Archived People hanging out in toys waiting for the push

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I had a collector/reseller take a hot wheels box off my Uboat when I wasn't looking today. I had already pushed a ton of them, but he just had to look through that box. Needless to say this is getting old quickly.
 
sfslackey said:
I had a collector/reseller take a hot wheels box off my Uboat when I wasn't looking today. I had already pushed a ton of them, but he just had to look through that box. Needless to say this is getting old quickly.
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Our toys person will put the hot wheels at the electronics counter and wait until the aisle is clear before she still stock them.
 
no nix nein said:
Our toys person will put the hot wheels at the electronics counter and wait until the aisle is clear before she still stock them.
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Good idea *but they could probably take it from electronics, a lot of the time there is no one at the desk, it's a big area. It has often been hard for me to find an electronics person while doing SFS.* I almost feel like I will maybe hold them til last. I had already pushed all I could by 8am, I didn't need them taking a full box off my Uboat and opening it themselves. At least my boss wasn't too angry at me about it and was more angry at them. Not cool hot wheels collectors.
 
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Opening a sealed factory box is a special occasion for collectors. It’s like getting the first comment on your favorite persons page, Then that person replies back to you.

Collectors want to see EVERY car, they’re looking for mis-prints, defects, unannounced one-off cars, and they show up in normal case packs.

Most collectors will be respectful with a little aggression because if competition. Just respect their game, they’re not AP threats. Getting booted from a store would deck their hobby and they know it
 
sfslackey said:
Good idea *but they could probably take it from electronics, a lot of the time there is no one at the desk, it's a big area. It has often been hard for me to find an electronics person while doing SFS.* I almost feel like I will maybe hold them til last. I had already pushed all I could by 8am, I didn't need them taking a full box off my Uboat and opening it themselves. At least my boss wasn't too angry at me about it and was more angry at them. Not cool hot wheels collectors.
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Ah, our toys person doesn't come in to stock until 12 or so.
 
I used to work overnight, and when we were stocking the toys, one guy would always take the collectable hot wheels and purchase them before he left. I know they talked to him about not doing that, but one tl would never tell him anything, I think they were cousins, something related Idk, but anyways the collectors going in early never had the chance to get any, don't know if he is still there doing that. He sold them online.
 
I actually had a 6-7 year old come up and ask me where the hot wheels were today (closing shift). I was almost astounded that someone other that a 25-30+ dude was interested in hot wheels. I was more than happy to tell them exactly where they were (I know it very well at this point). Honestly, I am more interested in the the cool tracks and gadgets they have now than the individual cars themselves. Lots of nostalgia there for me.
 
Hardlinesmaster said:
Hot wheels are getting a digital chip to avoid counterfeiters.
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That's nice actually. There is such a huge market on these things. I wonder if the price would go up. As it is resellers can buy an $1 hot wheel and sell it for $60. Doesn't make much sense to me, but what ever floats your boat.
 
Hardlinesmaster said:
I would taken the unopened case of hot wheels, here is the rules. You are not blocking my aisle. Please fix the pegs so I can, put up the whole case. You can do that for me. If you want the empty box, take it. Check back with me during the week, if we have more cars, I will get them for you. I try to hold nothing back. We have about 15 collectors come by, at least twice a week.
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Don't let them have the boxes. They take out the rares, refill them with the commons, and reseal them. Then they either return them to us or sell them as unopened to scam other collectors.
 
Tyloric said:
I tell the hot wheel collectors......They must clean up the area, stock the product, and purchase no less than 10 for me to give them the box to open.
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I want to do something like this sooo much. I would even open the box for them as long as they buy 10 of whose 0.99 cent hot wheels they love so much, but talk about the various managers that would be angry at me. I know you are probably joking, but a person can dream.
 
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We've had two guys try to come in the back while we're unloading the truck to get some hot wheels. My TL had to yell at them to get out.
After that, we hold all the hot wheels in the back and push them last.
 
obso1337 said:
We've had two guys try to come in the back while we're unloading the truck to get some hot wheels. My TL had to yell at them to get out.
After that, we hold all the hot wheels in the back and push them last.
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This is what we are told to do, but they can hang out for that long so what difference does it make?
 
Yeahhh I normally leave those in the back till last. And tell them “I haven’t seen any come off the truck.” We have around 10-15 collectors come in pretty regularly at our store. One of them is even a team member... I have to hid them from that TM too. Most of our collectors all leave a decent mess of my zone after they are done sifting through them. Just annoying. Had some take boxes off my uboat plenty of times. I just take it right back from them and tell them that I can’t let them do that. That’s when I stopped stocking them with everything else at the same time.
 
AlwaysBackstock said:
Yeahhh I normally leave those in the back till last. And tell them “I haven’t seen any come off the truck.” We have around 10-15 collectors come in pretty regularly at our store. One of them is even a team member... I have to hid them from that TM too. Most of our collectors all leave a decent mess of my zone after they are done sifting through them. Just annoying. Had some take boxes off my uboat plenty of times. I just take it right back from them and tell them that I can’t let them do that. That’s when I stopped stocking them with everything else at the same time.
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Have none them are TMs, that seems like it could be a conflict of interest. I feel bad straight up lying to a few of them for some reason, just doesn't feel right to me. I guess I should get over that, but (hypothetically) what if they leave and decide to randomly come back just to see it all stocked. These people can be super hardcore and then they will never leave me alone after that. I will usually say I don't know for sure or I put some other ones out already that day (which would be true).
 
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I’m not sure if Target ever hosted them, but during my first stint with Kmart (2008-2013), the stores would host regular Hotwheels ‘collector events.’

Basically, stores would get cases with new release cars in them. On the morning of the event, collectors would get raffle tickets and we would draw who got to go through the boxes first. We would open the boxes in front of the collectors, draw tickets to determine picking order, set a timer for 3 minutes, let them get however many cars they were allowed, and then swap out customers. Rinse and repeat until each collector was able to go through the boxes. Once everyone went, we would dump the remaining cartons into shopping carts and people could go through the remaining cars at their leisure.

I’m not sure how actively corporate advertised the events, but we got a LOT of Participants.

They are always annoying too. We would have a couple grandfathers who would bring in their young grandchildren and the grandpas would “coach” their grandkids on which cars to grab. Of course, the kids would cry/whine that grandpa’s choice wasn’t what they wanted, etc.

People would complain about that, if we didn’t stop people from looking at the EXACT moment the timer rang, or that we were hiding additional cases in the back.

One time we had to have loss prevention kick a couple collectors out during the event. Two guys got into an argument over multiple kids (from the same family) getting to go at the same time and asking dad if “that’s one you’re looking?” Almost turned physical... over Hotwheels.

I do not miss hosting those events, but I do miss the people watching and seeing how crazy people got over toy cars.
 
We've had them ever since I started working at my store. They once asked an electronics TM (back when that's what they were called) to pull the shipper so they could look through it, then left it literally laying on the floor when they were done. That TM learned their lesson that day 😂
 
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