It will soon be Mickey Memories time, but there are some scams about! Like Chinese sellers and dodgy pre-orders. Read for more information.
The Mickey Memories collection has created such a love/hate relationship for some with Disney. People love the collection, but Disney have completely underestimated the demand, leaving fans annoyed. Even more annoyingly, when these sort of "hot" items are in demand, you get people buying them just to resell on eBay. And although there is nothing they can do about that, you should at least be careful if you're going down that route.
I am loving the collection, but I know very well there will probably be a month during the year when I can't get hold of one and may have to resort to buying it on eBay. If you're in the same boat, I'd like to give some advice on how to make sure you are buying a legitimate product after comments I've seen on social media.
"I've preordered mine"
I've seen some people say they have preordered their April Mickey Memories. I advise against this. Disney are not offering legitimate preorders for their Mickey Memories collection. The people who are putting these up do not have the toys yet, and if they cannot get hold of them, you're most likely going to be left out of pocket.
As you can see in the image below, most the preorder options are from CHINA. 99% of the time when buying something like this from China, they're going to be fake. You're going to pay over the odds, wait 4 weeks to get it, it'll arrive (most probably fake), and you'll be left out of pocket as its extremely hard to return things to China sellers for refunds. I've seen people say they've preordered through these, and it scares me.
When buying from eBay
If you were unable to acquire April's through Disney, and you really desire to keep up the collection, your only real option to buy through eBay. Thankfully, the prices are coming down due to the amount of people trying to profit off it. You can get hold of a March one for £35 now.
If you are going to buy on eBay, make sure:
It's a UK seller They accept returns Have an actual image of the toy in hand (with eBay handle if possible) They send via recorded/signed for insured mail