 something comes across my desk that makes me question a lot of things you know for reference I live in the United States of America North America so our economy works in different ways than other areas of the world so this might not apply to those other areas of the world because I obviously can only speak for how the economy works where I live but scalping is a big deal in the United States it's completely legal you can buy any item basically anywhere in the United States and resell it for anything that you want you want to go buy a bag of sunflower seeds that I'm like I'm staring at right now for two dollars at the gas station and resell it you know online or to a body for ten dollars you can do that good luck but someone might be willing to pay that ten dollar premium the only thing you can't do is false advertising I can't go buy this $2 bag of sunflower seeds take it out of its package repackage it into something else and claim that you know these are special sunflower seeds that come from this exclusive part of the world because that's a lie that's false advertising that is actually illegal so the reason I'm talking about this is because there was a story that kind of broke and not a lot of people saw it but broke over on Neogaf and actually it originated right here on YouTube about the NES classic and even the Nintendo switch and how there is apparently a group of three people that are considered to be liquidators and for those who don't know liquidators essentially acquire assets for way under what they were originally bought for because they're not selling and then they hope to once they acquire these assets obviously they pay for them they hope to over time liquidate those assets for a profit and this is significant to think about because you can make a lot of money doing this but it's usually off the back of a failed product or you know someone went bankrupt and now they have all these assets that they need to get rid of and they're not going to get as much for him as they were originally but they'll get some money and liquidating is I don't really think there's anything wrong with liquidating you know yeah obviously liquidators make a lot of money but there may be people are still usually buying the products for less than what the original market value was so whatever it's fine I have no problem with liquidators but apparently this group of three that you know it's a it's one company we have no names you know they're worried about privacy and not having their warehouses raided and yada yada yada but these three people we're talking to another person who does a lot of scalping and there was this big long email chain with lots of images and pictures and I'm gonna throw some of up in the video of them having pallets upon pallets upon pallets of NES classic editions and Nintendo switch units and it almost looks like they're attaining these items before they hit retail so from manufacturing and shipping to the United States and from that point until it gets into retail warehouses you know out of Nintendo's warehouses and into retail ones there is an exchange happening and these aren't they are not claiming they know these are falling off the truck units they claim that they purchase these units where do they purchase them from the warehouses or directly from Nintendo or you know cut it cut a deal with manufacturers or if they're just people who smartly are examining eBay and Craigslist and all these you know they're really you know hawk eyeing waiting for someone to be frustrated and throw up that NES classic edition for $25 throw up that Nintendo switch unit for a hundred bucks you know I know that seems crazy because these you know even used not even brand new in package both the switch and the NES classic edition still sell for more than their MSRP in general but you will find deals out there they go super fast that's why you don't see them very often but occasionally you'll find deals where people sell them at less than MSRP just because they're just want to get rid of it right they put it up in a garage sale even just because they want to get rid of it so they could be getting the units this way you know because they claim that they sell or at least one of the email exchanges suggests that they paid like $250 per unit but they're selling like NES classic editions as an example for just $140 on Amazon so it's highly doubtful they paid $200 plus dollars for an NES classic edition just to sell it for significantly less but this came to light because obviously GameStop and ThinkEat recently had you know brand new NES classic edition bundles and now Amazon themselves have like eight different truck locations like this is where you can buy Amazon products in person temporarily off of basically off the truck and they're selling brand new units of NES classic editions at MSRP and you know a lot of people wanting what happened how did GameStop did Amazon just hold back stock which you know GameStop you know they were actually selling things at a little bit higher price so you could argue they did that to make money whereas like Amazon selling them an MSRP that won't make any sense from the whole bad products just to resell them at the same amount of money they would have made if they didn't hold the product back like there's no advantage for a GameStop here or for Amazon in this case so it sounds like a lot of these units might have been obtained as an example from this liquidator and this is just one that we know about that there could be several different liquidation groups or scalper groups and there's one thing you know if someone got a whole of 10 units like that seems reasonable right for someone to Hawkeye different retailer websites and different in-person stores and end up with 10 units and resell them like like that's a that kind of scalping market while it sucks it doesn't bother me as much because I mean that's that's just how the American economy works and I'm not gonna lie like I've used to when I was a kid I used to buy Pokemon cards so I could resell them and hope I hit on a rare card so like it's okay I don't view this in as negative a light as some people do but to have one specific person I mean you'll see in some of these email chain that putting up you know where they say we have 500 units we have 800 units NES classic we have a thousand Nintendo switch units this to me is just mind-boggling the length at which scalpers and liquidation companies which by the way like you know I'm gonna consider well this is a liquidation company which is probably why they had you know 200 300 thousand dollars they needed to purchase all this stuff you know they are they are acting like scalpers because these are products that they're not liquidated to turn to turn a profit they're scalping at the turn of profit because these are things that are selling and are in high demand whereas liquidators are usually trying to turn profits on things that aren't selling very well and aren't in high demand so this is like the opposite of what liquidators usually do but obviously there's a high profit margin to be made here if they're somehow able to get a hold of these units between when they're made and when they hit retail stores and again this is just one person doing it and apparently when I was going through the neo-gap thread just to see if there's any additional information on this guy named Gregor the fel hand says I mean you know this video is silly because it was reported in the video and it says I work in this industry resellers and liquidation only 30% of the sales of the company I work for is in video games a three-man team buying one plus million in stock as an example and slowly selling it is becoming more standard if you FBA aka send the item to Amazon so Amazon fulfills it all you do is select a price and or sell to Amazon at a set price then ship the items in bulk to Amazon to handle Amazon takes a 25% cut on most video games now and on top of that a percentage of the gross sales and a listing fee for video games even as liquidators this three-man company most likely spends 60 plus hours a week trolling eBay and other sites to snatch up the classic that go up cheap and it's standard policy or standard practice to raise prices on high demand items even if they have lots in stock especially if they have lots in stock that's just basic capitalism supply and demand they could be buying could they be buying knockoffs from China yep and have they have probably sold some knockoffs from China knowingly or unknownly it happens resellers of retro stuff aren't the devil they act as a buffer to people that don't want to buy from Bob you know aka ran a person off eBay a good reseller will test clean and complete the system before sending it out so in that sense you're paying for peace of mind resellers and target new items and buy everything to increase cost I'm not a fan of but that's how the market works this guy suggesting that this is actually really common what both with old items obviously we know that but also with brand new items and while they personally frown upon it it is something that a lot of people do do so again it's a frustrating situation for us as consumers like wrapping my mind around the fact that there is someone out there may potentially several different companies out there that have warehouses with pallets of NES classic editions with pallets of Nintendo switch units just sitting there and being listed up for a ton more money just really it really irks me this is the point at point where I think there needs to somehow be away there isn't currently but a legal way to limit this a little bit on high-demand products I don't know if there's any way they could actually enforce a law on this like allow people to still scalp but then at the same time have a limit on how much they can scalp or how much they're allowed to keep in stock I don't know if if that could ever be legally enforced I think a lot of judges would throw out any attempt even by the federal government to attempt to to putting in restrictions on this I don't think it would ever pass Senate so many people make money off this and you know it's about making money you know whatever and obviously you know the counterbows is well Nintendo could just make so many of these units flood the market with switches flood the market with NES classics that ends up wrecking the value of having all these units in a warehouse and that's possible like obviously Nintendo's eventually going to catch up with switch stock like they're not gonna keep trying to short-changing the market they're going to catch up eventually and when they do obviously all these units sitting in a warehouse and aren't you know I'm gonna be able to get liquidated for anything other than MSRP so they're hoping to sell these units before Nintendo can catch up and when it comes to NES classic edition they can take their sweet time selling the NES classic edition or they sell off some stock to GameStop or they sell some stock to Amazon and you know what when they're selling their individual stuff like they can take their time selling it because it's not going to be made anymore so even if people as an example won't pay a hundred and forty dollars for an NES classic today won't pay two hundred dollars for an NES classic today three four five years from now people might be willing to pay that because it's it's it's gonna be even rarer and rarer to see NES classic editions anywhere so yeah it it it sucks that this happens and I as a consumer feel frustrated I'm upset that I don't have an NES classic edition I do have a Nintendo switch so like you know I have one of the two high you know high demand products here but it just frustrates me knowing that there are specific companies out there that do this I think in the back of my mind I always knew that the scalper mentality and the liquidator mentality like I knew it was infecting video games I knew that this happened but I was always in denial that it was this bad right like having consumers you know that the one is a sell stuff they bought or purposely buy you know 510 units to sell you know we've seen it like oh where someone has a whole trunk full of Nintendo switches it's like I know that stuff happens the pictures are out there but like we're not talking about trunk fulls of the Nintendo switches or a single pallet of NES classic editions we're talking about pallets upon pallets and like a like warehouses full of this stuff oh man it sucks it really really really sucks Nintendo switch I'm not as worried about in fact they're only even selling the switch apparently on Amazon for something like a 20 or $40 profit so that you know they obviously know that the market for switch isn't going to be around very long in terms of paying more for the unit but yeah I this this is obviously just it's frustrating that it happens but welcome to America man I man I just feel bad for for general consumers and again you know it's not like Nintendo's not you know not partially to blame for this because of them not not I'm not going to blame a master for the switch because it sounds like there's a parts shortage things like Nintendo it's not necessarily 100% their fault they can't keep up a demand but the NES classic Nintendo did stop making it despite the fact that the final month they they were producing it it was the second best selling console in North America behind the Nintendo switch so Nintendo literally was owning the market that that month for console sales so I Nintendo should have kept making it obviously with the still selling that much and tapered it off once numbers started to dip but whatever we got the SNES classic edition coming now which they claim is going to have more units and should be easier to find but yeah because the story I was gonna talk about today was how Nintendo might have told Walmart to cancel all those pre-orders but yeah this felt like a bigger deal to me I guess even though it's something I think we all know or you'll think happens or maybe we didn't think it was this bad but oh man some days I wish I lived in a different country anyways I am Nathaniel Ruffeljens from Nintendo Prime if you like this video you know what to do if you dislike the video hit that dislike button I'll have links to where you can find all this information in the description below including the various youtubers that helped uncover it and yeah I will catch you guys in the next one