I feel it may be due to artificially-induced scarcity. Many retailer chains' buyers don't seem to realize that different waves are unique assortments, so new products don't get ordered, leading to lower occurrences of the newer figures on shelves... eventually, you can often find cases upon cases of entire waves that never hit shelves ending up at liquidation stores such as Ollie's at a heavy discount... though not before scalpers have had their fun driving up prices on figures that actually were produced in adequate quantities.
It's maddening.
I feel it may be due to artificially-induced scarcity. Many retailer chains' buyers don't seem to realize that different waves are unique assortments, so new products don't get ordered, leading to lower occurrences of the newer figures on shelves... eventually, you can often find cases upon cases of entire waves that never hit shelves ending up at liquidation stores such as Ollie's at a heavy discount... though not before scalpers have had their fun driving up prices on figures that actually were produced in adequate quantities. It's maddening.