The prices on the 40th anniversary figures are just insane, to the extent that I have to believe that Hasbro has a hand in the scalping market. This is a well known practice with the scalping of concert tickets, where promoters, talent, etc. artificially limit the availability of seats and then sell them through back channels to take a sizeable piece of the resale market. Currently, here in Australia, consumer watchdogs are investigating Ticketmaster's resale website for just such activity.
In our case, there is a completely intentional 'limited' production of figures (and/or 'exclusive' editions) to leave the market dry and collectors seriously hungry (and we all know there's no collector hungrier than a
Star Wars collector
denied). Hasbro then supplies a select group of (online) sellers with bulk lots of figures, who sell them way above retail on the secondary market to meet 'demand', and Hasbro makes a killing on the 'resale'.
I mean - is this a hobby, or the calculated milking dry of the fan base?
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Star-Wa...583981?hash=item46620ac62d:g:JXUAAOSwBOtY-7Gw
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Star-Wa...437707?hash=item466236518b:g:du0AAOSwVm5Y~5UW