What's in those stores....UK

[Joshuasmummy]

Thanks guys.

Bombom-it was a high street boots, a decent sized one but certainly not the biggest I've been in and not the size of the retail parks, we have another shopping centre with a boots too and I stopped there afterwards but they had no toys out. The lady said that next week is roll out time for the xmas stock across Boots so hopefully we can expect to see more then...I am assuming the price was a mistake, but hey, I certainly wasn't going to point that out to them!! ;-)

Also tried Argos but had the same luck Carscrazy!

[Bombom77]

Thanks for the info!

By the way, how int he blue hell does anyone get a specific car/plane from Argos if they arent on display? The catalogue (The laminated book of dreams ) shows "Assortment" with them all having the same catalogue number.

Ideas greatly appreciated,

Ta

[Joshuasmummy]

Bombom-Today I saw that a store in the next town had 44 in stock (on their machine thing in my local store) so I called them up and asked if they would mind telling me on the phone which characters they had in stock. The guy came back to the phone with the box and read them out to me. If you go in to store they will bring them out for you to see

[carscrazy]

Yeah like said above, we go to a till in argos with the item number from book and say we would like to see their stock, they give you a slip to view the items. Then go to the collection point and they will bring the whole box out

[niftynigel]

Yes it probably is a joke, but if you spend lots of time searching and money on petrol the cars are there to be found. In reality for probably many people on this forum that is not an option. I know I certainly don't have the time or money to do this, but its great that Nigel posts what he has found from what he see's and hears from the trade that he talks too. Thanks for all the help Nigel...

What part do you think is a joke?

If you think that I posted something innacurate, please bear this in mind, the UK and Ireland has a population of about 65 million. The 'average' production run of 2,000 cases is very small. If you also consider that the 994B case had ten 'first to market cars' plus a few other quite rare reissues like Donna Pits, it really shouldn't come as any suprise to anyone that the retailers that were allocated them, couldn't get enough and kept ordering them. In all the stores I knew that had the case, the contents were being sold almost as soon as they were being put out. Because it didn't contain any Chase cars, I thought that Mattel would actually produce more, say 3,000 to at least plug the gap (in the hope that the case would get to as wide a distribution as possible) until the last wave of releases hit the shelves. It is still possible that more 994B cases could be produced, but that rather depends on how many the retailers order for the pre-Christmas market.

If there are say 2,000 994C, 2,000 994D plus 2,000 of the first two Cars 2014 series we have 8,000 cases. If Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons etc., order big, it may well be that their orders alone exceed 8,000 cases? What about the other retailers?

Last year, we had the 997J and 998G cases. There were an extimated 5,500 case 997J as that's what retailers like Tesco and Sainsburys were happy to accept. Easy for Mattel, the supermarkets were happy with that, so that case kept coming and coming and you all complained. However, there were still only 5,500 of them. There were 3,000 997U cases from earlier this year, but lots of people on here complained they kept seeing that case for weeks, but there were no Chase cars and importantly Tesco were the biggest recipient of that case, so it's distribution was far and wide. That proves how important it is to have Tesco on board!

Sainburys continue to supply their stores with existing stocks of 996Y, 997V, 997W and 997Y. I have seen fresh and remnants of recently fresh cases in a number of Sainburys in the Greater London area over the weekend. I actually missed a fresh 997W case (and Francesca Chase car) by a few minutes in North London on Saturday! By the time I'd got there, they said they'd only put the case out within the hour! Grrr! Most of the cars were on the clipstrips, so very clearly displayed. That store was only a Local store and they said they put out at least one case a week. They also said another similarly sized Local store did the same and the cars would sell out in a couple of days! They didn't have the room for more cars either on display or in the storeroom.

[niftynigel]

At least one Tesco near to me has put up the price of Silver Racers to £6.50. There were old Cars 2 (not from 996Y but older) cars in there too, but only the one product/code on the shelf!

[carscrazy]

Popped to TRU today.
They had the box set with the 3 way tie, If it was a bit cheaper I'd of bought a set. Pegs were full with cars, They had some 3 packs for £14.99 (Sally/Mcqueen/Sheriff and Mater/Ramone/Doc) Loads of radiator springs Mcqueens, tru special Finn, old twin packs of Mater/Zen pitty, deluxe Queen and of course no end of Francescos

Did ask a member of staff if they had any others in stock but they said since planes has come out thats all they've had. He said he thinks the cars stock is stopping due to planes.

They had ample of planes in stock and they were 'buy one get a second half price'. Managed to get Chug and Zed.

[yuffie]

If you think that I posted something innacurate, please bear this in mind, the UK and Ireland has a population of about 65 million. The 'average' production run of 2,000 cases is very small. If you also consider that the 994B case had ten 'first to market cars' plus a few other quite rare reissues like Donna Pits, it really shouldn't come as any suprise to anyone that the retailers that were allocated them, couldn't get enough and kept ordering them. In all the stores I knew that had the case, the contents were being sold almost as soon as they were being put out. Because it didn't contain any Chase cars, I thought that Mattel would actually produce more, say 3,000 to at least plug the gap (in the hope that the case would get to as wide a distribution as possible) until the last wave of releases hit the shelves. It is still possible that more 994B cases could be produced, but that rather depends on how many the retailers order for the pre-Christmas market.

has anyone seen the 994B case outside of the london area?

[carscrazy]

has anyone seen the 994B case outside of the london area?

I seen left overs from it on two occassions.... I'm miles from London

[Lozzi31]

Yuffie, I saw the remnants of 994B in the Southampton Disney Store on Thursday, Only ones I saw from it was 2 Boost with Flames, Jeff Gorvette etc. I haven't seen Mark or Luigi down here but they must have been grabbed up!

[niftynigel]

has anyone seen the 994B case outside of the london area?

You of all people shouldn't be compaining! Remember your local (now ex) Disney Store in Bath came up with loads Prince Wheeliam's last year and you put a few on eBay at up to £25 a pop!? Hmmm!

Now tables are turned ...

... And I wouldn't resort to that level of profiteering. I'd rather let all the genuine collectors know where they were first. You may claim that you get stung on eBay. We all get stung on eBay. It's usually the genuine collectors that do!

I've seen 994B at Toymaster, Morrisons, Disney Stores and Tesco in Surrey, Sussex, Greater London, Tyne & Wear, Leicestershire, Lancashire, Greater Manchester and Hampshire. That's a fair spread of the country.

[yuffie]

it was a genuine question so i'm not quite sure why it resulted in such a personal attack

for what it is worth - though i'm not sure why i have to defend myself to you - i bought five prince wheeliams over the course of 2-3 months - one i kept, one i sold to a PCD member for the price i paid and three i listed on ebay starting at 99p, none of which sold for £25

but thank you for actually answering my question in the end

[niftynigel]

it was a genuine question so i'm not quite sure why it resulted in such a personal attack

for what it is worth - though i'm not sure why i have to defend myself to you - i bought five prince wheeliams over the course of 2-3 months - one i kept, one i sold to a PCD member for the price i paid and three i listed on ebay starting at 99p, none of which sold for £25

but thank you for actually answering my question in the end

It wasn't a personal attack against you per se, but it did highlight the *look after number one* attitude of some supposed collectors on here.

There was one *collector* who asked me if I could look out for a Rip Clutchgoneski (possibly as a trade) as they lived in a part of the country that wasn't served very well by Mattel. I was a bit sceptical, but I was willing to look for another one to help a fellow collector. I did find another one, but in the meantime, the *collector* actually put one on eBay and sold it for £49.99. That was a bit of a wake up call for me! I'm sure eBay keep historical data to verify all of this?

It does annoy me that people post pictures of multiple purchases or gross acts of hoovering up entire stores' stocks, obviously not just for themselves or a few fellow collectors, but really to take other genuine collectors to the cleaners via eBay.

That's just plain greedy! Just think how you would feel if someone beat you to it and in front of your very eyes bought every rare car the store had. You'd feel pretty annoyed (at someone else's greed)! Yes, I can see everyone nodding in agreement!

I was very lucky once. In a similar situation, Disney Store Oxford Street had six Becky Wheelin's. This lady had carefully picked all six of them in front of me. I appealed to her better nature and she let me have one! Five minutes earlier, it would've been the same result, five minutes later, she'd have won 6-0.

On the issue over Prince Wheeliam. Some time after your 2-3 months (it wasn't anything like as long as that), I saw 15 (fifteen) of them on the pegs in Disney Store Oxford Street. I did buy a spare one (for a one-to-one trade) and let it be known that I'd left the other 14 (fourteen) for other collectors and/or children. I was quite amazed at the amount of PMs on this site and another one, where everyone suggested that I should've bought all 15.

[yuffie]

whilst not having your encyclopaedic knowledge of my ebay activity looking back through my e-mails the first one i listed was on 11/10/12 and the last one sold on 16/12/12 which appears to fall into a 2-3 months timescale (albeit only just) - the same e-mails that show your accusation that i put them on ebay for up to £25 as rubbish (though this i did know)

and i still fail to see why my simple question about where this case has been seen elicited such a response - personal circumstances have meant i have not been able to keep track of every post on here recently and from what i've read it seemed the only people who had seen the case where those in and around london

[carscrazy]

I don't wish to get involved in any issue between fellow members but i think there's alot of other collectors who have/do list on ebay. I'll be honest we will sometimes if we get lucky to find an extra car that's popular. Tho we don't make a regular thing of it and certainly not in bulk, it helps us with the cost of collecting because as we all know Cars collecting isn't a cheap thing to enjoy.

I don't know about anyone else but we can't afford to keep spending £6.00 each car that gets released (or more if we buy through ebay ourself due to poor availability) therefore selling the odd extra helps us with that. I don't agree with clearing the shelf of all good ones just to sell for profit as i know the joy it brings to kids when they see a car they have been after for a long time (i collect with a child)

Maybe Mattel will sort things out one day and stop being so tight with releases so that more people stand a fair chance of finding each car.. reducing the price in the UK would be nice too, We can all dream lol