Hi, I'm rather be placing this as a For Sale thread rather than here, because the last post in the C&C section was over a month ago, and I wanted to address the current buyers and sellers. But the rules state that here is where it goes, so here it is. I realize I'm opening myself up to flames, here, but this is a genuine query. Indulge me if you like , or not as you choose. I've had two sales so far, and have been observing a couple of dozen more. Although I'm a newbie at SB, I've been a collector (and dealer) mostly of postcards, art, fantasy figures and historic miniatures for decades, and I confess I am confused about the definition and rationale behind the policy of no flipping. I noted CHAKAL's sale. He's obviously a new guy. This is his first sale. He's offering some items I haven't seen before, from Mexico, and the prices do not seem too out of line with other toys roughly in that style. Yet, he gets the following comments from different members: It seems to me, possibly naively, that if you don't like the figure at the price he's selling it for, you don't buy it. Why does the guy have to explain who he is, how many of what he has, and whether or not he's connected to a store? We have artists and people connected to stores selling stuff on this forum all the time. Which brings me to my main point. The rules in the For Sale section more or less define flipping as selling something for five times what you recently paid for it. What really does this rule mean and why is it in place? Seriously, for what purpose does this rule exist? I'm not being cute here. This is a genuine question. I have seen threads where people have been criticized for selling something they purchased only recently (even at "market" prices), for selling items they were given as a gift, for selling something which, in the opinion of some forum members, was priced too high--all violations, evidently, of the no flipping policy. Now, I can think of a couple of hypothetical reasons why flipping, as defined narrowly as making a quick profit, might be disallowed. 1. This is a friendly toy-loving community and making a quick profit from it might be seen as against its true spirit of collecting for the pure pleasure of owning beautiful things. (Or really, really ugly things, in some cases ) OK, what is meant by "quick?" I have seen toys selling here for three and four hundred dollars that someone paid maybe $100 for, if that, four years ago. They are rare, of course, but someone did make a considerable profit by selling them on this forum. I just bought a lovely little Uamou - clear w/ice cream innards - for $30 from Lulubelle. The item is now sold out. I also snagged a Vampire Rose from S7 for $25, also now sold out. How long do I have to wait before I can offer either one on this forum for say, $60? I could probably get $100 for the rose right now if I put it up on some other forum...say a forum for aficionados of rose-related collectibles. (I'm not going to. I bought these for my collection, not to sell at a profit.) But some day I might want to turn them loose. They are already rare. Neither has appeared on the "aftermarket." How much can I ask and how long must I wait to ask it? 2. We would like to keep the toys circulating in our own community. Well, disallowing flipping actually works against that one. SB has, at last count, 1536 users. Friends, that's a very small percentage of the folks who collect these items. Toy collectors, art collectors, Americana and Japonica collectors, all inclusive (not just vinyl) kaiju collectors, and so on, all have their own forums, and there are other venues as well. And, in each of these forums and venues, there are investors and dealers who buy items for the sole purpose of making a profit. So what happens when they cannot make a profit on this forum? Why, they take the items out of this community and sell them elsewhere. They can even use separate identities for each venue, so you would never know who is buying for the love of it, and who is buying for investment. That decreases the available (to us) toys in circulation. 3. The only other reason I can think of right now, and have to discount, really, is that the community has rules such that if you don't follow them, you get flamed. This is sort of a hazing process, of course, and is not entirely without some small merit, but it dissuades newcomers and impedes the community from growing. I have to give the SB community more credit than that. I must be missing something, or the rule would either not be in place or would be better defined. Any comments?
2) NO FLIPPING - If you want to get five times what you paid for a figure that was released last week, go to ebay. viewtopic.php?f=9&t=16115
OK. I think so too, actually. But there is a very fuzzy area with regard to "quick" and "profit." I suppose you could say it's like defining jazz: you can't accurately define it, but you know it when you hear it.
I think the "No Flipping" rule is meant to protect one another from those wanting to prey on our collective insecurities, so to speak. Collecting should be fun, but more importantly, it should be healthy both financially and emotionally. If profit margin ever comes into the psyche of the collector, the hobby ceases to exist. Ideally, the funds spent on toys should be entirely discretionary, and by collectors helping one another by buying and selling toys at prices that would benefit the hobby as a whole, everyone benefits. There will always be some "Holy Grail" type, one of a kind, items that will fetch outrageous prices, but even then it is incumbent upon the seller to price the figures fairly and even accept a considerable "loss" by selling them in the BST rather than making everyone fight over it on Ebay or YJA. In this regard, judgment improves with experience.
In CHAKAL's case you have a person who is new to the board who is selling an entire toy line, all at once and admits having duplicates of each figure, but in a prior post, states that he has no connection directly to the maker of the toy. This indicates that although he may be selling the toy at "retail" that his intent was not to have the toys as part of his collection and instead purchased or is purchasing them for resale, i. e. flipping. He states that he can get more, so probably he has a way to get these toys for less than retail and sell them here at retail, thus getting an immediate profit. His intention is to profit off sales on the board, which is different than a collector who purchases a toy for their own collection then after 6 months or more decides to sell it for personal reasons and finds that the market for that toy is higher (or as many collectors of RxH see, lower) and prices the toy at the market rate. The same is true if that person purchases a toy, then finds another one that is better than his original (due to the original having some defect, not being in as great shape, or, in a personal instance, not having a header and not still being mint in the bag (MIB)). In this last instance, this is not considered flipping because the collector did not purchase the toy being sold with the purpose of making a profit originally (or a loss). Anyone else?
I'd like to say thanks for the non-flipped / price gouged Betarus! It's a "do unto others" mentality. Since joining this board, I've had awesome folks (sometimes that I barely know) go out of their way to help me, so I try to give back the good toy karma whenever I can. Doesn't get much better than that... We are creating a kaiju-topia!
I don't know CHAKAL's situation and am inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt as a newbie. This site runs on B. Flynn's dime. Unless the S7 staff approves someone to use this site as a "store," it's very disrespectful and an abuse of the site to do so. There have been problems in the past with people, perhaps "innocently" thinking they could set up shop for themselves here. To keep it cool and keep it real. To keep prices from being artificially inflated and to keep greed from running rampant. In spite of whatever things annoy members from time to time this site is an oasis of level-headedness and good faith compared to venues like eBay and YJA. It'd be a shame if the greed-heads and guileless filppers were allowed to run amok here. Rules are necessary. One should be here for the love of the toys above all else. This is not etsy. Selling items received as gifts is offensive and uncool. If one really doesn't care for something received as a gift, a fair trade "on the down low" might be acceptable ... opinions will vary on this, but as a generalization, it's not considered cool to sell something that someone gave you. That's just common courtesy in any community, isn't it? People do sometimes sell things that they recently bought because they "aren't feeling it" or have unexpected financial issues or whatever. If someone does that at retail price infrequently, it's probably not going to be seen as a problem. It's not "flipping" per se. The fact that you're even asking this at all is troubling. If that's why you bought those toys, please don't flip them here. Assuming your question is purely hypothetical, there is no forumla for appreciation that will yield the solid answer you're looking for. Observation is the barometer. If you want to maintain a good reputation, you'd sell those toys for no more than what you paid for them, or maybe 10% more or so. Realistically speaking with rare and highly-desired items consensus value will rise considerably, as you no doubt know. Just watch "the market" for your cues if you really want to sell at a profit. It pays "read between the lines" and to maintain a good sense of ethics by your own reckoning. If your sense of ethics is out of whack with the unspecified consensus standards, yeah, you'll hear about it, and some people won't pull punches. Unfortunately this sometimes leads to excesses of "hazing" when a friendly "this isn't the best way to do this" would have been better, but such is the nature of the board and a reasonably thick skin is sort of necessary. While I do think that the actually-stated rules could be set up somewhere at the site for easier access for newbs, fact is most here feel that "the rules" shouldn't have to be laid out in a heavy-handed fashion. Just be cool, you know? EDIT: I haven't read any other responses yet, so apologies if I'm repeating anything or misrepresenting the staff's views in any way.
Absolutely not. Hypothetical . These are little gems, in my opinion and frankly, nothing I could hope to get monetarily would come close to providing the pleasure I have from admiring them in my home. I'm not a flipper. Anything I have ever sold here (or ever would sell here) has been at break-even or a loss, and deliberately so, because 1. I would rather be accepted as part of the sharing community and 2. I needed the space and the funds ASAP for something better suited to the menagerie and I priced them to move.
I'd like to point out that the board is not immune to flipping which occurs mainly through private messages. And certain figures seem to be more acceptable when sold at 2 - 3 times retail because of exclusiveness or hype value.
The best approach us just to ingratiate yourself in the community for a bit before attempting sales. People here are definitely wary of people coming in just to make a quick buck with such limited items. Keep your eye on how things sell in the Market Place (if you really need to part with something) and use your own judgement. We definitely try and help each other out here. If you have much love for the toys it will show.
i was always curious as to how often this flipper targeting via pm's occurs. when i was new here, i threw up a few wanted threads here and there, and got pm offers for crazy amounts. i never bought anything like that from offers mainly because i couldn't afford it at the time. for awhile i thought that was the basic prices for those figures, so i never thought to keep those offering's member names in mind. one that i do remember was an offer of $350 for a monster farm popsoda. so, i was wondering if other newbs who read this thread have experienced this. or maybe posting this as a warning...
I've had a not-so-active-member offering me one of my wants and asking me to make HIM an offer. When I messaged him asking how much he wanted for it he never replied. That to me is worst than flipping itself.
Yeah, I had that when i first came onto this board. Started a wanted list and got pm'd a few prices. All of them really expensive. Luckily i kind of had a idea of the real market value. I also had someone ask me to name a price and i did the same, saying, as not to offend, that maybe they should say how much they want for it. I never heard back from them.
This is a well known phenomenon in other venues, easily identified by the "I never heard back" complaint which goes along with the "make me an offer" ploy. It's usually indicative of one of several things, none of which is entirely above board. 1. The seller has a customer already lined up and wants to charge top dollar, but he doesn't know how high he can go before the potential buyer complains about the soak. 2. The seller doesn't actually have the figure, but knows where he can get it, and wants to know whether there's enough margin for him to buy it for turnaround. Classic flipping. 3. The seller is trying to sell to whomever offers the top bid, but doesn't want to put the figure up for open auction. 4. Whoever has the toy has no idea what it's worth and is looking for an appraisal. He (or she) may or may not have any intention of selling it at all....at least not on this forum. On rare occasions, the seller will actually accept an offer if it's within his own ballpark estimate; however, anyone legitimate will reply with an acceptance, a flat decline, or a counter-offer, just as would happen with the BO option on the Bay. In my own experience, no legitimate collector (or dealer, for that matter), will put a figure up for sale without a price. They already know what they need to get to make it reasonably worth their while. People who use the "make me an offer" ploy are at best greedy, and at worst dishonest and greedy, and should be reported and boycotted. In my opinion, of course.
