The (reselling) game has changed
I've been a long time collector of Monster High and recent collector of Rainbow High. Things are so different online now than when I was collecting Monster High while it was still in stores. I was in my early twenties, going to college on financial aid and working various part time short term jobs to help my parents with house expenses. I didn't have a lot of spare money for dolls so I would sometimes resell (gasp) ones I found that were rare or more sought after. I lived in a small city and often dolls that were really desired online would sit at Toys R Us and Target for months. I didn't have the money to buy a bunch, usually one doll for me and one to sell. Or more often, one at a time I could sell so eventually I could afford a doll to keep.
I'm not going to say that collectors were keen on resellers back then, generally selling a doll for way over retail was frowned upon in the circles I frequented. But a little extra to cover your gas, time, and incentive to sell? That was fair. If someone had their dolls priced too high, you just didn't buy it or you'd haggle them down with trades. It was pretty easy to spot someone who wasn't a collector since they would generally want nothing in trade. This doesn't include people that were selling their collection for emergency money, I'm talking about people that refused to post any sort of trade list on the forum. They generally also were asking some ridiculous price, their doll was always RARE HTF no matter how far that was from the truth.
But now I see collectors being absolutely rabid against resellers, and I understand why, but I also think it's lost its nuance. Someone who is charging $10 more for a playline doll to cover gas, time, and a little profit is demonized just as much as someone who marks a limited collector doll up by $100. I'm seeing a larger group of people using bots to buy Monster High releases to the point where nearly no one without bots can buy one. Bots and reselling have been around for longer than I've been collecting, but now it's to a ridiculous degree. People showing a cart full of boxes after they've cleaned out a whole shelf because they know they can create the demand to fit their supply.
And on the Monster High side of things I definitely blame Mattel's terrible lack of communication about drops and limiting even playline dolls to a severe degree. I'm not one of the conspiracy theorists that claim Mattel is in the pocket of the resellers, I think they they just like being able to hype up the fact that a release sold out in two minutes and they don't even think about the secondary market at all.
It's even more disappointing that they didn't go the route of the Hot Wheels club and offer presale and limited drops that are transparent about date, price and quantity.
I like collecting dolls. I like buying, trading, selling dolls, it's fun. But right now the secondary market has turned into a horrible beast I don't recognize and I hope that eventually the reseller hype dies down.
