slight rant warning
As a Funko collector first and a reseller second, there is a huge trend in the funko community that is starting to become a huge problem. "Flippers"
Now i'll be the first to admit, I am all for making some extra $$$ on the side, when it comes to Funko, the right Product at the right time can be worth a lot of money. Unfortunately there are a lot of people out there that are looking to take advantage of collectors. I couldn't even begin to list all the shady sites, discord groups ect, that are using collectors for nothing but cash grabs.
Lets take the Galactic Toys exclusive 6 inch DBZ Broly that just went up for preorder yesterday. This is an exclusive to this specific store. Yet there are numerous sites that had preorders up weeks in advanced for a mark up of 15-20 dollars not including shipping. How you ask? one word Bots. These preorder sites run bots that give them an unfair advantage of ordering high demand products faster then a person could themselves. They allow the user to use multipule addresses, names and credit cards to get around limit orders to fulfill the preorders they have already sold with out having the product in stock or a guaranteed shipment.
A lot of the time I don't have an issue with this, but for some reason with the Broly exclusive it got to me, and pushed me over the edge. This specific Pop will be the first DBZ and Anime Pop to have a Chase edition. These preorder sites that are able to Bot their way to ordering 25,50,100+ of a certain product, most of the time don't allow refunds what so ever, and do not guarantee an exclusive sticker or a chase. This means a lot of the time they are filling orders with overseas stock, and pulling chases to keep and sell at a huge mark up. The fact that this specific Pop will be the first Animation funko line to have a chase which means the chases are going to be super valuable. I guess this is more of a warning to collectors then anything. If a site is asking for you to use something like cash app or Venmo to pay for preorders, stay clear and just wait. Forking out a few extra bucks for an early preorder may seem like a good idea especially for a high demand Pop, but unless its from a secure or verified site you should avoid it at all cost.
Thankfully a lot of legit sites that are looking after collectors are catching on to this trend and dropping the ban hammer on any IP that's found to be using a bot. Its a step in the right direction, but unfortunately there will always be a work around on order limits and catching new drops faster then a collector can on their own.
I guess what im trying to get at with all of this is if your a collector, just do your homework before forking out a ton of cash for a preorder. There are so many IG pages, Twitter accounts, FB groups, free discords that supply accurate information about release dates, early and placeholder links, and direct links the minute something goes live. Be smart about where you order from and how much you're paying.