SpaceCowboy

lol - I was just coming in here to see if anyone had NY ship their VF-1S Strike parts yet (mine haven't come in), and I see it is one of the most recent posts...okay...I guess I just keep waiting...

Yeah, thanks to @HardlyNever for his assistance writing the bot. Should have mentioned that in the first post.  Lots of good tips. 

Here was my experience writing a preorder bot....

Shortly after this thread popped up, I thought, "hell, I'll give it a shot", and wrote one that would go through HLJ all the way through payment and actually buy something.  It handled order-stop, would auto search for terms, would wait for the "add to cart" button to go live.  The whole shebang.  Then I forgot about it for months until the Roy preorder popped up.  I pulled it out, everything was still working...

Then HLJ completely redid their site a few days ago.

:|

So I did a few fixes to make it work again, but everything was slightly different but kind of the same...but I got it working, but some of my corner cases I couldn't test thoroughly (due to lack of time on my part).  My bot did indeed find the VF-1S Chogokin.  Except HLJ had decided that even if you couldn't "add to cart" it was going to show the button anyways.  So, I might have been able to program around this quickly if this was my livelihood, but as is, I just wanted my one toy, and I was up watching the bot, seeing if it would work, and on another system was refreshing amiami.  So my time was better spent just trying to make sure my amiami order went through.

My take away from this is:

* for every site that you want a bot for, you need to really understand their purchase flow control and be able to handle it individually.  Expect that they will change their HTML responses.

* If the community paid someone, they would probably be up, preorder night, dealing with last minute changes or cases they didn't know about (amiami deciding to log you out randomly, or HLJ having a known page that doesn't load for 10 minutes).  Then you, as the customer, would need to take their latest changes as they made them (unless you want to trust random programmer with your CC# or account info)

* I probably spent about 8 hours total.  Let's say I'm an entry-level web developer making $27,000/year ($13/hour).  That is still over $100 of time I've spent - and I didn't get Roy with my bot.  I'm sure a pro could do it better/faster, but their time will also be more expensive.  Multiply whatever amount you come up with by the number of sites you want a bot for.

* My goal was to be able to sleep through preorder madness and wake up nice and refreshed with a purchased item.  It's clear that I'd need to be monitoring the bot and programming quickly to keep up with last minute changes.  Then if *I* were the person you were paying, most of the site would be pissed at me because the bot failed in one random direction or another.

Anyways, sharing my perspective.  It was a fun programming exercise, and it's not terribly complicated, but in the end, it is extremely fragile due to working on a black box that is subject to change and has conditions that are difficult to test for.

Good luck to everyone still searching.

Scored at amiami.

It was in my cart for like 40 minutes trying to check out.  Here is my theory.  Once it is in your cart, you have it for a certain time.  As long as you are making progress along the path, they will let you keep it in your cart.  My theory is that there is a timeout where they clear your cart and put it back into gen pop, that's why they become available again.

It was in my cart for like 20 minutes not letting me proceed.  Then it let me go to payments but sat there for another 20 minutes because there were too many users for me to check out.  So I just kept trying to pay and eventually it worked.

Good luck all.  This is enough to turn people off the hobby.

I was able to finally change my password, but I'm not sure what voodoo allowed for it, or if their server was just slow or what.  I made 3 request to change, but only the last one resulted in an email coming through.  My guess is that the first two didn't come through because maybe my account was silently locked for failing the captcha too many times.  :\

And mine are one of the passwords on HLJ that have been "invalidated" by their new hashing algorithm.  And I can't reset it because it won't send me a link.  I guess this is better than them doing it tomorrow, but jesus what worse timing...

@Sanity is Optional

Let me know how the Photon works for you.  That price is right.  But every time I think about getting a resin printer I watch something about what a pain in the ass they are to clean and how hazardous the resin is and how much effort you have to put into dealing with it.  Then the fact that the resin goes bad in 6-12 months and it all turns me off of it.  My FMD is pretty simple in comparison and that ABS plastic can sit there for years and be perfectly fine when I start up. 

However, the resin print quality is so much better than FMD....

Always use the indefinite article "a" personal use toy, never "your" personal use toy.

yeah, me either - lame

Seriously?  Goddamnit!  I literally don't check this site in a few days, and I miss my 10 second window.  Bandai is killing any desire I have in this crap...

Still no word on when the preorder for Roy goes up?

On 12/20/2019 at 5:58 PM, pengbuzz said:

Yeah, I saw those SDF-1's and it irritated me. 80 is too much for them IMO, as they're pretty busted up.

I offered him $20 for one of them, but he wouldn't budge (despite him saying in the description he knows nothing about transformers).  I have one that is pristine in box.  I have another that is a bit yellowed, but missing the head and one shoulder turret is broken off.  I have a 3D Printer.  So I could take the pristine one and remodel the head and turret and fix my "display/play" one.  But if I could just find a piece to replace it with it would be easier for me.  But $80!?  I mean, I spent $130 for my in box one, $110 on my 1/5000 Wave one, and far less on my yellowed one, and he wants to sell 2 bundled with missing arms on both (one missing a complete shoulder), missing main guns on both, and who knows what else, and the condition is listed as "good".  lol.  Condition should be "junk/parts"

My guess is he is comparing these to complete unmodified/broken versions and seeing what they sell for and thinking they must not be too far off from that.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-of-2-Vtg-1984-Bandai-Robotech-SDF-1-Fortress-Macross-12-Battle-Transformers/233321045076

Is the Alien Dog Neca by chance?  I've stopped buying their stuff as their plastic seems to be very brittle.  I've had several of their pieces just come apart.  Looks amazing, just can't touch it or open it.

What is the general lead time between when we know a PO is coming to when it happens?  I know I've not checked the site for a week or two and missed preorders.  My guess is that sometimes it is days of notice.

There is definitely some value in it.  It's just a matter of if you are going to get the money you want that makes it worth your time.  Easiest thing is just put it on ebay for either a buy it now or do an auction starting at the minimum it is worth your time to sell it for, then see if anyone bites.

I wouldn't mind having a few of these pieces (I love old worn out stuff that comes cheap, as I have no reservations about playing with it, modifying it etc). 

But usually what I see on ebay is people way overestimating what something is worth (example:  there is a guy selling two incomplete broken Matchbox SDF-1s bundled and he wants $80...I personally think he is going to have a hard time getting that given how broken they are (missing large pieces), but more power to him).  If you just want to get a ballpark on anything you have, go to ebay, do an advanced search on the item you are considering selling, then filter by "sold listings" and that will give you an approximation of what your item is worth and whether it is worth your time to sell them or junk them.   "Sold Listings" is better than just what is out there because of what I said above - people way over value what their possessions are worth sometime.  So if you see an old VF-0S with a buy it now price of $2500 but they are mainly selling for $200, one of those prices is more realistic than the other.

Then just take in the condition of your item and adjust price appropriately.  A lot of times you can even find items that are roughly the condition yours are in to give you an even better idea, or you can get a range from "mint in sealed box" vs "missing pieces/loose/yellowed" and figure out where your item fits in.

Re: NY:  Well, just got a notice that they are preparing shipping...so...slightly redeeming themselves?  We'll see when it arrives.

Hmm....I'm 7030XX and still NY hasn't filled my order...I really hate dealing with NY.  I swore them off after the VF-31A fiasco, but was swayed that that was just a one off and they always come through.  We'll see...

Nice Knight Rider shots sh9000.  Did the stands come with them?

13 hours ago, sqidd said:

Mine are coming from NY.....so it will be January before I see mine.

 

Oh, I see you paid for the white gloves rush shipping from NY!

Going back to the topic of making a bot...my guess is that the amount each person would have to pitch in for a bot would be as much if not more than just paying the mark up that some stores and scalpers already put on the items.  At least the first time.

I do think a decently trivial bot might be possible with something like the python Selenium library.

I'm not sure I buy the whole "poor Bandai, they can barely make a profit at the numbers they are producing and any more would be a loss."  We all loved getting cheap yamatos on sale months after release due to being shelf warmers - that is a very clear case of over production.  But most of what Bandai is selling sells out within minutes.  Not even hours or days.  It would be really interesting to know the minimum increments they could go up.  Maybe they produce 5000 units and the next smallest amount they could produce would be 10,000 and really they have demand for 7000.  That sucks, but that's the only situation I can really understand it not being profitable for them. 

I also don't buy that "well, they don't care about the US market", because if resellers in Japan buy it for resale in the US, Bandai doesn't really care, because the  first point of purchase was from Japan, so to them, it is just stock that was bought in Japan.

I think more likely is that Macross makes up such a small percentage of their revenue stream that if they leave a bit of money on the table, they don't really care as other properties such as Gundam, DragonBall, etc, dwarf Macross and it makes more sense to concentrate on them.

But they really do suck all the enthusiasm out of collecting these multi-hundred dollar, fragile, display pieces.

Quote

The retailers aren't having problems selling all the Macross pre-order units they have so they don't really have an incentive to agree to this offer. Unless, the people agree to buy other stuff that aren't flying off their shelves. 

True.  The real problem is Bandai.  If they would up their production runs or simply have multiple windows to guage true demand, I don't think the problem would be nearly as bad.  I've said it before, feels like they are leaving a ton of money on the table.

HardlyNever speaks truth.

I'm not a web developer, but I am a programmer, and I think most people grossly underestimate the cost of custom programmed software. 

Just counting unique replies here (not the lesser number of who said they would contribute), you are collecting a bit over $100.  $100 buys practically nothing in terms of programmer time.  An hour or two maybe?  If you increase the price, look for some people to drop out or take their chances in preorder madness.

Taking HardlyNever's word at face value, multiple bots would need to be created, one for each major site you want to hit.

Your best bet is having a programmer on this site do this for themselves and just share with you, or try to go to one of these sites and say "look we have 20-30 people that would order from you if you could gaurantee a preorder without the madness" and see if they would play ball.  That sounds more interesting to me as well.

Just putting a warning out there you get what you pay for.

Yeah, I'm curious how it works.  I disassembled the whole thing so that the screws wouldn't rust.  The disassembly + reassembly + masking + repainting was a bit time consuming, but a fun little exercise.  I'm curious if just a 4 hour dunk could remove most of those steps and make it a lot less painful.

From my experiments (I was using really weak pharmacy hydrogen peroxide), the peroxide stripped the paint, but this might have been due to the duration (I left it outside for like a month since the concentration of H202 was so weak).

However, I whitened two old jetfires.  Within a few years you can already see the yellow returning, and they have mostly been in a dark cardboard box in a bedroom (air conditioned) closet.

It's fun to try and it does amazing results at first, just be aware it is unlikely to last long.