anyone every buy from brian's toys?

I bought the Master Replicas Jedi Training Remote from them on Ebay for $84. Both then and now I find that to be a very reasonable price, so no complaints from me.
As for shipping they charged me $45 which is what I have had to pay for all my Master Replicas effects not living in US, so again no complaints.

 

BT emailed me back saying they would honor the preorder price.....we'll see.

 

I get Brians Toys monthly catalog. I like thumbing through it just to get a laugh. I will never buy anything from them. He is ridiculously over prived. If you have purchased something from them, then don't complain about the prices. You have fed the beast.

 

Aside from the insane prices they charge, BT's Staff are notorious for buying out the stocks at convention booths, then selling the items at their own booths for twice the price. I know for a fact, because I saw it with my own eyes at last months Comic-Con. They even have signs posted that they will buy convention exclusives from you at regular price. Then you see them selling it for twice what you sold it for.

Sorry if that sounded bitter, but I HATE scalpers!!

 

I agree with you here; I view scalpers as nothing more than thieves. I have never, ever ordered anything from Brian's Toys, nor will I purchase from their booths at ComicCons. Companies like this one ruin it for many collectors who are on a budget. They gave me a 10% discount coupon with a $20 purchase from their site while I was at CC6, and I could do nothing but laugh. 10% off a $20 purchase, eh? Great, I can get 10% off of a Tatooine Luke. Thank you, Brian's Toys!

 

I'm not in any way trying to defend Brian's Toys, but I have bought some things from them before. But in just about every case, I made fairly large purchases to help on shipping costs and I basically did it to backfill some of my collections. When I did it, I wasn't looking for anythign specific other than characters that I don't have as at one point, there was quite of few that met this criteria. I had found quite a bit at one point from the POTF, POTJ, and AOTC/Saga lines and in one or two examples even the OTC line that were fairly cheap. Certainly as cheap or even cheaper than what I could find the same figures for at other websites. I will agree that for "current" items (such as Saga 2 figures, etc.) the prices are outrageous. But from what I can tell, they evidently must sell some at this price otherwise they couldn't stay in business. For that, I'd blame those who do purchase those items at those prices rather than actually trying to hunt around the stores to find them.

But let me ask this, excluding ebay since I'm not the only one who would rather avoid that, where else besides Brian's Toys would you consistently find better prices and a good selection? I see plenty of other websites that will try to charge $20 for a figure that you can find on the pegs right now if you're willing to look for it. Back to my example, if I'm willing to buy 15 or 20 figures at a time, I've found that Brian's toys was the only place that had all of those figures. Even if i could find them for $1 or $2 cheaper elsewhere, I would have had about 8 separate orders to get what I wanted and would have paid more overall with the shipping on that many orders. But I will say that I think I have only made purchases like this from Brian's Toys twice.

 

I have consistently found far more reasonable prices at these sites:

BigBadtoystore.com
toymaniacs.com
entertainmentearth.com (great prices if you want to buy by the case)
hasbrotoyshop.com (check often)

 

My top two sites that are way better than brian's toys are entertainmentearth and bigbadtoystore. I have never been screwed over by either company and they both go up and beyond the call of duty when you order. I have been ripped off by brian's a couple times and vow never to shop there again. They are no better than scalpers in my opinion yet people give them props over people on ebay (not everyone on ebay are scalpers). One time I paid good money for items that were supposedly C9+ and when I received them they weren't even C5 in quality. Cards were creased left and right and they didn't do anything after I e-mailed them about it. I had better luck with yestertoys right around the time that they were having their problems.

I have heard of people having some success with brian's I just know I will not go there not only because of the prices (can get better on ebay) but because of the experience I had with them.

 

I think Entertainment Earth overcharges a lot fot things, too. They have good sales on MR items, but who buys action figures by the case?!

 

Buying figures by the case is actually smarter than getting them one by one, at least in the long run. I once bought a case of 8 figures for $35. If each individual figure costs $6.99 by itself, with taxes, that would amount to over $50.

 

Very true about buying by the case. In fact for next year, I will buy ONLY by the case, as my stores don't seem to ever carry what I'm looking for.

 

Sorry to stay off topic here, but I've never really looked closely into buying by the case. I thought you could end up with multiples of the same figure that way, and then what if you don't want the multiples? I know everyone will just say to sell them, but at least to me, that's easier said than done. Now if all the cases were to literally come one figure each so you could get a whole line that way, then it might be something I want to look into.