July 14th, 2016 – 1:20pm – Amiibo ’16: Chapter 7

This was another mostly uneventful grab but I figured I’d share anyway since I’ve been fairly diligent about chronicling this year’s Amiibo exploits already.  The latest batch rolled out on July 7th with what is essentially a recolor of the original Splatoon 3-pack – like the original this would includes an Inkling Boy, Inkling Girl, and Inkling Squid, only now they’re adorned with different colors of paint.  The new ones consisted of a Callie and Marie double pack.  I preordered both the 3-pack and 2-pack at Best Buy a month or more ago, dropped by Friday morning, and was on my way.  5 more down – that’s 106 Amiibo if you’re keeping count…510 if you’re counting all the cards too!

I saw the Callie & Marie pack pretty much everywhere, but I only saw the new 3-Pack hanging around that same day.  Plenty of retailers had the individual new releases of Inkling Boy and Inkling Girl, but it looks as if once again the new Inkling Squid is a 3-pack exclusive and that the 3-packs themselves are at least relative limited.

I’m happy to say that it looks like this year’s release schedule has calmed down a lot from last year and I’m pumped that we’re finally getting a Daisy and Waluigi, even if we do have to wait another 4 months !

June 21st, 2016 – 6:20am – Amiibo 2016: Chapter 6

It took almost 3 long months, but 11 days ago on June 10th we finally got another batch of Amiibo!  I didn’t take many preemptive measures this time around, mostly because recent Amiibo have shown up in bountiful supply.  However, I did worry a little about Isabelle (Summer Outfit), so when I saw the Japanese release going for only a few bucks more back in April, I jumped at the chance.  She arrived in the mail a couple of weeks later and that was that; 20% of the June 10th wave already taken care of!

The actual day itself was fairly uneventful.  Although I’d planned to be up at the Target in Raleigh by 8am, I slept a little longer than I meant to and didn’t get up there until around 8:30.  When I did, I was horrified – they had nothing and there was absolutely no activity going on around the electronics counter.  I started to panic a little but I also reminded myself that it was only 8:30 and there were plenty of stores left to check and plenty of time to do so.

I rushed back to the Target closest to my house and an employee had just finished stocking the shelves with 4 of each of the new Kirby series.  So I picked up a Kirby, King Dedede, Meta Knight, and Waddle Dee along with several packs of Series 4 Animal Crossing Amiibo Cards and the new Kirby: Planet Robobot for the 3DS.  Conspicuously absent from Target’s shelves was Isabelle (Summer Outfit), but luckily this wasn’t something I needed to worry about.

A few hours later I set off again, just to see what I could find.  Toys R Us had all 4 Kirby series Amiibo, the new Isabelle, and a box of Series 4 cards.  I picked up some more cards.  Afterwards I went by GameStop, and they too had all 4 Kirby series.  I asked about Isabelle and the manager said that they had some but they’d all already come and gone (it was about noon at this point).  Looks like I made a semi-reasonable call in getting Isabelle early, though for all I know she might pop up all over shelves in a week or two, similar to what happened with Shovel Knight.  Anyway, the weird thing is that they didn’t have any cards.  And not like they could’t find ’em or the shipment hadn’t come in, but the Series 4 cards weren’t in their system, at all.

I ended that first day with around 10 or 12 packs of cards, but the fact that GameStop didn’t have any made me uneasy, which made me even more uneasy considering that the 2 closest Targets seemed to only carry one box each of the Series 3 cards.  Once that first box sold, neither had anymore available from what I know.  And worse still, Walmart never even got Series 3.  I was worried that things with Series 4 might be even more dire, so over the next few days I exploited various monetary sources and probably scored 25 – 30 packs in all.

The good news is that by brute force, I was able to acquire 88 of the 100 cards.  I ordered the other 12 online and managed to find all that I needed from 3 people.  Each of them had 4 cards; I’ve gotten 2 shipments but I’m still waiting on the last bundle of 4, after which I’ll officially have “all the Amiibo – including cards” once again.

To be honest, I don’t think my paranoia was unfounded.  I think others have noticed the same patterns that I have and the Series 4 cards have become tough to spot after that first week.  This is actually a good thing for me, because all those duplicates I got are moving pretty well on eBay and turning a tidy profit.  I had something like 80 duplicates by the time I’d amassed my 88 unique cards, and in the past 11 days I’ve sold something like 46 of them, about 20 of which were sold over this past weekend.

Bottom Line:  Chapter 6 is now virtually closed, with Summer Isabelle, Kirby, Dedede, Meta Knight, and Waddle Dee all in hand, alongside 96 of the Series 4 cards which will hopefully be joined by their 4 missing brethren either a little later today or tomorrow at the latest.

As for the forthcoming July 7th release, I’ve already got all my ducks in a row with preorders for the new Splatoon 3-Pack and 2-Pack already placed.  I know that more potential releases are floating around out there, but the official site doesn’t go any further than the 7th.  I really, really hope Nintendo takes a break from the cards, at least until 2017.  I am pretty sure that these will be the last Animal Crossing cards though.  Hopefully, if Nintendo does decide to roll out another run of 400 card, they’ll pick something a little more diverse than AC.  Pokemons would be an excellent choice, as would various characters, items, power-ups, and other objects from the huge world of Mario!

Well that’s it for this time, but check back in a couple of weeks and I’ll be showing off Marie, Callie, and the rest of the new Splatoon Amiibo!

March 18th, 2016 – 1:43pm – Amiibo ’16: Chapter 5

Well it’s that time again – another largish batch of Amiibo to track down!  I’m glad the craziness has slowed down a little from the holidays, and it looks like we won’t be seeing another batch until June, though I wouldn’t be surprised if Cloud, Corrin, and/or Beyontta  were released in the meantime.

All things considered, I felt pretty good about my chances today.  Here’s what was scheduled to drop:

• R.O.B. – Famicom Colors (I already had this way back thanks to the resident Doc)
• Timmy & Tommy (Target exclusive)
• Kapp’n
• Rover
• Roy (GameStop exclusive)
• Ryu
• Animal Crossing Series 3 Cards
• Shadow Mewtwo (Card bundled with first print run of Pokken Tournament)

I also made another interesting discovery: the Digby that was packaged with Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival is now in a standalone package.  Of all the places I went, I only saw it at Target, and even then I only saw it at one of the two Targets I visited…

Target – Raleigh: Today I started my journey in Raleigh.  Usually I come down to the nearer Target for my first stop, but lately they’ve been unreliable when it comes to new Ammibo.  Since Timmy & Tommy was an exclusive and I had no way to pre-order it and I was concerned about Target anyway, getting him was the “big deal” of the outing.  I’ve had to scoot up to the Raleigh Target quickly from the nearer one a few times, and always by the time I’ve gotten there everything new is all nice and neat and laid out on the shelves…

…Only today it wasn’t!  We’d already been in the parking lot for 20 minutes waiting for them to open, and now panic started to settle in.  Just then a lady came over saying something like, “I bet y’all are here for those…things….yeah?”  Turned out they had box after box of Amiibo behind the electronics counter.  It took her and another couple of employees a while to rifle through it, (that’s how I found out about Digby) but without much trouble I was able to walk out of there with Timmy & Tommy, Kapp’n, Rover, and 3 packs of Series 3 cards.

GameStop – Raleigh:  Target opens at 8; GameStop opens at 10.  When all was said and done I had about an hour to kill at home, then I went right back out to Raleigh to pick up Roy from a GameStop I’d preordered him at.  I would’ve preordered one nearer to me, but one day I happened to stop by this one in Raleigh and they had an “accepting Roy preorders” note on the door.  The guy behind the counter got me all nervous as to if I’d be able to preorder him from the physically closer location, so that’s why it went down like that.

I left with my Roy and 3 more packs of cards.  Turns out she had at least 3 extra, non-spoken for Roys, as well as extra Ryu, Kapp’n, Rover, and R.O.B. (Famicom).  Good thing I didn’t need any, but at least some were available.

Best Buy – Raleigh:  Best Buy also opens at 10, and it is literally right there in the same strip mall as the GameStop I’d just left.  Took in my printed confirmation email, went to the pickup counter, and got Ryu without a hitch.  After seeing so many at Target and GameStop, I didn’t bother looking around Best Buy anymore to see what else they had.

Toys R Us – Raleigh:  On my way back home, I decided to stop at TRU just to see what was up and maybe pick up some cards.  All they had on shelves was about a million Ryus (personally I thought Ryu had rarity potential, which is why I preordered him but none of the other non-exclusives)…ok, not a million, but at least 20 or 30, no joke.  I asked the employee if they had any Series 3 cards.  She went to the back forever and I was just about to give up as she popped out with ’em.  Grabbed 4 more packs.  She didn’t drag anything else out though, so I’m curious as to whether they had the other Amiibo but hadn’t stocked them (and no one had asked yet), didn’t get them in, or had sold out of everyone except Ryu by the time I got there around 10:45 – 11:00am.  (That last one is probably pretty unlikely, though with all the Amiibo that TRU has been stocking lately, I was a little surprised.)

GameStop – Wake Forest:  Now it was time to hit up my local GameStop.  Another painless pickup (I’d preordered Pokken Tournament) though the phone was ringing off the hook.  He said most of the calls had been about the Amiibo and Pokken, and he had 5 or 6 extra copies of Pokken but the only extra Amiibo he had were 3 or 4 Ryus and 3 or 4 R.O.B.s (Famicom).  Again, a little unusual.  This GameStop has often been my “failsafe” for those that fell through the cracks.  I think what’s really happening is that Nintendo is shipping out less stuff on Day One to some of the smaller markets; the toys themselves often start appearing everywhere a week or two later.  I grabbed 3 more Series 3 packs.

Target – Wake Forest: While I was out, I couldn’t resist going by, just to see what might’ve happened if I’d been at my local Target at 8 instead of going all the way up to Raleigh in morning commuter traffic.  Somewhat surprisingly, they had 3 T&T on the shelves but nothing else.  This Target has always been slow when it came to getting the cards in, though I’m sort of shocked that they only had their exclusive in stock.  I assume they had 4 total since the Amiibo are shipped to retailers in boxes of 4 each and the other 3 were right there in a row.  I guess some folks could’ve shown up and grabbed 5 T&T in the 3 hours since opening, but judging from past releases recently, I suspect not.  I wasn’t glad that they didn’t have the others, but I did feel vindicated in my decision to be up in Raleigh by 8am!

So that’s it for now.  I’ll probably run out to pick up some groceries a little later on and check out what Walmart has just for the hell of it, though I’m not really expecting anything.  They seem to be about a week behind when it comes to these new waves, though back when Series 1 cards were semi-scarce they were the first retailer to carry them outside of GameStops.

Have you got any Amiibo Adventures to report on?  Let me know how your hunt went!  Since – tentatively – there won’t be any further Amiibo until June 10th, I’m excited to get a “family photo” sometime in the next few days, so be on the look out for them!  It might be a while before I can truly say that I have all of the Amiibo once again since I’ll have to (ugh, yet again) track down all these damn cards, but hey, I’m getting there!  I’ll also snap some pics of everything before I open it up as well so check back with me soon or just keep your eye on the Status Widget!

March 17th, 2016 – 11:52pm – Amiibo Hunt 2016: A Belated Part 4

I regret not getting to this sooner, but since tomorrow is such a big day for Amiibo, I figured I ought to go ahead and chronicle my most recent exploits….

Really there’s not much to tell.  Gold Mega Man arrived in the mail as expected (I’ve seen him floating around in the bundle pretty much everywhere since…) and most recently, I picked up Twilight Princess HD with the accompanying Wolf Link Amiibo.  I had it preordered at GameStop; I was in, I was out, done.  The guy at the counter told me he’d already had 4 people come in back on the 4th looking to buy a bundle, but he had to turn them all down because they had no extras.  I was feeling like maybe Wolf Link would be a rare one, but in the couple of weeks since virtually everyone – Target, Walmart – has had plenty of available bundles.

Oh well, I’m staying on top of it and I suppose that’s the important part.  I’ll report back tomorrow with more details of my journey; wish me luck!  And for the record, here are some pics of the Gold Mega Man and Wolf Link bundles.  Wolf Link is definitely up there with my top 5 favorite Amiibo so far.

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