You make a fair point here, and I can some what agree with it. For the seller it's an investment then. It sucks for buyers but that's also the market and business. What it's worth now is what it's worth on the market. If absolutely every single QS001 was bought by collectors intending to keep and display it originally I may have not been able to get one brand new or at all even.
This is true and the big, and possibly the only, positivity about scalping. However, you have to realise that your gain is another person's loss. If people are buying multiple figures or even one figure to keep for later selling on the aftermarket at higher prices, yes it means someone who missed their chance to get it can get it a couple of years later, but it also means that those wanting it at the time of release weren't able to get it, and it also means that if they're unable to afford the huge amounts of money they're upscaled to then they're completely going to miss out. Some people just can't afford to or are willing enough to throw another couple of hundreds at a toy, and this doesn't mean that they shouldn't be trying to buy them in the first place.
The aftermarket is a natural market anyway, if everyone buys one and it sells out but a person decides to not open theirs and sell it down the line, sure, the market dictates it a rarer piece, especially for being mint and of course the price will go up. However, too many people who played Runescape and considered themselves merchants buy these pieces on purpose capitalising the nature of the aftermarket and deepening supply and demand further.
Again, if you bought one and just never opened it, it's hardly scalping, the after market price is the after market price. It's the people who buy multiples never intending to actually own or open it that try to keep the supply to increase the aftermarket demand.
Just to clarify also, I'm not talking about selling on a figure you did intend to own and open and want to sell later on, the price you put is reflective of the market, but in my opinion that's heavily dictated by the scalpers who keep the mint items to sell really highly..