Buying toys from the flea markets - part 1

Traditionally, toy collectors used to ‘plough’ the flea markets hoping to ‘unearth’ some ‘hidden treasures’ at a steal from clueless sellers.  I started collecting My Little Pony toys this way around 10 years ago at the Clarke Quay flea market (it had since moved to China Square Central a few years back).  Of course over time, the sellers learnt to recognise the most sought after toys that collectors would ‘die for’ and the toy prices escalated accordingly over the weeks.  Bargaining was, and is still widely practised at flea markets here and much haggling takes place between buyers and sellers at the stalls every week.  Lasting friendships and partnerships were made and updates on toy news were exchanged during these weekly trips to the flea market.  

Soon, everyone started to know more about the popular toys that were ‘at the top of the charts’.  There seem to be a toy trend here and some toy collectors are toy ’speculators’ too.  They would buy extras of ‘hot in demand’ toys to resell to ‘latecomer’ toy collectors for some profit.  It is almost like a mini stock market where the ‘late novice’ toy collectors sometimes get ‘exploited’ and ‘lose out’.  This tends to happen to clueless ‘Rapid Growth’ collectors, who are so driven by their obssessive emotions to lay their hands on those highly sought after toys.  These ’Rapid Growth’ collectors sometimes fall for the sellers’ convincing sales pitch about the toys being very rare and very hard to find etc.  Hence they give in to temptation and subsequently overspend.  Most toy collectors overspent at least once at the flea market a.ka. toy resale market, when they went through this ‘Rapid Growth’ stage, including me.   

The so-called market prices for both MOC/MIB and loose toys are mostly set by the sellers.  It is not considered a market price until regular transactions take place at those prices.  Many ‘Newbie’ toy collectors could get mislead when they see for example, a MOC Transformers movie deluxe figure Bumblebee priced at SGD 65.00.  I believe that sellers are just testing their selling luck to see if any buyer ‘bites’ at those asking prices.  Hence it is like a ‘waiting’ game to see whose emotions ‘cave in’ first and cannot wait anymore.  Even if one seller underprices his MOC Bumblebee figure, a seller from another stall would buy from him and immediately re-sell at this own stall.  Usually the buyers ‘cave in’ first and new market prices are set. 

Hence toy collectors need to shop around first to have an idea of the prevailing asking prices.  It is good to befriend other like-minded collectors there instead of being rivals and competitors with them.  The benefits include sharing of updates, tips on best buys and toy care, customising and of course ‘fun bragging’ about obtaining ‘Nirvana’ toys at bargain prices etc.  Toy collectors could also form a mini ‘toy partnerships’ to pool their resources together and import their wanted toys in bulk from Ebay for example, to save on the shipping costs.  Anyway, the sellers at the flea market also get their stock from Ebay to resell to local toy collectors.  Overall, it is a great joy to have friends who share your passion for toys, and also work together with to help build up one another’s collections.  This is more economical in the long run and more fun at the same time!

 Also read: The 5 stages of toy collecting.