There is no nevcoup on Ebay, good effort though.
Sea-to-sky-games wrote:With respect to the difficulty of gauging market volatility, I wonder what portion of eBay buyers plan on keeping fairly longterm what they buy. What I mean is, for example, how many buy a ridiculously expensive item just to look at it for a few months or years and get rid of it? It must be difficult to track what any rare item "should go for" if the effective supply of these may be ever dwindling. After all, it seems a lot of the sales done on eBay are not from a collector to a casual buyer, but from a seller who says "gee, I got to get rid of this crap" to an avid collector. As such, and holding interest in the hobby constant, it seems every unusual item bought should put upward pressure on the price.
If ten of them sell for $1,800, to KNOWLEDGEABLE BUYERS, it IS worth $1,800. Plain and simple.
nevcoup wrote:My bad: I am andrewlloyd311lla (I didn't get to pick my name?!?!).
I doubt it. Besides, the market is amoral. It has nothing to do with ethics or morality.
Sea-to-sky-games wrote:Don't you mean knowledgeable investors?
A Tsoj (seems to be the running example) is worth $800-$1,200, in nice shape. Plain and simple. If someone pays $1,300 for it, they overpaid.
Sea-to-sky-games wrote:.. if they wish to resell it and resell it tomorrow, then I perfectly agree with this statement. Moreover, if he DID pay $1,300 it means that he probably won the auction (perhaps laughing that he got it so cheaply) while everyone else passed up perhaps a once in a year opportunity to get their hands on it!
Markets are neither moral or amoral.
So then by definition they're immoral?
Deadlord39 wrote:Price shifts do not include noobies buying $2,000 Tsojs. They include items which show an up/down trend over a period of time, involving multiple sales of the same or similar items.There really is no debate here. A Tsoj (seems to be the running example) is worth $800-$1,200, in nice shape. Plain and simple. If someone pays $1,300 for it, they overpaid. Why do I say this? Because I (and several others here) have seen many copies bought and sold, and that is the realistic range. If you sell one and get $1,800 for it, congrats, you made out and someone took a hard greenie up the brown onion. If ten of them sell for $1,800, to KNOWLEDGEABLE BUYERS, it IS worth $1,800. Plain and simple.
Markets are neither moral or amoral
Let me guess, you are sitting on about 5 of these babies and you are getting to sell them off, right. "Come one, come all be sure to invest all of your money into my collection and laugh all the way home as you effectively steal these things away from me for a low ball price of $1600." Right....
nevcoup wrote:Then you are mistaken about the very principles by which collectible markets operate. You load your argument with a spurious distinction between "newbie" and "KNOWLEDGABLE BUYERS." By your reasoning at the beginning of your comment, any knowledgable buyer would buy within "true" range because, being "knowledgable," they would not overpay. If this is the case, then the market just would not fluctuate because, as you say, the market only changes when many knowledgable buyers overpay (which, OF COURSE, wouldn't happen!). If the market worked according to your reasoning the going Tsoj price in 20 years would be "$800-$1,200, in nice shape. Plain and simple." Also, by your reasoning, past rates for Keep on the Borderlands would remain as they were 6 years ago. Logic, experience, and the Acaeum article on the D&D collectible market suggest otherwise.Again (as this SEEMS to have been overlooked), I am not saying these dealers are not shady (sorry for the double negative). I am making a simple point about collectible markets:Values are set by buyers in such markets.If buyers drink the magic Koolaide and pay very high prices for a particular item for a while (whether "newbie" or not) then that is the going rate (not the true price, just the going rate). Sellers are prone to push for this by pricing items higher than book, but it is up to buyers to buy or not.
