I know every one likes to be down on Hasbro, but...

It's funny you should mention that, I was going over the stock we were planning on ordering for our new comic book store, whenever it opens. And Hasbro Legends figures are 13.99 a piece if you order a case and Diamond suggest you sell them at $16.99. If you order a bunch of cases you do get a discount, but most small stores can't afford 100 cases.
And if you go to FYE to buy your legends(this was the only place I could find Lord Thor) They are anywhere from $16.99-21.99, I ended up paying 21.99 for Thor.
Things can only be sold for cheap if you're a huge retail chain, they get huge discounts for the 1000's of cases they order, so they can make a profit at $9.99
So that's why I'm not going to have mass market action figures at my store(unless it's something I really want too).

Don't be too hard on the Comic Shops - they can't get mass distributed toys for the same cost that the big retailers (Wal Mart, Target, TRU) get them for so their prices will be higher. No doubt there are the guys out there trying to stick it to some desperate collectors but most of them are just trying to make some kind of profit with very little margin for mark up.

I feel your pain bro! Some Comic book dealers will actually hold or special order things for you, but they can rip you off with a huge mark up too. For example, Wal-Mart had the new Halo figures before the Comic book shop did with the exception of the female for less than $10.00 each. The main comic shop I go to had them the other day including the hard to find female one...they had them priced at $26.00 each!?!?!? WTF????? I think even hard-core Halo fans would be hard-pressed to part with that much money, just think if you actually purchased the whole series at that price? Here I am paying more and more for gas, groceries, and what-not like everybody else, and these greedy B@$+@rds think someone wants to pay $26.00 for a single 5 inch figure. I didn't even want any of these anyways, but it made me so mad that I just walked out of the store.

I try to be a bargain shopper, and find what I want at the big retail stores. The only problem with that is that you never know if and when they will get new stock in, or if they will even carry the lines you are collecting. Thus you can miss out on a lot of things that you really want as early birds have snatched them all up and may be selling them on ebay with another huge mark-up. Then there are the figure lines that have extremely low production runs that are really hard to find. It's all really just a big headache sometimes, and sadly, I tend to spend a lot of money on ebay for stuff that I could not find otherwise.

It is, because if I really want something and decide to break down and buy it from ebay. They will have it there at Kmart the day after I payed for my order.

It's all a GRAND CONSPIRACY...They are out to get you!

If I check Kmart for stuff it won't be there. But if I just happen to be at Kmart, they will have stuff I want. Kmart is evil that way.

wow
maybe I should go to k-mart!!!

Yeah. Haven't opened her yet, just took her piece.

you even got a danger?