There’s a YouTuber who goes by the name of Ignition Diecast. He published a short video on March 5, 2024 that I thought was interesting. Not because I found it insightful or reasoned, but because I found it ridiculous and absurd.
For example, he said people who buy Hot Wheels diecast cars at retail and then later sell them for more money on the secondary market are terrorists.
At the 0:19 mark:
I know I gripe a lot about the unscrupulous resellers commonly referred to as scalpers like the people that buy something for like $6.50 and wait for it to be out of production and sell it for $22 and you have no choice to buy from the terrorists.
You have no choice? On the contrary. You always have a choice how you spend your money. When something is no longer available at retail, you have the choice to buy it on the secondary marketplace. That doesn’t mean you have to
Complaining about scalpers is its own hobby
I have been collecting Hot Wheels off and on since 1998. For as long as I can remember going all the way back to the Usenet days, there have been people complaining about “scalpers.”
It’s a derogatory term for people who buy collectibles at retail with the sole intention of reselling them on the secondary market. Supposedly scalpers deny true collectors the God given right to buy all the Hot Wheels they want at their favorite retail establishment.
Some people go to Walmart and if they cannot find a Super Treasure Hunt, a limited edition Hot Wheels vehicle with rubber tires and special paint, a scalper must have bought them all. These perpetual complainers never seem to realize that if the store doesn’t have any Super Treasure Hunts on the pegs, most likely a true collector like themselves got there first and bought them.
Ignition Diecast goes on to explain why he refers to resellers as terrorists.
At the 2:17 mark:
I call these people terrorists because what they do is they go to the retail stores they buy them all and everyone else barely sees them. A good example being the Hot Wheels Boulevard series. You never see those and then they go out of production and then they basically become eBay exclusives where you if you really want that particular car or cars you’ve got to pay what the the terrorists are asking in ransom because there’s nowhere else to get it unless you’re are really good at trading.
In Ignition Diecast’s world, people who buy Hot Wheels at retail with the intention of eventually reselling them on the secondary market are just like people who murder innocent people, including children, for political gain. Got it.