Are Scalpers taking the Fun out of Everything?

It's Christmas time and you know what that means right?

Say, little Mikey wanted a Gaming console or a particular action figure, he's keeping his promise by getting good grades, helping out with the chores and being respectful to his parents and in out of return, you try to  award him that Christmas gift he so anticipated,  only to find out that it has been sold out due to some grinch of a motherfucker purchasing mass quantities of the item in question.

Out of desperation, you look on eBay or even Wal-Mart for restock availability only to find that the item is there BUT, marked twice or even thrice the regular price it was going for.

Well, you're left with only two options, and none are good. Suck it up and pay the seller's asking price or, if you can't afford it due to limited funds, deliver the heartbreaking news to your child who has been good for the longest.

On the surface, some would say that scalping isn't that big of a deal, but when it comes down to those from the working class lacking a huge amount of funds, while trying to make ends meet, is a big deal!

Yeah, I get how some are using this method to make a fast turnaround, but when it comes to merchandise that's high in demand and you scarfing all the consoles, graphic cards or those G.I. Joe Classified figures for flipping out of greed, you're a grimy bastard.

Not too long ago during the pandemic, "thanks China " the availability for Playstation 5, Xbox Series X consoles and Graphics cards were faced with heavy scarcity issues where some shady individuals used bots to purchase them as soon as they were restocked from Best Buy and so forth. There was even a case where some Gen Z shit managed to purchase a lot of Playstation 5 consoles that were in huge demand, sold them At a higher price of course, and made well over a million dollars.

This is where some will @ me with "don't hate the player, hate the game." (No pun intended) well, I hate both. While most were stuck indoors due to the Covid lock down, they were searching for some form of escapism from a dangerous contagion.  And was devoid of that break in solace. It didn't stop there, scalpers were selling fucking toilet paper, bottled water, and sanitizing wipes for a lot of money. One seller had his huge inventory of toilet paper and wipes confiscated for taking advantage of the pandemic related scarcity while others were stuck with the thousands of dollars products since people weren't that desperate to buy into the scam. As of this writing, in demand items such as the Playstation 5, Series consoles and graphics cards are readily available. 

Some of those Marvel and G.I. Joe figures are somewhat of another story. Try purchasing a "Snake Eyes" classified or certain troop builders and see what comes up. However, there are some resellers who offer their figures at a decent, i.e. affordable price because they are part of the collecting community, and they have my utmost respect, so I encourage any buyer to continue patronizing their business.

The scalpers market is still a thing and it's not just limited to rare toys and collectables like fucking Funko pops, there's limited edition foodstuffs- from Blackberry Ginger Ale to Kahlua flavored Coffemate!

But do you want to know who's really at fault aside from the customers who can easily avoid paying exorbitant high prices?

It's retailers like Amazon and Walmart that give third-party resellers the freedom to scalp in exchange for selling fees. Now as far as I can recall, selling concert or sports venue tickets is considered illegal, so what's really the difference between selling a $1000 ticket for a Taylor Swift concert, a Jets vs Bill's game....scratch that, the Jets suck. Or a $1000 RTX 5030 GPU?

In the case of the latter, i'd rather wait 3 years and get it much cheaper!