Mostly ignorance of the PODs being available elsewhere for less.  In some cases, the buyers probably think they are getting the real deal or perhaps an "official" reprint, which they are kind of getting...?

It's a rather lucrative business for the sellers that are doing this.  This particular seller has sold about 110 POD items since April 11th for between $8-$64.

This is horrible for the hobby but inevitable. It does cause damage.

Yes, these are authorized reprints, but unsuspecting buyers dont know they are overpaying for something in print.  

Magic and Pokemon have their "proxies" and fakes. It causes all sorts of problems. Some folks turn away from the hobby after discovering they have not purchased a collectable, but something that is infinitely replaceable. Others get outright paranoid and begin believing original items are fakes, causing returns, negative feedback and costs. This happens to The Most Reputable sources in the games; magic and pokemon especially. Others just wont know better. We will see feedback stating "The module was stapled separate from the cover. Clearly a fake."

Worse yet, scammers receive original items, and learn to claim "fake" or "reprint", requesting refunds while not returning items, or replacing the original with a fake. I say "learn," but there is always someone who believes they had the idea first.

Its the worst on high end items. Some will only consider buying graded items so they can verify the cert#. Yes, this would be reason number 5 of why I am glad CGC is grading. Its also the most unpalatable part of what makes grading a near-monopoly, and in CGC's case, an actual monopoly for modules.

We will eventually get YouTube videos detailing how to tell the difference, but this is just bad press further tainting the hobby. Look out and learn before you buy folks! Not everyone wants to learn. They just wanted to buy a B2 and you scared them off.

Others stop collecting before they start, thinking the hobby is rife with fakes and scammers when they learn these even exist.

Folks looking to make a buck couldn't care less about the hobby. They just view buyers of collectables as something to overcome. Dummies spending their money on dumb stuff...who cares if its original?

mbassoc2003 wrote in POD's on eBay:But in most cases we’re talking about people selling legitimate authorised products here.
....
This can’t really be compared to the sophisticated scamming and forging of MtG and Pokemon cards. They are worlds apart. One clearly is an intentional illegal activity. .....

completely agree. And although illegal the cards that get proxied are often held valued at ridiculously high levels, and then either fall out of standard (the 2nd main way of playing after Commander) or reprinted later (which destroys the value). So Proxies in this case are used as a hedge to stop having financial exposure of a set of 4x$400 cards that could go to $50 in the next Masters Set. Whereas, as is central to this conversation, reprints of D&D stuff dont really impact the value of the originals (and i think some have argued that they increase them as has helped build the OSR community).

Conversation got away from us a little.

Reprints existing are fine, capitalism is good and reprints are not going to bring down the price of originals. We all agree.

Selling reprints at 4-6x for what they can be purchased for on drivethrough RPG is preying on the ignorance of new collectors to our hobby. This was the original post.

It is inevitable, but predators within a community are bad for the community. They aren't healthy life lessons benefiting the hobby long term.

I understand we may disagree on this last point.

Are they clearly listed as a reprint, or is there intent to defraud the buyers by obfuscating the origin? I have seen both on E-Bay and there is a big difference between the two. The buyer does have some responsibility here before spending their money.

Tszii wrote in POD's on eBay:Selling reprints at 4-6x for what they can be purchased for on drivethrough RPG is preying on the ignorance of new collectors to our hobby. That's exactly the intent of the sellers. Lets not argue to absurdity; "this needs to be done in the name of freedom" or "ignorant buyers exist in a vacuum without sellers of intent."

I agree that that is exactly the intent of the seller. They see arbitrage and they believe it is worth their efforts to go for it. Without a willing buyer there would be no seller. We are making assumptions of ignorance on the part of willing buyers  and success on the part of the seller. For all we know we could be looking at informed buyers who don’t care, or sellers who are shilling their own books in order to make their shops look successful. No doubt there reprints get sold at inflated prices in stores also. It’s how economies work. I see anything illegal or immoral going on here, and I don’t see the mechanic by which it demands the hobby. If anything it removed money from the table that may otherwise be driving up prices for those who wish to fill gaps in their collections.

I’d sooner a fool dropped $60 on something he could print himself for $20 than threw $60 at a fanzine I want to complete a set. Fools throwing money around fuck up markets, whatever market they mess around in.

I do believe everyone should be free to spend their money as they please. But I don’t believe we should extend any courtesy to idiots, the same way I don’t believe idiots who invest in stupid things and then get burned when markets move against them are deserving or sympathy or cuddles. We are heading into a time in our histories where many people are going to find out that they have placed their savings foolishly. There may be many who loose their homes. That is what happens when you misallocate funds. It’s not like anyone doesn’t know this. It’s just bone idleness that they choose not to evaluate what they are doing. I work way too hard to sympathise with bone-idle stupidity. If anything, we have a moral obligation to teach people not to be lazy and ignorant. That is what life’s lessons are meant to be about.

I could see that argument for someone buying from the country the seller is in, but if you’re buying international, when you factor in the customs processing I’d imaging they’re not too much different. I suspect it’s just muppets being muppets, and most of them likely have no interest in learning anyways, so no harm done to anyone. It’s no different to lazy buyers buying used cars of stocks on their phones. They’re usually too stupid to know they overpaid, don’t care anyways, and in all likelihood never will know anyways. Everyone’s a winner. Especially the buyer with his nice new $80 book. Imagine how much more he values that book than if he’d bought a copy for $20. That seller has given him $60 of appreciation and value other books of that kind just do not have. Ignorance is his world and who are we to say he should not be happy there?

There have been reports over the years of poor binding and print quality from certain PoD presses.
Namely, pages occasionally pulled too far into the binding (which is clearly a typesetting issue and not a printing issue), and of colour pages sticking together where the ink was not fully dried and lifting ink from adjacent pages leaving white spots on one side, and black spots on the other.
If I bought a book from DrivethruRPG and I was disappointed by the print quality, I'd sell it on eBay to cover my time and costs and the efforts I'd gone through to buy and then dispose of a poor quality product. In such a circumstance I could understand why resale needs to carry a $40-50 premium. No-one wants to be working for free, and eBay and PayPal both add their costs, as well as the original retail cost and shipping, not to mention postage and packaging and insurance to the new buyer.
If there is a willing buyer, where is the harm and selling to them? It's not like they don't have the option to go elsewhere, and its not like they don't have access to Google and the internet.
This isn't a case of 'ignorance'. This is a case of buyers who either don't care at all because it's only money, or buyers who are so bone idle they they are unwilling to Google what it is they are buying.

VancianMagic wrote in POD's on eBay:

Well that's good to know.