It's a great question and something I have thought about myself several times. I frequently come across rare/HTF figures in my hunts and have occasionally bought them and put them up for bid on eBay. Some people would call this scalping but I prefer to think of it as simply relocating the figures from a dusty peg to someone's hands that actually wants it.

In those situations I always try to let the marketplace determine the price. So I would set the starting price at the MSRP and then let the bidding determine the ultimate value. That way you are offering the item for more or less exactly what you paid for it, and if the price goes up it is not your fault, it is simply a function of collector demand.

Where it gets a little tricky is when you start factoring in things like shipping and handling, sales tax, etc. That stuff can vary from state to state, and it can be hard to find just the right balance.

When you think about it, there HAS to be some sort of premium put on the item to cover things like: the cost of the actual shipping package, fuel costs driving to the post office, etc. You can roll that all up under shipping but it does start to add up.

That's pretty much my take. Sometimes eBay restricts how much you can charge for shipping and you are FORCED to jack up the list price just to avoid losing money. I have run into this problem several times shipping records.

Awesome, this is part of my ongoing Vintage focus as well. I have all the EWOKS carded and am steadily working my way through the DROIDS lot, although those are way more expensive.

I still need a carded Sise Fromm, C-3PO, A-Wing Pilot, and Boba Fett. And the ATL Interceptor, than I'm done.

There's a decent auction on eBay right now for a loose Sise Fromm, Sidious, if you're interested. Might be worth checking out.

I'm good, finally beat that bastage last night.

That wasn't a dream, you were shopping on hasbrotoyshop.com

Now THAT is funny. 

I actually had toy dream last night, probably cause I read this thread yesterday. I was frantically grabbing new TCW figures off a TRU in-store display. They were in some kind of funky new red packaging, and there were a lot of kids milling about that I had to navigate around. I don;t recall ever getting to the register though.

Hopefully that is just a premonition of my morning, as our TRU gets a new truck today and I have high hopes for new figures. We'll see.

So I finally got to the end of the game for the Wii, and WTF am I supposed to do with Darth Vader? How do you beat that guy?

I have looked around online but can't find any good walkthroughs for the Wii version. Everything is all "platform-jumping" and that gets you nowhere on the Wii version cause there's only one platform and if you jump off you just die everytime.

Tips?

Awesome IA, lmk if you are looking for any other vintage MOTU stuff, I have boxes of figures, vehicles etc I am looking to get rid of.

I have a few vintage toys I am still looking to re-add to my collection:

Pulsar
Shogun Warriors and Godzilla
ROM Spaceknight

Gets harder and harder to find this stuff on eBay complete and in decent condition.

Yeah, that was really more of a rhetorical question, I understand the timing but it is an ill-conceived and poorly executed plan at best. Most stores with half a brain would ramp up for a major new display like that and have plenty of product to put out on the pegs, new or otherwise. Even Target got this at first when they did their resets.

Practically speaking, it really does you no good to have a major eye-catching display like that right in the front of the store if the empty spaces outnumber the actual items on the shelf. "Hey Kids! Clone Wars starts again soon, so remember to watch the show but don't bother finding any of the toys here."

JTA feels me:

"The distribution woes are nightmarish and it seems the only people not losing years off of their lives worrying about finding figures are those who are ordering them online. Hmm, that sounds like a splendid idea now, doesn't it? We'll say the same trite thing over and over again. Let's wait and see what happens in a few weeks. But it's very disheartening to wait for product to come that never does."

Word!

Not so much a find - my local TRU changed the marquee area in the front to be Clone Wars themed. The graphic is pretty cool - it shows Anakin dueling with Savage Opress, Obi-Wan dueling with Ventress and Yoda and Dooku.

No new product, they essentially moved product from the home location in the boys action figure aisles over to the marquee - maybe they're expecting stuff next week. (one can only hope)

Didn't I read that you found new figures there later? Or am I crazy? Thought I recalled you posting about finding Jetpack Rex or some such thing.

None of the TRU's have reset here of course.