Tokyo Police Arrest Man For Re-Selling Around 200 Consoles And Games

200 consoles and games and his profit was 25,000 USD? That would mean he was profiting over 1k on each console/game.

This is a load of nonsense.

Sadly there’s not real way to stop scalping

He should have just signed up for Squidgame.

@Mattock1987 true but places like eBay could stop encouraging it by being like why is your Xbox 900 dollars what makes this so special?

@Jawessome Was thinking the same thing when it said about the horse racing

@smithyo, I think you misplaced a decimal point. The average profits would actually be around $125 per system.

I presume he was employed when entrusted with the delivery job. But unemployed now as he’s been sacked.

ebay could stop scalping on their site and that would go a long way. You know, there are things that you can't sell on ebay so adding hard to find and overpriced game consoles and graphics cards to the list shouldn't be a problem.

The real problem is people who say 'but it's just Capitalism'.

@duplicitea @Inaroomalone @smithyo

Haha my wife corrected me on a few things, she reads Japanize better then me, especially numbers.

The total value of 200 items he was delivering was 5.8m yen. He sold 100 items in one day for 3m yen to a second hand store (or 30,000USD) so that's $300 an item. The article calls out how he sold the switch at a high price, so $300 a unit for the $345 OLD, $500 PS5 and some other random crap seems reasonable.

We don't know the total retail price of the items he sold to that store; only that he had 5.8m total from 200ish things and he sold 100ish things for 3m.

The article says he was working for a delivery company (the headline calls him a "driver" I think ... neither of us are 100% on that one!) and uses the symbols that are closer to embezzlement then theft so yeah, he was employed in Oct when he was arrested but it not employed at time of the article.

"saying he committed the theft due to money problems, but largely spent the earnings gambling on horse racing"

Sounds legit - gambling is a tried'n'true way of developing money problems. As opposed to solving them like so many still believe.

And yes, the whole case is a new level of nuts. If it sucks to see scalpers snatch a product away before you order and pay for it, imagine ending up scalpers snatching it AFTER you order and pay for it.

Makes you wonder what was the guy's excuse initially - did nobody have questions for him when all those deliveries failed to reach the designated addresses and most likely caused a wave of complaints? Or had he been employed without an ounce of personal contact info?🤔

@Ocaz the problem is that at least one person is willing to buy an Xbox One for $900

@Mattock1987
Actually, there are several steps that can be taken to stop scalping:
1. Limit the amount that can be sold per customer.
2. Have anti-bot software in place to prevent auto-bot purchases and digital currency scams.
3. Require product registrations to ensure a customer who buys a product receives said product and it doesn't end up somewhere else, like in a warehouse or thrown in a pit with other packages (like that pile of FedEx boxes in Alabama). Sony did something similar with my son's PS5, he got it directly from the source.
4. Passing legislation preventing the resale of anything above its original MSRP within at least 90 days of release (both before and after!).
These are just some of the suggestions I have thought of during the TCG shortage we recently had.

@Jersa7Darkangel good points but
1. Scalpers can create multiple accounts and go to multiple online retailers
2. Not all scalpers use bots, and some are smarter than the retailers anti bot software
3. Nothing wrong with that one I admit
4. That would be impossible to enforce- you can’t monitor every transaction

That's really messed up.

If I found out anyone was manipulating the contents of my package, I'd sue the heck out of anyone involved.

The Switch OLED is relatively easy to find in my area. Nobody seems interested in it, at least not now.

A real warning, to those who continue to try and scalp during COVID-restrained living conditions.

They say a fool and his money are easily parted…..as long as there are impatient idiots or parents with demanding spoilt children there’ll always be scalpers ready to take advantage of the situation. PS5 are still tricky to come by in the UK but not impossible and OLED Switch are readily available.

@Mattock1987 @Ocaz @Jersa7Darkangel

I wish it was one person. The "problem" is that the gap between the people who are wealthier then 89% of all other people and people who are wealthier then 99% of all other people is 100s of millions a day, but because everything thinks it's going to be the same as the difference between 30% and 40% (which is like ... $5000 in total net worth) people don't give any respect to how big the wealth gap really is.

When 18.6 million people who see buying a switch for $100,000 the same way 150m see buying a switch for $300 ... it's not on the manufacture or the re-seller. Eventually you just can't produce enough goods for all the insanely rich people to get them, and as long as some insanely rich people still want them, why wouldn't you buy one and sell it for more then you make in a month?

The only other solution is inflation. When pressured about flex pricing, Disney has gone on record saying that market research shows they could sell tickets to Disney World for $50,000 and not only make way more then they do now, but still sell out and have to turn people away pretty frequently because their are more then enough people who see $50,000 as a trivial amount.

Nintendo could have just made the OLD switch cost $100,000 until they were able to meet demand, and if you support capitalism you should be mad a them for NOT doing that.

The only "problem" here is the wage gap. We've all been gaslighted to blame it on the other insanely poor guy making you pay $400 more for an Xbox and not the guy paying you so little you care about $400, and that's pretty dumb if you ask me.

Think that's bad? Here in America, we're dealing with a crime spree at electronics stores like Best Buy and Apple, where organized gangs are smashing and grabbing hundreds of thousands of dollars in merchandise and reselling them at heavily inflated prices, sometimes even in broad daylight.

They're also hitting hardware stores like Home Depot to get crowbars and hammers to use in the smash-and-grab sprees at those other stores. While the issue largely seems to be contained to California, it's still worrying. There's also the potential for it to spread to other states, either by these same criminals or by copycats.

@HeadPirate uhhh that’s a bit far. Scalping has existed before in collectors items and limited products but these are normal consumer products still in production with an MSRP.

I keep seeing people charging $700-$900 for a basic console.

Some stores here are selling both PS5/XSeX/S for $800.
On top of that, they only have forced bundles that they don't allow you to return the extra items.

@Ocaz

I get how it's hard to see, but you need to shift your perspective a bit. The problem isn't the exitance of "scalping", it's how prevalent and profitable the wage gap has made reselling products, even ones that have huge production runs . Think in terms of opportunity cost; Fewer people scalped items with large production numbers in the past because their were easier ways to make money.

20 years ago, the idea that I could buy up enough switches and re-sell them at a high enough price to be worth the effort is insane. There just weren't enough people willing to pay that much over the MSR.

But today the wage gap is so extreme that not only are there people willing to pay 5, 10, maybe 100 times the MSR, but there are so many of them it's reasonable to think that even with a production run of a million units, not everyone willing to pay that is going to get one. Add that to the fact that pre-inflation wages 20 years ago were also MUCH higher then wages today, re-selling has become a better option for a lot of people.

Given that right of first sale means a person re-selling a switch isn't breaking any laws and Nintendo is not artificially restricting production, these aren't scalpers. They are sole proprietors of a business with a pretty solid business model. You might not like that (I sure don't) but that doesn't stop it from being true.
More so, this is the goal most of us are told to work towards our entire life. These are heroes of capitalism, and if you like capitalism you should be cheering on their entrepreneurial spirt!

This isn't new, it's a pretty well studied phenomena that has happens all over the world in countries as wage gap grows; more and more things end up being re-sold because more and more people are willing to pay so much over market value that it's a good way to make money. It's annoying that it's happening with video games ... but history shows us it could get much worse when it start happening with potato's

@HeadPirate
Wage gap? You do realize, that this is happening all over the world, were wage gaps might not be that much of an issue? Also, you're assuming people only use the money they are being payed in a month. There are people who have saved up money, so they can buy expensive stuff later, even if they don't have high wages.

What scalpers ultimately do, is not only get money from rich people, but also take advantage of the exhaustible resource that is called "patience". Everyone that has the money, and wants the thing can wait, until he/she cannot any longer. So, these scalpers exploit pretty normal psychological weaknesses. They know exactly what they do. What's there to cheer about? That's as if you would cheer for loan sharks and unregulated gambling.

@HeadPirate I don’t really want to argue over video game stuff, you put a lot of thought into this I can tell but it boils down to stupid people being stupid with their money. What I’m saying is I wouldn’t pay that because I want to buy it from a store and have faith it will get to me. Not paying 200 over msrp and hoping the guy doesn’t send me a rock. You’ve got…. Something going on there but I’m thinking more basic not anti-establishmentarian

Sleeping booths at internet cafes? Man being homeless in Japan sounds a lot better than the experience I've had in Murica.

@Ocaz

Fair enough man, thanks for engaging either way.

My country "solved" the scalper problem by asking people to buy 3 PS5 games along with the console. That way any scalper would be stuck with being forced to flog a console with 3 games, which becomes way too expensive and there's no guarantee of a sale anyway, since a lot of people might not like that particular choice of games. So, that's that. We've had availability of consoles for the past 6 months.

@smithyo just take 25000/200 = 125$ profit off each console

I love how the headline makes it sound like he was arrested for reselling 200 consoles, to fan the flames, when he was in fact arrested for STEALING 200 consoles. What he did with them after that doesn't really matter much.

@HeadPirate Do you have a source for that Disney quote? It's a shining citation to have handy as I've tried to explain the same thing to so many people, and it mostly falls on deaf ears.