annoyedWhich is not to say that the con is without its problems. One, that's been getting more extreme with every passing year, is the issue of THE COMICON EXCLUSIVE (dun-dun-DUUUUUN). These are toys made for and offered solely at the con. They can't be obtained anywhere else. There have been My Little Ponies, special perfumes from the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, and action figures, action figures, action figures. Oh, the action, oh the figures, without end. Collectors swarm the exhibit hall the second it opens, rushing to get the exclusives on their list.
I, it must be said, am no different. I went to SDCC 2011 with the following exclusives on my list: diamond form Bishojo Emma Frost, Waid-era Bishojo Susan Storm, the SDCC 2011 My Little Pony, and the Deadfast cosplay Ghoulia Yelps. I got there early on Wednesday, and hit the floor while the throngs were at their lowest pre-Sunday ebb, ready to stand in lines, fork over cash, and get my goodies. There is nothing wrong with being a collector of things. I have been a collector of things my whole life. Some of the things I collect now, I started collecting when I was four years old. Four years old. My ability to throw stones at collectors died a long damn time ago.
That being said, there are limits.
People were getting mean this year. There was a weird sort of mass hysteria sweeping the floor, where totally reasonable, rational people that I would normally enjoy having a chat with suddenly became consumed by the crazy-pants need to be at THE FRONT OF THE LINE RIGHT FUCKING NOW. Part of this may be due to the steady increase in toy scalpers, people who come to SDCC just to buy the exclusives and resell them on eBay at a hefty markup. Think I'm kidding? Look at eBay. The Monster High doll I bought for twenty dollars two weeks ago now has a base "buy it now" of sixty dollars...and people are paying it. The market has stabilized, and the people who bought as much as they could carry at the convention are reaping the benefits.
Because the scalpers were clearing things out as quickly as they could, the people who wanted those toys for their own collections acquired a new sense of urgency—suddenly, it wasn't "walk briskly," it was "run." And when the scalpers started running, too, "run" turned into "stampede."
Saturday, after being asked to pick up a Monster High doll for a friend, Amy and I went over to the Mattel booth to get in line. The line was...ugly. Basically, a single guard was doing crowd control at the mouth of the actual line, and letting people in one at a time, right to left. Amy and I were on the far left; four people literally shoved past us to get into the line before we could. Shoved past us. But we were there for girl toys (which always sell slower than boy toys), so we waited until we could get past the guard, and we got into the lineup without major incident.
About six people behind us in line (and thus right next to us, due to the amusement park ride setup being used for people moving) was a mother and her seven-year-old daughter. The daughter was pretty clearly upset. The daughter was also dressed as Draculaura, one of the major characters from Monster High. I asked what they were in the line for, and guessed that it might be Ghoulia. The little girl, still looking miserable, confirmed.
I asked her mother what was wrong.
"We've tried to get into this line four times," she replied.
Why so many tries? Because people were pushing her child. People were stepping on her child. So when the crowd was crazy, they had to withdraw—no doll is worth injuring a little kid, period. And the girl was, naturally, very concerned that she wouldn't be able to get her toy.
I asked the mother if they wanted to go ahead of me. She looked stunned. She asked, several times, if I was sure; Amy and I both affirmed that, if one of us was getting the last Monster High doll, we wanted it to be the little girl. (None of the six people between us and the kid were there for Monster High toys; like most collectors, they wanted the "boy toys," which always sell out before anything else.) We let the girl and her mother go ahead of us...and the mother's level of gratitude was so far out of proportion with the cost of the gesture that it made me want to go around yelling at people. Don't step on kids! Cheese and crackers, that's just common sense!
Most of the kids at SDCC are very well-behaved, possibly because they're too terrified by the size of the crowd to do anything else. It's pretty easy to believe that the bogeyman will get you if you're bad when you can see the bogeyman, he's right over there and he's buying comic books. Maybe he needs a snack! It could be you. So they're pretty cool, those con kids, the next generation of our species. I mean, unless someone in a giant Perry the Platypus costume has just walked by. There are limits.
And I'm not saying kids get everything. I didn't give the girl my toy, I just let her go ahead of me to get hers. But there are moments where you really need to pause and ask yourself "is my eBay profit worth stepping on this little girl?" And if the answer is ever "yes," maybe it's time for some serious soul searching.
Here's a goal for all of us who are planning to attend San Diego Comic Convention 2012: let's not be dicks. And when we're buying cool stuff, let's make sure we're buying it for ourselves or our friends, not for our burgeoning eBay business. Okay?
Cool.
August 3 2011, 17:43:40 UTC 5 years ago
I don't think it's morally wrong or bad to buy things for resale as long as you don't overdo it and get GREEDY. It's nice for collectors who can't go to events to have a chance to get things, and there have been times in my life when the only way I could afford to go to cons, or to Japan, was to bring stuff back and sell it. But I've NEVER bought five of a limited item and marked them up 300%. That's pure dickery.
The only way I'm ever going to buy five of something and mark them up 300% is if I find deadstock in an out-of-the-way store at original retail price; at that point I figure everyone else has had their chance. I did once finance an entire trip in the 90s after finding the motherlode of old Japanese Sailor Moon dolls on a sidestreet in Chinatown.
But I also don't understand why sellers who know there are 1000 people in line to buy 500 items are willing to sell 5 of them to the first in line (and I think those people are more likely to be reading this and to think about what is said here than child-stomping dickwads). You can say that they need to make money but if 1000 people are lined up they're going to make their money even if they turn the scalpers away--they can and should grow a pair of whatever and say no to people who want to buy 5 Ghoulias that there are only 1000 and there are more than 1000 people here, so sorry, you can't.
Lolita brands do a lot of limited releases. There are tons of people who WOULD behave like this (I've met them) if they could get away with it, but the shops don't let them. Some of their strategies for crowd control are pretty dickish* but there are two that I heartily endorse:
1) Not selling stuff to people who camp out in front of the store, behave like jerks in the store, and so on; and
2) Limiting how many of the limited items people are allowed to buy. If Angelic Pretty does a limited edition print in three colours you can't go in there and buy a dress, sleeveless dress and skirt in each colour just because you got there first. You can buy two main items, period, and one set of accessories that goes with each. (Main items are dresses, sleeveless dresses and skirts.) When Baby the Stars Shine Bright does grab bags and throws $400 worth of stuff in a bag that they sell for $150 and $100 for $30, you can only buy ONE bag at each price point. That means if I want to sell a bag to pay for another bag, I have to make the adult decision of which bag I want to keep without even opening them.
These are sound strategies for preventing nasty people from showing us all how low they can go--and for preventing people from shorting themselves on sleep, food and water to stand in lines for so long they become people they wouldn't recognise or like if they realised it. It does mean that people who sell their AP limited edition dresses sell them at a markup, because the dress they sell is one that they don't get to wear, but it also keeps teenage girls from having catfights at 4 AM on Kearny Street over a place in line to buy dresses and it keeps those of us who work normal jobs from not getting a dress because teenage girls CAN get up at 4 AM and sit on Kearny Street until the shop opens even if it is a weekday.
* Dickish, not recommended strategies: Only selling rare/limited items at special parties to which only people who dropped $30-100 at your store in the past month are invited; it's fine to have those parties and let people meet the designers, but a 15 year old who has saved for 6 months to buy a $300 dress for her prom shouldn't have to buy a bag the month before to get a chance to buy it. Not allowing people who don't want to buy a dress or skirt because it doesn't come in their size to buy one pair of socks or one headbow out of the limited collection without buying a dress or skirt which they HAVE to scalp because they can't wear it.
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