(Topic ID: 290984)
Gilbertsville, PA
Quoted from CrazyLevi:Well, let's challenge Business Law 101.
I am selling my original Attack From Mars for $5.
Would you take $3. ? 
Quoted from Bublehead:People can laugh, but I didn't write the laws... violate them at your own risk and peril. I honor my prices both offered and accepted.
I'm just trying to figure out what the "Business Law 101" remedy is when someone on Craigslist puts up a Pinbot for $1000 and then replies to me that they've had "a ton of interest!" and now they want $2500. Do I sue? Call the police?
Quoted from Bublehead:People can laugh, but I didn't write the laws... violate them at your own risk and peril. I honor my prices both offered and accepted.
Generally there needs to be “consideration” (something given up) by the buyer before a binding contract is formed. That’s what my Contracts professor in Law School taught me.
Quoted from wolverinetuner:Generally there needs to be “consideration” (something given up) by the buyer before a binding contract is formed. That’s what my Contracts professor in Law School taught me.
That must have been in "Business Law 102."
Quoted from Bublehead:Call your lawyer, he needs a good laugh. Being right within the law and getting actual justice are not the same thing.
Well, that's certainly something we can agree upon!
Quoted from Bublehead:My business law professor warned us, never to make an offer in jest, especially if their are any witnesses, and never accept an offer in jest either because even if it would seem unrealistic, outlandish, or false, once accepted, the other party has actionable recourse if you try and back out.
Well there is a reason this person is teaching instead of ya know... running an actual business.
Quoted from Elvishasleft:Well there is a reason this person is teaching instead of ya know... running an actual business.
Quoted from wolverinetuner:Generally there needs to be “consideration” (something given up) by the buyer before a binding contract is formed. That’s what my Contracts professor in Law School taught me.
It hinges on the term "acceptance". I say, "buy my pinball machine, $1000 bucks", you say "OK, I'll buy it." If it was a verbal agreement or written, the contract is binding. The only thing required is the communication that offer was extended and the offer was accepted to form a binding contract. No "consideration", i.e. monies, securities, or any other item need be transferred or negotiated for a binding contract to be established, that is what I was taught.
Quoted from Bublehead:It hinges on the term "acceptance". I say, "buy my pinball machine, $1000 bucks", you say "OK, I'll buy it." If it was a verbal agreement or written, the contract is binding. The only thing required is the communication that offer was extended and the offer was accepted to form a binding contract. No "consideration", i.e. monies, securities, or any other item need be transferred or negotiated for a binding contract to be established, that is what I was taught.
I was taught the basic 3 components that make up a contract are offer, acceptance, and consideration. That’s fundamental common law. It is possible for legislation to change that, but that’s basic contract law.
Quoted from Elvishasleft:Well there is a reason this person is teaching instead of ya know... running an actual business.
He was a business law professor at the local community college. I guess you would have expected Jeffrey Bezos or Elon Musk to be teaching a pathetic community college BL101 course? Right....
Quoted from Bublehead:He was a business law professor at the local community college. I guess you would have expected Jeffrey Bezos or Elon Musk to be teaching a pathetic community college BL101 course? Right....
I'd like his expert take on if he who smelt it actually dealt it also.
And can I sue for that as well..
Here is a site showing these 3 basic elements:
http://jec.unm.edu/education/online-training/contract-law-tutorial/contract-fundamentals-part-2
Actually, it adds a fourth element of “mutuality” or “meeting of the minds.”
If the buyer paid, and the seller accepted, $1,000 in cash, then I’m sure that is consideration. If “consideration” included simply accepting an offer and nothing else, it wouldn’t be a separate element of a contract. But I recall that consideration can be less than paying the seller. What constitutes “consideration” required for a binding contract has been decided under case law by courts.
I had offered 2500 full asking price for a decent Black Knight a couple years ago the seller accepts and asks if I can pickup next day at noon.I get there he says you were first so you get first bid of 2500 I have two more buyers parked out front same time and one offered 2700 will you go 2900 ?I told him sell it to them Dick
Quoted from CrazyLevi:Well, let's challenge Business Law 101.
I am selling my original Attack From Mars for $5.
I will triple it! Be there with 15 buck asap
Quoted from CrazyLevi:I am selling my original Attack From Mars for $5.
Quoted from DudeRegular:I will triple it! Be there with 15 bucks ASAP.
Hey, now! There's no need to overpay for it. Ten would seem to be more than fair.
Quoted from Bublehead:People can laugh, but I didn't write the laws... violate them at your own risk and peril. I honor my prices both offered and accepted.
You know what they say; possesion is 9 tenths of the law.
Article on the collectible market exploding in general for a variety of reasons.
https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2021-09-03/collectible-prices-skyrocket-to-the-dismay-of-hobbyists
NEW YORK (AP) — Americans have become obsessed with collectibles, bidding up prices for trading cards, video games and other mementos of their youth. The frenzy has brought small fortunes to some, but a deep frustration for those who still love to play games or trade cards as a hobby. Among the items most sought after — and even fought over — are the relics of millennials’ childhoods. These include copies of trading cards such as Pokemon’s Charizard and Magic: The Gathering’s Black Lotus as well as Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. game cartridges. Some cards are selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars and an unopened Super Mario game recently sold for an astonishing $2 million.
This is more than a case of opportunistic collectors looking to cash in on a burst of nostalgia triggered by the pandemic. Everyone seemingly is angling for a piece of the pie.
The corporations who own franchises such as Pokemon are rolling out new editions as quickly as they can print them; internet personalities are hawking the products and raking in advertising money; companies that tell collectors how much their possessions are worth are doing unprecedented businesses — and in at least one case getting financial backing from a prominent private equity firm looking to get in on the action.
But while some collectors and investors see dollar signs, others complain about the breakdown of their tight-knit communities. Players looking to play in-person again after the pandemic are unable to find the game pieces they want; if the pieces are available, prices have gone up astronomically. Critics of rising prices have become targets of harassment by those who now consider trading cards, comics and video games no different than a stock portfolio.
“Prices are going up, and access is going down,” said Brian Lewis, who operates a YouTube channel under the name Tolarian Community College.
The collectibles frenzy has been fueled partly by a self-fulfilling cycle of YouTube personalities driving hype around collecting and the rising prices of collectibles. This can lead to big paydays as advertisers notice the frenzy stirred up among the influencer's dedicated followers.
With more than 23 million subscribers, Logan Paul made several videos where he simply opens up boxes of vintage Pokemon cards, hyping the prices he’d paid and bringing in millions of views. Australian YouTube personality Michael Anderson, who goes by the moniker UnlistedLeaf, has garnered millions of views doing similar videos.
“It may be a burgeoning industry, but this is still big business. Brands want to reach these audiences,” said Justin Kline, co-founder of Markerly, an influencer marketing agency. Based on standard industry metrics, he estimates Anderson earns upward to $50,000 in advertising revenue doing unboxing videos, while Logan Paul may earn six figures per video.
The hype has sent collectors scrambling to find out if their Pikachu, Charizard, Mox Emerald or Ancestral Recall cards might be worth a fortune. To do so, they turn to grading services, which have been flooded with orders.
The grading service Beckett’s has effectively stopped accepting any cards to grade unless the customer is willing to pay $250 per card for its ultra-fast turnaround service typically reserved for the costliest collectibles. The turnaround time for basic grading services is more than a year, the company says.
In response to record demand, companies are releasing new versions of the games, including premium products that command higher prices. Whether the momentum is sustainable, at least when to comes to prices, is unknown. Other fads like Beanie Babies or Pogs blew up in the '90s only to crater, leaving most collectors holding worthless junk. Pokemon and Magic have been around for decades, and have seen surges of interest before.
In the meantime, auction companies and grading companies are making fortunes riding the current speculative frenzy.
Based in Portland, Brian Lewis produces several videos a week under the nickname “The Professor,” in hopes of teaching new and existing players about his favorite hobby, Magic: The Gathering. With more than 600,000 subscribers, he also comments on the state of the game, particularly the issue of rising prices, both on the secondary market (cards purchased from shops) as well as the prices companies are charging for products like Magic.
“I worry deeply that these rising prices will have an impact on the average person’s access to the game,” he said. “There’s a growing class of investors in Magic, and I think it’s not having a positive impact on the game.”
But the frenzy goes beyond trading cards. The U.S. Mint released a 100th Anniversary collection of the Morgan silver dollar, considered by coin collectors to be one of the most beautiful designs ever made, early this summer. The products sold out in minutes.
Three weeks ago, an unopened copy of Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System sold for $2 million, making it the most expensive video game sold. Only a few weeks earlier, a copy of Super Mario 64 sold for a then-record $1.6 million. An unopened copy of Nintendo's Legend of Zelda from 1987 sold for $870,000 in early July.
Some members of the video game collecting community have questioned whether the prices paid have been exaggerated by the involvement of third parties like Rally, which sells “shares” in collectibles.
Meanwhile, the trading card community is seeing its own lofty prices as players scramble to find coveted pieces for their collection.
A mint condition Black Lotus from Magic: The Gathering's first set known as Alpha, sold in January for more than $510,000. That price is double what a card in similar condition sold for six months before in July 2020.
Austin Deceder, 25, primarily buys and sells cards on Facebook and Twitter as a middleman between players wanting to get out of their games and new players. Based in Kanas City, he now travels the country buying collections as his full-time job, having to balance his enjoyment of the game with now being involved financially.
Deceder had a used Black Lotus card that he says he sold for $7,000 in September 2020. "Here we are now and the price on that same card has doubled.”
It’s not just the ultra-rare cards seeing inflation. Take the widely available Magic: The Gathering card named “Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer.” The card, depicting a bespectacled monkey sitting on a hoard of treasure, was $30 earlier this summer. The card now sells for closer to $90, Deceder says, as game stores have reopened after the pandemic.
“Now that people can play in person, card prices are moving up again," he said.
Not everyone is happy, however. Some enthusiasts say the frenzy has brought out the worst in fans and speculators. Nowhere is this more evident than among collectors of Pokemon cards, with its motto “Gotta Catch ’Em All!”
The frenzy in Pokemon began late last year when Logan Paul did his first unboxing videos, which only led other content creators to make similar videos and collectors to bid up prices on cards new and vintage, said Lee Steinfeld, 34, a long-time collector in Dallas who does videos, including unboxings, under the name Leonhart.
“That's when things went super crazy,” he said.
Since then, boxes of Pokemon trading cards have been routinely sold out at hobbyist shops and big-box retail stores. Fistfights have broken out, requiring chains like Target to restrict the number of packs an individual customer can purchase. The Pokemon Company says it is trying to print as many cards as possible to keep up.
“Pretty much the entire Pokemon community has deteriorated,” said Shelbie, a creator of Pokémon videos under the name Frosted Caribou on YouTube.
While most of Shelbie’s content features unboxings or discussions about upcoming products, one of her most popular uploads was an hour-long video focused on the problems in the Pokemon collecting community since the frenzy began last year. Shelbie, who declined to give a last name to avoid being a target of harassment, said some harassment in the past has come from some of the community’s biggest collectors, particularly when she has talked about prices.
Later this year, Pokemon will be releasing a set to celebrate its 25th anniversary. While typically an anniversary set would garner interest from any collector, this time Shelbie said she's hesitant.
“The set is going to be amazing. It's also going to be impossible to get. It's going to be awful actually,” she said.
But the surge of interest has been good for the corporations and Wall Street.
Hasbro’s Wizards of the Coast division makes the tabletop role-playing game “Dungeons & Dragons” as well as Magic: The Gathering. Wizards reported second-quarter revenue of $406 million, more than double year-ago revenue. Hasbro executives told investors in July they would soon be raising product prices. Wizards has introduced premium packs of cards with harder-to-find game pieces that sell for four to five times more than a regular packs.
Wall Street has also ridden the wave of interest. Private equity giant Blackstone purchased a majority stake in Certified Collectibles Group, a company that grades collectibles like trading cards, in July for $500 million. The company has doubled its employee count since last year and is buying another 30,000 square feet of office space, President Max Spiegel said.
Whether that's good for the players who have long participated in these hobbies is unknown. Long-time collectors likely stand to make money in the future, but those who recently entered these communities may be purchasing overpriced cards hyped by those who stand to benefit the most, community leaders said. It's not unlike the stock market craze that drove prices of GameStop and other “meme” stocks higher earlier this year.
“There’s now a whole subculture who are using Pokemon as a stock market. I don't know how those people can look at the community and say this is healthy,” Shelbie said.
Holy shit..
https://pinside.com/pinball/market/classifieds/ad/120213
34k for a single machine... the machine might buckle under that much "cash on glass"
Quoted from SantaEatsCheese:Article on the collectible market exploding in general for a variety of reasons.
https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2021-09-03/collectible-prices-skyrocket-to-the-dismay-of-hobbyists
NEW YORK (AP) — Americans have become obsessed with collectibles, bidding up prices for trading cards, video games and other mementos of their youth. The frenzy has brought small fortunes to some, but a deep frustration for those who still love to play games or trade cards as a hobby. Among the items most sought after — and even fought over — are the relics of millennials’ childhoods. These include copies of trading cards such as Pokemon’s Charizard and Magic: The Gathering’s Black Lotus as well as Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. game cartridges. Some cards are selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars and an unopened Super Mario game recently sold for an astonishing $2 million.
This is more than a case of opportunistic collectors looking to cash in on a burst of nostalgia triggered by the pandemic. Everyone seemingly is angling for a piece of the pie.
The corporations who own franchises such as Pokemon are rolling out new editions as quickly as they can print them; internet personalities are hawking the products and raking in advertising money; companies that tell collectors how much their possessions are worth are doing unprecedented businesses — and in at least one case getting financial backing from a prominent private equity firm looking to get in on the action.
But while some collectors and investors see dollar signs, others complain about the breakdown of their tight-knit communities. Players looking to play in-person again after the pandemic are unable to find the game pieces they want; if the pieces are available, prices have gone up astronomically. Critics of rising prices have become targets of harassment by those who now consider trading cards, comics and video games no different than a stock portfolio.
“Prices are going up, and access is going down,” said Brian Lewis, who operates a YouTube channel under the name Tolarian Community College.
The collectibles frenzy has been fueled partly by a self-fulfilling cycle of YouTube personalities driving hype around collecting and the rising prices of collectibles. This can lead to big paydays as advertisers notice the frenzy stirred up among the influencer's dedicated followers.
With more than 23 million subscribers, Logan Paul made several videos where he simply opens up boxes of vintage Pokemon cards, hyping the prices he’d paid and bringing in millions of views. Australian YouTube personality Michael Anderson, who goes by the moniker UnlistedLeaf, has garnered millions of views doing similar videos.
“It may be a burgeoning industry, but this is still big business. Brands want to reach these audiences,” said Justin Kline, co-founder of Markerly, an influencer marketing agency. Based on standard industry metrics, he estimates Anderson earns upward to $50,000 in advertising revenue doing unboxing videos, while Logan Paul may earn six figures per video.
The hype has sent collectors scrambling to find out if their Pikachu, Charizard, Mox Emerald or Ancestral Recall cards might be worth a fortune. To do so, they turn to grading services, which have been flooded with orders.
The grading service Beckett’s has effectively stopped accepting any cards to grade unless the customer is willing to pay $250 per card for its ultra-fast turnaround service typically reserved for the costliest collectibles. The turnaround time for basic grading services is more than a year, the company says.
In response to record demand, companies are releasing new versions of the games, including premium products that command higher prices. Whether the momentum is sustainable, at least when to comes to prices, is unknown. Other fads like Beanie Babies or Pogs blew up in the '90s only to crater, leaving most collectors holding worthless junk. Pokemon and Magic have been around for decades, and have seen surges of interest before.
In the meantime, auction companies and grading companies are making fortunes riding the current speculative frenzy.
Based in Portland, Brian Lewis produces several videos a week under the nickname “The Professor,” in hopes of teaching new and existing players about his favorite hobby, Magic: The Gathering. With more than 600,000 subscribers, he also comments on the state of the game, particularly the issue of rising prices, both on the secondary market (cards purchased from shops) as well as the prices companies are charging for products like Magic.
“I worry deeply that these rising prices will have an impact on the average person’s access to the game,” he said. “There’s a growing class of investors in Magic, and I think it’s not having a positive impact on the game.”
But the frenzy goes beyond trading cards. The U.S. Mint released a 100th Anniversary collection of the Morgan silver dollar, considered by coin collectors to be one of the most beautiful designs ever made, early this summer. The products sold out in minutes.
Three weeks ago, an unopened copy of Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System sold for $2 million, making it the most expensive video game sold. Only a few weeks earlier, a copy of Super Mario 64 sold for a then-record $1.6 million. An unopened copy of Nintendo's Legend of Zelda from 1987 sold for $870,000 in early July.
Some members of the video game collecting community have questioned whether the prices paid have been exaggerated by the involvement of third parties like Rally, which sells “shares” in collectibles.
Meanwhile, the trading card community is seeing its own lofty prices as players scramble to find coveted pieces for their collection.
A mint condition Black Lotus from Magic: The Gathering's first set known as Alpha, sold in January for more than $510,000. That price is double what a card in similar condition sold for six months before in July 2020.
Austin Deceder, 25, primarily buys and sells cards on Facebook and Twitter as a middleman between players wanting to get out of their games and new players. Based in Kanas City, he now travels the country buying collections as his full-time job, having to balance his enjoyment of the game with now being involved financially.
Deceder had a used Black Lotus card that he says he sold for $7,000 in September 2020. "Here we are now and the price on that same card has doubled.”
It’s not just the ultra-rare cards seeing inflation. Take the widely available Magic: The Gathering card named “Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer.” The card, depicting a bespectacled monkey sitting on a hoard of treasure, was $30 earlier this summer. The card now sells for closer to $90, Deceder says, as game stores have reopened after the pandemic.
“Now that people can play in person, card prices are moving up again," he said.
Not everyone is happy, however. Some enthusiasts say the frenzy has brought out the worst in fans and speculators. Nowhere is this more evident than among collectors of Pokemon cards, with its motto “Gotta Catch ’Em All!”
The frenzy in Pokemon began late last year when Logan Paul did his first unboxing videos, which only led other content creators to make similar videos and collectors to bid up prices on cards new and vintage, said Lee Steinfeld, 34, a long-time collector in Dallas who does videos, including unboxings, under the name Leonhart.
“That's when things went super crazy,” he said.
Since then, boxes of Pokemon trading cards have been routinely sold out at hobbyist shops and big-box retail stores. Fistfights have broken out, requiring chains like Target to restrict the number of packs an individual customer can purchase. The Pokemon Company says it is trying to print as many cards as possible to keep up.
“Pretty much the entire Pokemon community has deteriorated,” said Shelbie, a creator of Pokémon videos under the name Frosted Caribou on YouTube.
While most of Shelbie’s content features unboxings or discussions about upcoming products, one of her most popular uploads was an hour-long video focused on the problems in the Pokemon collecting community since the frenzy began last year. Shelbie, who declined to give a last name to avoid being a target of harassment, said some harassment in the past has come from some of the community’s biggest collectors, particularly when she has talked about prices.
Later this year, Pokemon will be releasing a set to celebrate its 25th anniversary. While typically an anniversary set would garner interest from any collector, this time Shelbie said she's hesitant.
“The set is going to be amazing. It's also going to be impossible to get. It's going to be awful actually,” she said.
But the surge of interest has been good for the corporations and Wall Street.
Hasbro’s Wizards of the Coast division makes the tabletop role-playing game “Dungeons & Dragons” as well as Magic: The Gathering. Wizards reported second-quarter revenue of $406 million, more than double year-ago revenue. Hasbro executives told investors in July they would soon be raising product prices. Wizards has introduced premium packs of cards with harder-to-find game pieces that sell for four to five times more than a regular packs.
Wall Street has also ridden the wave of interest. Private equity giant Blackstone purchased a majority stake in Certified Collectibles Group, a company that grades collectibles like trading cards, in July for $500 million. The company has doubled its employee count since last year and is buying another 30,000 square feet of office space, President Max Spiegel said.
Whether that's good for the players who have long participated in these hobbies is unknown. Long-time collectors likely stand to make money in the future, but those who recently entered these communities may be purchasing overpriced cards hyped by those who stand to benefit the most, community leaders said. It's not unlike the stock market craze that drove prices of GameStop and other “meme” stocks higher earlier this year.
“There’s now a whole subculture who are using Pokemon as a stock market. I don't know how those people can look at the community and say this is healthy,” Shelbie said.
Yeah I've read this stuff too.
The funny thing is, if you compare pinball to all this junk, it's really not even in the same stratosphere. Pinball machines - even at the asking prices that cause daily freakouts here - are relatively inexpensive for what you get; a commercial asset that will have inherent value as long as bars and arcades exist in any form. In my mind it's a lot different than paying $5,000 for a piece of cardboard.
I really don't get all the constant whining. SO you can't afford a $20K POTC? There's plenty of pinball machines around for between $1000-6000 and it seems like there always will be. I don't find pinball prices to be particularly outrageous; most of the outrage simply seems to because the fact that prices have risen somewhat over the past 5-10 years, and this demographic doesn't exactly embrace change.
Pinball machines are not really old enough to be true "collectibles" anyways...
At least not the ones people really care about from the 90s onward.
Someday they will be but then it will be all about originality and condition.
With all the modding and stupid shit people do to pins it will be interesting to see how many unfucked originals are left. My guess is a handful.
1 week later
Quoted from SDpinballer:Banning
I assume you’re referring to the crazy high prices being paid for those pins.
Looking at the marketplace on here and I am seeing everything going up for sale at $15,000... like thats the new average median price for any title... Not sure who is paying these prices, but I definitely can tell you one person who is not. I think I'm going to go back to playing on site... for $15K, I can play a lot of fricken games, even at $2 for 3 balls.
Quoted from Bublehead:Looking at the marketplace on here and I am seeing everything going up for sale at $15,000... like thats the new average median price for any title... Not sure who is paying these prices, but I definitely can tell you one person who is not. I think I'm going to go back to playing on site... for $15K, I can play a lot of fricken games, even at $2 for 3 balls.
A joke for most but if new speculators overtake a hot hobby that’s historically not a good sign.
I’ve generally ignored it but it will be interesting where we go from here.
Quoted from SDpinballer:For me, time to lay low and trade. That’s my plan next few months...
Or join the fray and do the equivalent by selling at the new higher prices and then buying at the new higher prices.
As the lastest example of prices going nuts, I listed my Twilight Zone (a nice one) for $9,500 trades preferred and less than 24 hours later it walked out the door for $11,000. I wasn't trying to run an auction, but when I got full price offers I told people I was really looking for trades to see what was out there. Someone off of facebook offered 11k in response and I just couldn't pass it up. A list of the trade offers in in the link below.
The only downside is now I will likely pay an inflated price for a different machine. However, I still should come out ahead and have extra for some other goodies. Took my kids to a ball game with the extra too already.
What I am seeing is the classic 90s bally/williams seem to be appreciating faster than the Sterns.
It's been getting out of hand for since just around when COVID started. I've been seeing Pinbots in players quality condition asking and going for about $2500. I paid $800 for mine about 15 years ago. High Speed, F14, same deal. I even saw a players quality Comet, nice game, but never, even new was worth $2800.
Of course this also means that Funhouse, Roadshow and other populars are skyrocketing too.
I never got into games for money, I've only bought what I've liked and it was a nice exp, sure some titles were more than others, but lately it's just crazy and unjustifiable the prices being asked and paid for not NIB games.
Quoted from JohnTTwo:I don't understand the hate on this site for flippers of new games. MM Royal at 14-15k no problems, Godzilla LE at 15k bring on the hate. What game is newer and the latest and maybe greatest?
Ya, there seems to be some secret logic of what is appropriate to sell at insane markup prices and what isn't. I'm not sure if its based on individual games or not.
Some of it is just playful trolling and roasting for certain ads, but it always struck me more often or not more of the venom gets reserved for new members that have no post history and just jumped on to list an absurdly priced game, which I can understand.
The big time collectors with dozens of games seem to tend to get a pass on their own massive pricing and get lots of comments like "Beautiful game, GLWTS, so and so has very high quality games, wish I was closer" and the like whether their price is reasonable or gouged just as badly as flipping a Godzilla LE for instance.
Just anecdotal observation from being on the site mostly lurking for a few years. Part of it might be the new games have a clearly established msrp. Where the classic games can have very variable and subjective value.
I will never pay 5k for a game let alone 15k......guess that means I like pinball but I don't love it .....just another interesting hobby to me
Quoted from Obed_Marsh:Ya, there seems to be some secret logic of what is appropriate to sell at insane markup prices and what isn't. I'm not sure if its based on individual games or not.
Some of it is just playful trolling and roasting for certain ads, but it always struck me more often or not more of the venom gets reserved for new members that have no post history and just jumped on to list an absurdly priced game, which I can understand.
The big time collectors with dozens of games seem to tend to get a pass on their own massive pricing and get lots of comments like "Beautiful game, GLWTS, so and so has very high quality games, wish I was closer" and the like whether their price is reasonable or gouged just as badly as flipping a Godzilla LE for instance.
Just anecdotal observation from being on the site mostly lurking for a few years. Part of it might be the new games have a clearly established msrp. Where the classic games can have very variable and subjective value.
Would trading a NIB Godzilla for a MM Royal be considered bad flipping?
Quoted from the9gman:I will never pay 5K for a game let alone 15K.
Gee. From your Pinside name I thought your limit was 9 grand?
Quoted from JohnTTwo:Would trading a NIB Godzilla for a MM Royal be considered bad flipping?
Funny I was just thinking about that same type of scenario. I think the LE market is made up of a combo of scalpers, ultra rich people who need every LE and top tier of everything, diehard fans of a theme, and then like you mentioned those looking to use it for barter material to secure a pin that would typically be out of their price range. Or those that try to grab an LE to subsidize a premium they will keep or whatever.
I guess for me personally the true hobbyists looking to fund their passion bother me less than the pure profiteers, but same end result. Scalpers are annoying in general, but don't bug me all that much. I think it strikes me as worse for pinball with the small machine counts and getting on secret distributor lists. The worst is when distributors get in on the scalping themselves. I would never think of most LEs, but I would have gone in for a Godzilla, especially since already paying so much for a premium. Some dealers like OC Pinballs were selling for scalper prices on their own site on day 1, that really rubs me the wrong way. I've never seen that happen openly at least in another industry.
Quoted from Obed_Marsh:secret distributor lists
These really exist?
Quoted from wolverinetuner:These really exist?
Dunno, I get the impression they do to an extent with people talking about having an LE secured for a certain title before it is even officially announced.
a question for the thread - what's a 'good' price for a Stern POTC? Theoretically, 4th owner, HOU (undocumented, but believed to be true and looks true), excellent (say 9.5) cab, near perfect (9.8) pf, plays near perfectly (has some occasional slippage in the clutch assembly for the ship - maybe once every 100 games)? Curious to see what the consensus is here - 5k? 6k? 15k? And for sake of argument, we will say this pin resides in a large southern state.
Quoted from Obed_Marsh:Funny I was just thinking about that same type of scenario. I think the LE market is made up of a combo of scalpers, ultra rich people who need every LE and top tier of everything, diehard fans of a theme, and then like you mentioned those looking to use it for barter material to secure a pin that would typically be out of their price range. Or those that try to grab an LE to subsidize a premium they will keep or whatever.
I guess for me personally the true hobbyists looking to fund their passion bother me less than the pure profiteers, but same end result. Scalpers are annoying in general, but don't bug me all that much. I think it strikes me as worse for pinball with the small machine counts and getting on secret distributor lists. The worst is when distributors get in on the scalping themselves. I would never think of most LEs, but I would have gone in for a Godzilla, especially since already paying so much for a premium. Some dealers like OC Pinballs were selling for scalper prices on their own site on day 1, that really rubs me the wrong way. I've never seen that happen openly at least in another industry.
So do some people who don't own any pins just simply buy new LE's and flip them? I find that odd but am relatively new around here so I would not shocked but very surprised.
Quoted from JohnTTwo:So do some people who don't own any pins just simply buy new LE's and flip them? I find that odd but am relatively new around here so I would not shocked but very surprised.
I'd expect not for people with no pins. I'd guess it would be people already involved with the hobby to an extent and following the market. Seems a bit too much risk and effort for me for the payoff, like if you ebay a scalped LE and it gets damaged in transit, Ebay always favors the buyer for instance.
I'm sure some might try moves like they want a desirable out of production title, so they get an LE of the latest hot title as an enticement for a trade. To me that doesn't seem as bad as just buying an LE to scalp outright, but it's subjective
Quoted from chiefbrody:a question for the thread - what's a 'good' price for a Stern POTC? Theoretically, 4th owner, HOU (undocumented, but believed to be true and looks true), excellent (say 9.5) cab, near perfect (9.8) pf, plays near perfectly (has some occasional slippage in the clutch assembly for the ship - maybe once every 100 games)? Curious to see what the consensus is here - 5k? 6k? 15k? And for sake of argument, we will say this pin resides in a large southern state.
5k or heavily modded pinwoofer and so on 6k
Reply
Wanna join the discussion? Please sign in to reply to this topic.
Hey there! Welcome to Pinside!
Donate to PinsideGreat to see you're enjoying Pinside! Did you know Pinside is able to run without any 3rd-party banners or ads, thanks to the support from our visitors? Please consider a donation to Pinside and get anext to your username to show for it! Or better yet, subscribe to Pinside+!
