It has everything to do with it Cory. Canada sucks, plain and simple. And not all of us live within a short 30-60 minute drive to US stores. Closest ones to me are 2.5 hours, if I want to hit a TRU it's 4 hours. One way.
A couple of examples. The only unleashed that have been up here are Maul, Jango, Padme, Vader (1st), Anakin and recently the Boba wave. But it arrived some two months after I received my pieces from Newforce, which was about 6 weeks after guys like OCB received theirs. It's too big a gamble to wait on stuff.
As far as single carded figures go I live in a city of ~700,000 people. We have two TRUs. At any given time they will get in all of one case of figures (12 pieces). If you aren't at the store at exactly the right time, you won't find anything. From Saga, we crapped out after Palpatine and saw nothing new until the Carkoon Fett wave, which about 4-6 cases have shown up thus far and all dissappear the same day. Walmart is no longer carrying SW product. We have no Target. Zellers, which approximates K-mart is sporadic. The last wave they brought in prior to this winter was the Bespin Luke wave last summer. Just prior to Christmas one of the six stores in the city brought in one case of figures, clone wars basic figures. One case! Nothing at the other stores, including the one I live a 3 minute walk away from and check 7 days a week. At none of our retailers did we see stuff between Palpatine and Fett. That's more than a few figures.
You are right though, ignoring them is the best way. The problem is that I think of Star Wars people based on what I see on this site. Yourself, Scott, Jim, Matt and som many more people I'll neglect to mention have been super cool and helpful that I've really not had a hard time and where and when I can I try and return the favor. There just aren't that many opportunities. I just get irritated with people that are smug charging what amounts to a whole lot of cash over the regular costs. If I drive down, I'm going anyway, so I really don't expect people to pay for my gas for the journey. Say I buy a deluxe figure at $10 at Walmart. I bring it back and have to pay the taxes to get it back in Canada, that's about $1.00 Cdn and the exchange cost on that $10 figure is $12.50 Cdn. So reasonably I could charge $13.50-14 for the figure right? Why then do people feel justified charging $20+. I get it when retailers do it, they have retail costs associated but private collectors? Nope.
Ultimately, who cares. I was in a crappy mood when I started this thread and felt a need to vent. Nothing more.
Spooky, I remember that thread about the Cantina sets. Pretty funny as I sure don't remember lots of folks (or that guy in particular) happily offering Canucks commtech Stormtroopers for $2 each.
