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In recent years, whenever popular products are launched in the Japanese model market, they attract a large number of scalpers to compete and resell them at several times higher prices, which has caused strong dissatisfaction among model enthusiasts. They demand that model companies and even the government crack down severely on scalpers. However, while players criticize scalpers’ behavior, scalpers often make excuses for themselves to conceal the legitimacy of their actions.
Recently, a Japanese model YouTuber nicknamed “Eternal Cang” discussed from an economic perspective that no matter how scalpers defend themselves, their existence is always unreasonable. His viewpoint has gained recognition from a large number of netizens.
Eternal Cang “is a player who is passionate about model making and shares the process of model making on his own channel.
Recently, he expressed his views on this phenomenon on social media platform X.Yellow cattle often use the excuse of “if the shop is willing to sell to yellow cattle, it means it is harmless to the shop and the manufacturer”.
However, ‘Eternal Cang’ points out that from an economic perspective, the behavior of scalpers clearly hinders economic development and should not exist. He clearly demonstrated this through a set of diagrams.
Assuming that scalpers hoard a large amount of goods and inflate the price of the model.
So the model that was originally priced at 1650 yen now requires 10000 yen to purchase.
This means that a model player with a budget of 10000 yen can only purchase one model at this time.
If there were no scalpers involved, this player could purchase multiple models and peripheral products with the same budget.
In the meantime,The hype of scalpers can lead to a reduction in the economic scale of the model industry and ultimately ruin the entire industry.
Because for shop owners and manufacturers, players’ original budget can purchase multiple products, but due to scalpers’ involvement in profit, it is intercepted, resulting in the inability to create economic value that could have been circulated in the industry.
This theory has won the recognition of a large number of netizens, and he further added:
We cannot only consider our own interests. Some players purchase multiple models to bring multiple benefits to the manufacturer. Some players use their remaining funds for other consumption in addition to purchasing models, thus contributing to the economy. There are also some players who purchase various props and materials to improve the quality of the models. The speculative behavior of scalpers cuts off these additional economic benefits
He questioned, who can guarantee that the money earned by scalpers will flow back to merchants or retail stores? Taking game consoles as an example, the PS5 once triggered malicious hoarding by scalpers, resulting in a sustained downturn in the PS5 market and affecting the sales of game software, forming a vicious cycle.
The money earned by scalpers will not automatically compensate for the damage they have caused to the economy. Once the market trend cools down, the opportunities lost by manufacturers and software companies are irreversible.
In addition, due to the involvement of scalpers, manufacturers and retail stores are unable to accurately predict market demand. Moreover, scalpers are not formal retail channels, and if buyers discover defects in their products, they cannot seek reasonable after-sales service.
When consumers gradually withdraw from the market due to the inability to purchase their desired products, scalpers will not be responsible for the entire industry and will only walk away.
‘Eternal Cang’ emphasizes that his viewpoint is just one example of the phenomenon of many dissatisfied scalpers.
Refusing to purchase goods from scalpers is actually for the sake of the healthy development of the entire industry.