June 28, 2005 - In response to recent activities on the Hobbytalk board have prompted me to write my own take on the subject of the collector and my sins as one. I have shown in italics what the general statements or questions are that I have witnessed or have heard about.

    "Everything we have out is what we have in stock..."

    In my case, that is the truth. I "may" have a few saved back for myself, but those are generally just the regular releases and not the ever elusive White Lightning variation. True, most stores just say that so the lazy employees do not have to go in back and heaven forbid do some work to find said product, but like I said in my case, everything that we get in is almost put out in the same day.

    "Got any new Johnny Lightning's in?...."

    I usually get one or two calls every week of this general question by various different collectors / scammers. And I'll be honest if we have gotten any in or not.

    The store employee(s) is in with a certain collector / scalper or they are the scalper looking for an extra buck...

    Commonly refers to Toys R' Us and their wonderful ways of helping the customer or helping themselves. They are notorous for having corrupt employees that try to go that extra mile to hide things when the come in. Wonder why if that's one of the reasons why they got sold to another investment group eariler this year? Now am I one of those corrupt individuals who collects only the White Lightnings and hoards them for myself and sell them on EBay? No. Do I try to "control" the flow of WL to the collectors who frequent my store? Yes, I do control the amount of WL that each person may recieve. I do this to protect the WL's so that only the true collector can get them. Do I keep some for myself? Honestly, yes I have kept a few for myself. Do I plan on selling them? No. Trading? Yes, but probably for only regular release items. Which one's do I collect? I only collect Star Trek, and mostly Pontiacs with most of those being Firebirds or T/A's. There are the occasional Muscle Cars that I do keep for myself, but all the rest I leave hanging or save for my true collectors to have. Does this mean that I am just as corrupt as the people at TRU? In some minds I would say so, but I don't go home and have an EBay account chuck full of all the items that I get in that are ultra-rare or hard to find. Do I use my position as a store employee with direct relations with RC2 to my advantage? You better bet the hell I do! How do you think I am able to make the lists for the C.A.R.S. 2005 and have a good knowledge of all the master numbers that JL uses? Yep. With my contacts within RC2 and and using the myrc2.com website, I am able to inform the collector about what is and is not coming down the pipeline.

By, Kevin D. Matthews