Collectibility and supply issues
Upon initial launch, the Amiibo line quickly spiked in popularity, with preorders selling out before the products became available to the public. While Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata stated that Amiibo will be kept in stock, he also explained that some will be "limited-time offers which will cede their positions to new ones once they are sold out".[30] The rarity of certain Amiibo figurines influenced the prices held by online retailers and auctions, of which most can be seen offering select items at prices above the retail price. In Nintendo's 3rd Quarter Financial Results Briefing for the Fiscal Year Ending March 2015, Satoru Iwata expressed surprise at such online auctions that offered "premium prices" of sold out Amiibo toys.[31] A number of first-wave Amiibo toys with manufacturing defects were discovered and sold for notably high prices, such as a Samus figurine with cannons on both arms instead of one arm being sold on eBay for US$2500, and a defect of Princess Peach with missing legs being sold for US$25100.[32][33][34]
On April 2, 2015, when preorders were being taken for the May 29 release of the Super Smash Bros. series Wave 4 and the Splatoon series, the US preorder process crashed both GameStop's website and in-store register system.[35] Nintendo acknowledged these issues in early May 2015.[36][37] Amazon forwent the entire preorder process for those waves; it instead blocked out specific time intervals on their release date during which the non-retailer exclusive Amiibo and the Super Mario series Silver Mario Amiibo were available.[38] The retailer continued this practice with its exclusive release of the Palutena Amiibo as well as those released on September 11, 2015.[39][40]
In May 2015 in the UK, a truck was stolen that contained preorders of the special edition of Splatoon, which included a rare Inkling Squid Amiibo as a preorder bonus: the only way to obtain the figure in the UK. As a result, Nintendo lacked the stock to supply the Inkling Squid Amiibo to those who preordered, and offered Inkling Girl or Inkling Boy Amiibo instead alongside a standard edition with a £10 refund, or full refunds.[41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48]
In response to the lack of certain Amiibo toys in the United States, Satoru Iwata explained on February 17, 2015, that "an ongoing labor dispute on the west coast" has delayed the "discharge of cargo over the past six months", and was the cause of the absences of certain Amiibo toys intended to be delivered before its launch in November.[49] Following this announcement, rarer Amiibo toys such as Wii Fit Trainer, Meta Knight, and Ike have been receiving limited re-releases in North America.[50][51] For the US, the exclusive Best Buy release of the Dark Pit figurine, the retailer announced it would not take any preorders or online orders and the item would be limited to one per customer.[52] While some news sources such as Kotaku came out in favour of Best Buy's practice,[53] alternatively in response to this (and the difficulty of acquiring previous retailer-exclusives), others, such as Brian Altano, Jose Otero, and Peer Schneider of IGN's Nintendo Voice Chat podcast, have encouraged American collectors to import these hard-to-find items.[54]
