Nah, I live in Damn Stupid Hole in the Ground, also known as Illinois. As you might guess, I'm not very fond of it. I'm also sorta in the middle of nowhere (it's all farms and unending grass here), but even if I go north to the major shopping district that's nearby.... yeah. Marios everywhere, but nothing else. No collectible shows or anything like that around here. Stuff doesnt HAPPEN here.
As for the things being in demand and such, someone I know likes to go on about this issue, claiming that it's not Nintendo's fault, that it's all the retailer's doing (whichever one it is at the time), because they just wont order any of the more obscure amiibos to stock, because those dont sell. Hell, he claims that pretty much the entire thing isnt Nintendo's fault. He does this in extreme detail.
I have a hard time with that idea though, considering that A: the rare amiibos are bought out almost INSTANTLY whenever they do appear, and people tend to get just a BIT bothered when they cant find them, and B: the common ones that supposedly sell oh-so-well just sit on the racks; those racks pretty much never get restocked, because they never SELL. It's the case with absolutely every store I"m aware of in the area... and I'm aware of LOTS of them..
Interesting to hear the amiibo situation from other parts of the country. (I have heard from contacts in South Carolina that they are in plentiful supply there--even Rosalina & Luma.) I am definitely in the same boat as you though. I will not let the scalpers have their way, so I refuse to buy from them.
Target is known to be rather stingy with its store exclusives, which is why Rosalina & Luma and Jigglypuff are so sought after. GameStop and Best Buy both ordered multiple shipments of their exclusives (though even then, they sold out quickly), but Target did not expect the amiibo to sell and thus only ordered small quantities of Rosalina, then small quantities of Jigglypuff. It took until last week for Target to get another bunch of Rosalinas, so it sounds like Target is acknowledging their supply issues. Wal•Mart does not have any exclusives (except Gold Mario), but whoever was responsible for ordering them was even stingier than at Target. Even Marios sell out at Wal•Marts I've visited.
From what I can gather, based on released sales charts for amiibo, some of them were produced in much, much higher numbers than others. You always see Mario and Pikachu on the shelves, for instance, because they're anticipated to sell best, and Nintendo's right. The bulk of those sales, of course, are from impulse buyers or parents looking for gifts. (For the record, my amiibo collection consists of just three: Donkey Kong, Sonic, and Wario. I had to travel to four locations on release day to find Wario. And for the record, the Inklings were already sold out when I looked around in the afternoon.)
I am pretty convinced, between amiibo shortages and shortages of video games in general (I seem to have a harder time finding rare games than most others), that there is a pretty dedicated collectors' market where I live and likely some devoted scalpers too. I remember going to 12 locations to find
BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger before giving up and getting it off Target.com, the only online retailer that wasn't selling it far above MSRP. (The day-one edition has a soundtrack.) I had to go to 4 locations before finding the last copy of
Sonic Lost World. I spent three years until I could track down an offline copy of
Zack & Wiki. It's really no surprise to me that amiibo are so insanely hard to get, as I have to beat the collectors and scalpers to get them.
I don't know why retailers don't put a sales limit. Maybe even check for ID to make sure scalpers don't just go from store to store and buy 1 from fifty locations or something.
P.S. Since the wave containing Wario came out on the same day as
Splatoon, I also noticed that every location I visited still had plenty of copies of
Splatoon while the Inkling amiibo, all three kinds, were long gone. That is, the Inkling amiibo were selling better than the game. Fry's Electonics did get a few Inkling Girls later on though.
