There is no reason to bash Ebay or sellers for any product that was branded as "Limited Edition" or "Exclusive Edition" to begin with. Sideshow creates this problem themselves by purposely creating a limited supply of their products. If they created enough for everyone who wants one to get then there would be no issue to begin with, so it's really Sideshow you should blame, not the Ebay sellers.
Here are some Examples:
1st Balrog, limited to 1000 pieces, goes from $300 retail to $2000+ on Ebay.
2nd Balrog, unlimited edition, goes from $150 retail to $90 on Ebay.
You could argue about the presence of the first one over the second but since both are products of Sideshow and both are of similar quality and the same character I would expect their "market" prices to behave in a similar fashion, but instead the Unlimited balrog statue ensured that every collector who wanted one had ample time to get it, and thus there was no secondary market, even a year later it goes for barely 50% of it's original price.
1st GG Vader bust, limited to 3500ish, retailed for $45 goes regularly for $200-300
2nd GG Vader bust, limited to 20000, retailed for $45 goes for $21-25 on ebay
Both are of basically identical crafstmanship, size, and quality. You may call the second one a poll-dancer but there isn't anything particularly strange about him (unlike the full-size GG statue which just looks strange) and again we see the difference between 400% and 50% of original value
Can you honestly say that you feel better because the Bespin Exclusive Han has a mynock refridgerator magnet? Or the Exclusive Jedi Luke has an extra blaster? Do you even intend to have Luke holding the blaster when he's posed on the shelf, or are you much more likely to keep it in the box and have him using his lightsaber?
In fact, the entire practice of creating packaging with completely transparent windows to allow you to view it without touching is designed to feed the secondary market. Why else would we have these fancy fold-out boxes that allows you to showcase your figure without ever opening the box?
As long as Sideshow is purposely limiting the quantities of their products they are directly encouraging the secondary market. If they wanted to shut down Ebay sellers all they have to do is make as many of them as people want. But they know their customers WANT to buy things that only they can have, and those customers WANT the prices to go up on Ebay so they can feel like the plastic doll they just bought has an intrinsic value. So stop with the scalper bashing already - they are only making your collection more valuable.
how can they sell something that they don't even have it.
