Christmas/Holiday Shopping

[Jmustang1968]

So it seems the 2 hot items this year are the Nintendo Classic and the Hatchimals toys. While I have no interest in the NES, my soon to be 4 yr old daughter has been asking for a Hatchimal for a bit now. I had planned to get her one for Christmas without anticipating their popularity. If anyone comes across one in a store and wouldnt mind shipping, I would be more than happy covering said expenses.

[Fragems]

Over at cheap ass gamer they have most of the black Friday ads that have leaked already. Really not many spectacular gaming deals so far sadly . There are a few okay deals but most of the stuff has been at the same price if not cheaper during other recent sale . Especially peeved by the so-so deals at best buy which are made even more mediocre by the fact that the game club unlocked discount for members is unusable on black friday so no additional 20% off .

https://www.cheapassgamer.com/topic/358 ... er-thread/

I'll keep an eye out for Hatchimals hadn't heard of those yet so maybe they aren't big in my area.

Edit: also if you haven't heard of it before http://brickseek.com/ is a pretty good site for checking inventories. From my experience working at Toy's R Us though calling a store directly with the sku or item number can net you some pretty good intel since pretty much anything that gets published online draws the scalpers in droves . Heck if you get somebody who knows what they are doing you can probably get info from the national inventory system for some chains which is really handy if you can coordinate with people out of state. I did that for people at TRU a few times.

Looks like the scalpers hit them pretty hard around here nothing for 100 miles as far as I can tell .

[Michi]

I've never heard of the Hatchimals, either. But based on the jacked-up prices they look to be pretty popular. On the off chance I see one, I'll snag one for you.

[Jmustang1968]

Appreciate it guys. Ive been working long hours and I have a long commute to work until we move, so I have been unable to shop much for them. I also refuse to pay a jacked up scalper fee, but I wouldnt mind paying small finder's fee for someone here. My wife would try and get one more often, but my daughter is always with her, and would ruin the surprise.

[Ziggy]

I had to Google image search them, I never heard of them either. Not likely that I'll be in too many stores this holiday season, but if I see one I'll be sure to snag it for ya.

[marurun]

What about on-line from Target, Toys-R-Us, and the like?

[Jmustang1968]

What about on-line from Target, Toys-R-Us, and the like?

Ive looked but says sold out. I usually do 95% (made up number) of my shopping online. I will keep looking, but thats how I would prefer to get it.

[marurun]

Use their local store inventory function. Find a store near your commute and check their inventory.

[Jmustang1968]

Use their local store inventory function. Find a store near your commute and check their inventory.

They are typically scooped up by scalpers or other parents minutes of being placed on shelves. I am in some local bst groups on Facebook and there are a few threads talking about it. Hard to find these hot items like this in larger metropolitan areas it seems.

[Fragems]

I looked around last night and nationally only around 11% of the stores have them in stock and those stock numbers aren't constantly updated so that's like 1/10 stores a day has it in stock and probably not in stock for long .

There are literally people who have no job outside of scalping so it's hard to compete it mostly comes down to luck and timing.

You might get lucky and have something happen like the season where I worked at toys r us though. A week before Christmas we got a massive stock of about 5/7 of the hot items that season. Suddenly we had 50+ of the batman robots, and Elsa dolls that people had been flipping for $200+ weeks before and we never sold out again .

Really though try calling into a store or going in and asking them to check the national inventory or for the closest ones. At TRUs it was as simple as typing in the sku and I could find the nearest store in the nation with one in stock as well as occasionally seeing if somethings were in transit.