I’m sorry but this whole article, while painting an accurate picture of the problem, sounds more like a scalper apologetic when it comes to the solution. “Just don’t but from them” isn’t a realistic answer if collectors want to continue to be in the collecting game. Scalping in my area has become such a huge problem that one could say the manufacturers may as well be sending their entire inventory directly to the scalpers. And it’s not just individual scalpers. There are stores here that actually send their employees out on a daily basis to make sure collectors have no choice but to go to them at a significant markup. The entire collecting market (in the 7th largest city in the country no less) around here is totally controlled by the same 4 scalpers and two stores, who hit every Target, Walmart, and Walgreens within an 84 mile, 3-city span almost daily. While it may be true that manufacturers have an interest in partnering with stores, and vice versa, how long will that interest last if the collectors just quit altogether, which is what I see happening here more and more. The idea that people will shop in a store more often if they’re hunting for exclusives is laughable. People hunting for exclusives don’t spend any appreciable time in any one store. They run inside, head straight for the home shelf, find it empty, then run right out on their way to the next Store, hoping to find whatever scraps the scalpers may have left (by accident, I’m sure). Stores and manufacturers absolutely MUST do more to prevent scalping, otherwise scalpers with no customers is all they’ll have left, and a scalper with no customers will abandon the hobby also, leaving no audience for the product. I’ll tell you what I’ve had to resort to...if I somehow walk into a store at just the right time and find the exclusives on the shelf, I take the one with damaged packaging since I’m an “open to display” collector, then I intentionally damage the packaging of exactly half of what’s left, making the items less marketable to scalpers but now accessible to those who want to open and display. It that a crap move? Probably. But that’s what the hobby has become.