Thieves and Hogs - Tainters of Collecting

Two things have come to my attention as I've watched the insanity of Cars collecting. The first is hopefully a short-term issue, and constitutes the "Thieves" in the title of this article. As the Big Blu-Ray McQueen promotion comes to an end, we caught a glimpse of people being thieves by opening up the Blu-Ray disks at Wal-Mart's, etc. and stealing the codes inside the packaging. How sad and pathetic these people are to resort to such a low thing! You couldn't just do the right thing and pay for the darn disk?! I guess future promotions of this sort will have to be kept under lock and key to thwart the thieves.

There has also been stealing of the newer Cars out of the Target exclusive Dinoco 400 set. The thieves buy the set, then switch out the Vinyl Toupee, Octane Gain and No Stall Cars, with older commonly available characters, and return the set attempting to pull one over on the store. The crooks are also blatantly shoplifting! They are opening the new character 3 packs containing Charlie Checker, Lightning Ramone, Dirt Track Doc Hudson and the NEW Gold Mia & Gold Tia and simply stealing the individual Car. I saw a pack that was opened and missing a Charlie Checker just last week when I was in Target. Again, I can't believe the greed and common thievery. I hope the store security catches some of these low lives and makes an example out of them!

The second and more long-term issue constitutes the "Hogs" of Cars collecting. These are the people who are basically "Stalking" the Wal-Mart toy department staff. They gather around the toy department and linger as the "Stocking" begins around 11:00 pm. They started out by swarming the stockers while they put the Cars on the pegs and literally grab up all the newer characters. They've gotten to the point where now, they are brazenly opening up the store's boxes and taking out the Cars before they are put on the shelves! These pigs are the reason you can't find the NEW Characters for weeks and months! These are the Ebay Selling Hogs! I've seen this in other categories of collecting as well.

As long as the Secondary Market is impatient, frantic and willing to overpay for an item the minute it comes out, greed will continue to dictate this kind of behavior. What is crazy, is that these Cars Die Cast Toys aren't even limited in production. If you are simply patient, they will eventually appear in your local stores in abundance. Believe me, a Secondary Market is needed in all categories of collecting to ensure a hobby's longevity, but true scarcity should dictate supply and demand, not hoarding and over reaction. This makes collecting no fun, and quite frankly a chore!

I got impatient and purchased Sully and Mike on Ebay and I regret I did it. I overpaid, and as you all know, you can find them everywhere! The Moral of the Story...be patient!! Don't buy into the mania. Think of how stocks become over priced, look at the mess our housing market is in, and how about the days of $1500 Beanie Babies! Very few make out when people act without prudent thinking. Don't feed the Thieves and Hogs, slaughter them with patience.

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