(no subject)
There's some reality show about a guy who goes around finding old toys, then buys them and sells them at a profit. It kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but it took me a bit to articulate why. First, while the stuff about old toys is sort of interesting (they had a Bumblejumper on there), I don't care how much his "take" on buying and selling them is. It reminds me of the people who buy convention exclusive stuff just so they can sell it on ebay. It just drives up the price while it goes through the hands of people who have no interest in it, so the people who actually want these things have to spend more. It's like how Ebay made things more accessible but drove up prices, in some cases.
Let me tell you a story. There's a shop that consistently sells stuff at low prices. I got a pretty minty Tomb of Horrors D&D adventure module from the 70's for like $2.00. They don't get this kind of stuff very often, but it's definitely worth keeping an eye open. They sell Magic dual lands for about $20.00, when they tend to normally go for more like $100.00. One of my old friends (I don't know if I have any current friends, come to think of it...) saw that they had a bunch of these cheap Magic cards and bought as many as he could, just so he could sell them on Ebay. He told another shop, whose owner he's friends with, and that owner set about buying all the cheap cards so he could resell them in his shop at a lower price. The end result: the only place in town to buy Magic cards is the most expensive. I mean it's one thing to buy a box of Magic cards on Craig's List that the owner is too lazy to sort and sell individually, then resell them yourself, but this is just skeevy.
I think the problem is that modern collecters are total marks, and will buy stuff at jacked up prices. It makes collecting much of anything pretty lame.
Let me tell you a story. There's a shop that consistently sells stuff at low prices. I got a pretty minty Tomb of Horrors D&D adventure module from the 70's for like $2.00. They don't get this kind of stuff very often, but it's definitely worth keeping an eye open. They sell Magic dual lands for about $20.00, when they tend to normally go for more like $100.00. One of my old friends (I don't know if I have any current friends, come to think of it...) saw that they had a bunch of these cheap Magic cards and bought as many as he could, just so he could sell them on Ebay. He told another shop, whose owner he's friends with, and that owner set about buying all the cheap cards so he could resell them in his shop at a lower price. The end result: the only place in town to buy Magic cards is the most expensive. I mean it's one thing to buy a box of Magic cards on Craig's List that the owner is too lazy to sort and sell individually, then resell them yourself, but this is just skeevy.
I think the problem is that modern collecters are total marks, and will buy stuff at jacked up prices. It makes collecting much of anything pretty lame.