite rare, and if scalpers focused on the right ones they made a killing. However, those that went crazy and ended up with stock they couldn't sell above retail, I don't feel sorry for them.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01HFRICLE/

River City: Tokyo Rumble with Limited Edition Kunio Keychain

First off, the game apparently is a blast, especially for those that are "old-skool". Secondly, it was sold directly by Natsume on amazon for $29.99. Now, it's ONLY available from DealTavern for $39.95.
Obviously, they went on a purchasing rampage, and purchased Heaven knows how many (all or most of the stock?) and even though their markup  is "only" 33%, it's still scalping. So annoying...

I probably just won't bother to buy it at all, even though RCR is one of my favorite NES games.

Well, "ONLY" being through the Amazon page.  I don't know if  they include  the keychain, but it can still be bought for $30 elsewhere.

Sure, the non limited edition could be bought just about anywhere.

Why not?

Game companies allowing a small collection of third parties to absorb much/most of their entire stock of a limited edition tick me off, they should feel some blowback.  Maybe I'll get it used at some point.

Seems it's finally come to vgm as well. I went to order a copy of Kirby Robobot OST and it has already sold out. Where all the copies? YJA and Amazon.jp for 20~50% markup >:( It's the first release day of the album for crying out loud