Kingofpain89 wrote:I dont presume to think I understand why Doug wants to own every single Dragon #1 in existence.  But I honestly don't think it has anything to do with him "protecting his investment", "cornering the market", or anything similar.  I've met Doug, and although I dont know him very well, I think he is a pretty decent guy and I am usually pretty spot on with first impressions.  Badmike has vouched for him and has spent a lot more time with him than I have so he would know better than I would.  Course he could be a cannibalistic serial-killer and Mike is his next meal for all the good my intuition does me.

I respect what you say and think Brian.  You have spent a lot of time defending this hobby and this forum from people that try to exploit it and its members.  For the most part, it is a pretty thankless and time-consuming job...one that most people have no desire to take part in.  When you are right everyone praises you, but on the flip side, if you are wrong about someone, those people who were praising you before are now keeping their distance.  Nice double-edged sword there eh?

That said, I wish you guys would just drop the whole thing.  For one....it makes you both look like you are involved in nothing more than a pissing contest.  I am not going to try and defend what Doug does because I dont know his mind.  But with all the venom pointed in his direction, it wouldnt surprise me if he was just buying up Dragon #1's just to get you riled up.  If that is indeed the case, and I hope it isn't, it is definitely working.

I give Badmike a hard time about some of his prices on a monthly basis.  I have also made several comments about how looney I think of some of Doug's prices are.  But in the end, it is none of my business how anyone decides to price their items...so I just have to let it go.  Maybe you should just do the same.  At least stop calling him Coug Jr.  I dont think Doug deserves to be lumped in with Dave Whitfield.  Douchebag Dave is in a class all by himself.

Or you could tell me to blow it out my ass because I dont know what I am talking about.....either or is fine with me.  

Blow it out your ass! (couldn't resist)

Doug isn't stopping anyone from buying Dragon #1s...as a matter of fact, I pretty much know EXACTLY what his cut off bid is. Bid over and you win. Or spend a lot of time looking for Buy it Nows on Dragon 1s on Ebay...or post here or on Dragonsfoot looking for a copy...or contact a dealer directly...any number of methods will get you one, which is why "cornering the market" will never work in this hobby.  Anyone riled up at guys with seemingly unlimited funds don't need to be collecting anything...every hobby has a couple of people who always seem to buy all the best stuff all the time.
 This pissing contest is getting tiring.  I'm sure Doug will tire of buying up Dragon #1s just about when Brian stops ripping him...or maybe not..I don't care anymore. If he wants to buy them and line them up and stare at them, or put them up on ebay for $350 each, who cares. It's the free enterprise system at work.  Blackmoor was killing us all at Gencon with his Daystar bids (and wins) and I don't hate the guy because he bid them up too high for me to compete. It shouldn't even matter why someone is buying them up....a few years back Aneoth was buying up every White Box in sight and everyone was going nuts then too. If it's for an investment, so what....comics started out for kids, baseball cards also, and now people sometimes buy them as investments.  It's the nature of the beast. People are naive if they think certain key items in our hobby aren't going to go up in value in the years ahead.
   I wouldn't be doing what I do if I didn't think I could make a profit. As someone I know once said, "This is no altruistic venture".  Hell if I had more disposable income right now no one would win an auction on rare Call of Cthulhu stuff..that game is primed for a major spike in prices (they are already jumping up).  
 It's just a non issue as far as I'm concerned.  Doug will run out of money long before all the Dragon #1s in the world are gone. His motives are his own....if they are for profit, so be it.  Unlike Coug, I've seen Doug cut deals for people on occasion, myself included, I don't even know if Coug would let his own mother eat out of the dogfood bowl if she was starving.  The market will decide what anything is worth when/if Doug decides to resell them...he may be setting them aside in a safe for 20 years, who knows what they will be worth then? Anyway I just wish everyone would realize nothing is going to be proven or solved here and move on.

Mike B.

Ok, B.. maybe it's my bidding style then...

Usually when I want to buy something on eBay, I review the item, ask for more details, get more pictures... then I decide how much ie: the MAX amount I am willing to spend... then I place one bid.. my maximum final bid and I walk away... (not on all, but usually a rather high bid.. and after getting some final photos I might go higher)

When I started doing that with Dragon #1, you said I was driving up the price since I am willing to pay from $200+ to over $300 for a Dragon based on condition.

When I make such a high early bid, it means others have to overbid my price to get one... (thus my statement that people would have to pay a premium price since I don't low bid) so in a sense it drives up the price IF someone else wants the copy I have bid on... and since you attributed that to the fact I had some Dragon's in my store (which are the ones I decided not to keep since I am always looking to have a nicer copy of anything and thus keep the nicest).. I took them out of the store since I have no need to sell them...

Now I changed bidding styles, more at your "urging" than how I bid... so now I no longer make the up front bid (though if I can't be there at snipe time, I will make some kind of bid) I wait until the last few seconds and I bid the original amount I would have in the first place... meaning even though the Dragons I have won have ranged from $200-$270 in price, I did bid more on every one of them.

It seems to me, that you (and possibly many others here) attempt to buy on eBay or any place for that matter at the "lowest" price they can get an item at.... and that's NOT how I do it... I never have.. my final bid on items is always the absolute highest price I am willing to pay... ie: the other day a Don't Give Up the Ship was up for auction, and I won it for $23.15 .. now I have sold one of these in the store for ~$125.00 and have seen auctions go to ~$108+ .. so when I placed my bid in the last 5 sec... I bid $89.97 ... so if I resold it for $125... I'd make a few dollars.... I was willing to pay $89.00+ for the item, yet no one else bid on it so I got it for $23.15 !

In the past I would have bid the $89.97 the day I saw the item, and I might have paid more for it in the end than $23.15, so I am listening to you and I have changed my bidding style and it has saved me some money... so even though we don't see eye to eye, I get nuggets of good info from you... but still not sure why it makes me a bad person when I do buy lots of the same item.

I don't try and get the item at the absolute cheapest price, I try to make sure my "offer" for the item is fair and close to the realistic price the seller  hopes to get for the item... someone posting a low BIN will get what they posted it for since that must be all they want/expect.. though an ultra rare with a low BIN would get more from me since I'd feel like I was ripping them off if they didn't get at least 2/3 it's real value.

In any case, I wouldn't have started buying as many Dragon #1's if it hadn't "bothered" you as much as it seems to. Maybe "bother" is too harsh a word, but since you track them and seem to post everyone I buy (and make some off the wall comment about it), I don't want to disappoint you so I keep buying them... as long as I can afford to... 3-4 per month is about all I can handle, more than that and I'd have to get pickier in which one's I bid on.

And here I didn't want to fight within anyone else(especially someone who I have been on the same side as many times in the past) in this matter, but I guess I have no choice:

Kingofpain89 wrote:It's actually kinda funny....a couple of years ago when creep1962 started buying up every uncommon or rare item he could get his hands on to resell them for a significant markup, just about everyone on this forum, including myself, was ready to go to war with the guy.  The fucked up thing about it was....he was right.  A couple of years too early but all of those R and RPGA series modules he bought have doubled in value since then.  Sure he was an idiot about it at the time, lied about who he was, and he is a horrible seller, but if he had put them in a box somewhere and pulled them out today, half the people on this forum would be falling over themselves to snatch them up.

Umm, no.   First off and foremost R and RPGA modules have seen a moderate increase over the last two years, but not anywhere near what he was trying to sell them at.   He was trying to sell the R modules back then, when they were going for between $125- $175 for over $400 each(he had his BIN for the 4 R modules sitting in his store at $1799.99).  Nowayadays they are going for $150-$200(with the excepetion of R4 which seems to have really spiked at ~$300).  Even today, no one and I mean no one, would be falling all over themselves to buy them up at over $400 each.

Aside from that, this market like every other market has its ebbs and its flows.  Some items are hot right not and others not so much.  Two years ago 1st print woodgrain sets were going for between $4000-$5000 and the last couple haven't even broken $3000. Christ, I sold one last year and it didn't even break $875. In addition, and I can't speak for anyone but myself in this matter, but I would not buy anything off that guy, even if he was selling it 1/10 of the going rate on principle alone.  The R and RPGA modules are no different and are just as likely to see an ebb here in over the next couple of years as they are to continue at the rate they have been.

Kingofpain89 wrote:So the Coug tried to "corner" the H1 market a few years back.  Did it work?  No....and if Doug were actually trying to corner the market on Dragon mags it wouldnt work with that either.  I dont know what Doug scored on his SAT's but I guarantee he isnt that stupid.

Was he able to successfully corner the market on H1? No, you are right he wasn't.  that said, do you honestly believe that his continuous jacking up the price on them has not had an affect on the value of them even still today?  You bet your ass it has.  Cougarrinard is one of the primary reasons that complete H1s typical exceed $100 at auction even today.  Its not the only reason albiet, but its a big one.   There are several other comparable modules out there with counters including B10 which may in fact be borh harder to find complete then H1 and is a superior adventure by just about anyone's standards and yet consistantly falls well short of the $100 range in auctions.  The common denomintor in this is Cougar and not much else.

Kingofpain89 wrote:  It is obvious, and he has said as much in a previous post, that the main reason he is buying them is just to piss you off.

Sorry King, but I am going to have call a spade a spade here. This is utter and complete bullsh*t, period.  Blaming me for someone else's actions is attune to blaming the rape victim for being to scantily clad.  Its bull sh*t then and its bulls sh*t now.  Doug is buying up all the Dragon #1's because he wants to buy them and no other reason.  He can try and pin it on me, but he is the one doing the bidding and buying not me.  He is responsible for his own actions, not me.  You may not care about what he is doing and you may not like what I have to say about it, but this has nothing to do with me and everything to do with him.

Kingofpain89 wrote: It seems to be working very well too.  The ironic thing Brian is that you had a hand in creating the very problem you are seeking to resolve.  

No again as stated above he isn't pissing me off, he's really not.  Again trying to blame me for anyone elses action other then my own, is complete BS.  I post this stuff to educate the other people to see and make up their own minds and no other reason.  If they see it and it doesn't bother them, more power to them, but they will know what's going on beforehand.

Kingofpain89 wrote: So why dont both of you just stop?  If youre not going to then how about using PM's to call each other names so the rest of us dont have to deal with the vile banter anymore.  It's old, it's tired, and both of you have more to offer this forum than your obvious dislike for one another.  Get over yourselves already!!!

I'll remember this the next time madmaksid bids something up that you want.  You can't have it both ways. Just because Doug decided to jump into the fire and join the forum doens't get him any special exceptions, at least not by me and I really hope no one else does either.  As a matter of fact, as being a member of this forum we should be holding ourselves to a higher standard than we do other people, not a lower one.  

I am sorry if this annoys you because you and Doug are friendly outside the forum, but TBH I not sure that really matters. Don't get me wrong, I am not intentionaly trying to piss you or anyone else off for that matter (besides him), but I guess sometimes thats the result of my posting, its an occupational hazzard.

bclarkie wrote:And here I didn't want to fight within anyone else(especially someone who I have been on the same side as many times in the past) in this matter, but I guess I have no choice.

Actually Brian you always have a choice.

I'm not going to argue with you over the prices of rare modules.  There would be no point since you are on the valuation board and keep track of these.  And since the majority of woodgrains on Ebay over the last year have been in absolute shit condition it's not surprising that they arent selling for higher prices.

But how can you sit here and tell me that your not pissed off at Doug?  If your not pissed off then what is it?  Why are you trying to make him out to be nothing but a total prick?  You say you are trying to "educate people to see and make up their own minds" but from what I am reading it seems as if you are trying to make up their minds for them.

I just want you to understand that this isnt about you and me.  This is simply about the ongoing arguing and unnecessary rants that go on between you and Doug.  It has to stop sometime or one of you will most likely leave the forum.  I honestly dont wish that to happen to either of you.  It would be simpler to agree to disagree and move on.  You also should understand that Doug and I aren't friends.  I met him once at Mike's and thats it.  I have never been to his house or out in public with him.  I have never purchased anything from him.  We've never shared a deep, heartfelt conversation about D&D or anything else for that matter.  I just happen to live in the same general area as Doug and we share a mutual friend in Mike.

And by the way...just because I posted that madmaksid is an idiot because he bids up all the good Traveller stuff doesnt mean that I think he is the Antichrist (we all know Dave Whitfield is the Son of Lucifer   ).  Hell...Kynan Conner outbid him on every one of those Group One auctions by a considerable margin.  What does that make him?  Just another collector with a lot of money and no reason to care what others think about how much he pays for his items.  Good for him.  I dont see the fun in that but hey...whatever floats your boat.

The point of my earlier post was nothing more than a way to hopefully get your attention to make you both realize that neither of you are doing any good bringing this argument to the fore of half the threads on the forum.  Obviously I failed.  No big deal though as I honestly didnt expect to.  

bclarkie wrote:I should probably also note, that I have toned down my actions here considerably over the last couple of months.  With the exception of the Dragon #1 thing here in this thread and the Cougarrinard thing with Natalie last month(both of which which were effectively pre-existing issues as it was), I haven't posted anything new about shillers and what-not, nor do I intend to(despite seeing several possible examples on Ebay since then).  Since the Natalie thing seems to have run its course, the only thing left is this, which pretty much means as soon as Doug here stops buying up all the Dragon #1s, then I won't be posting about any of this stuff any more.

Really?  Wow, LUCKY US!  

Mike B.

ScketreWhisp wrote:Bombadil... some items like the PotVQ I place on eBay at a higher price not to sell, but for "advertisement" since very rare items seem to draw a crowd

Yeah, the Missus swears by expensive shiny things (plus the Power 9) to draw in people at Magic tournaments.

Cheers,
Malc

bclarkie wrote:
Kingofpain89 wrote:
 So the Coug tried to "corner" the H1 market a few years back.  Did it work?  No....and if Doug were actually trying to corner the market on Dragon mags it wouldnt work with that either.  I dont know what Doug scored on his SAT's but I guarantee he isnt that stupid.


Was he able to successfully corner the market on H1? No, you are right he wasn't.  that said, do you honestly believe that his continuous jacking up the price on them has not had an affect on the value of them even still today?  You bet your ass it has.  Cougarrinard is one of the primary reasons that complete H1s typical exceed $100 at auction even today.  Its not the only reason albiet, but its a big one.   There are several other comparable modules out there with counters including B10 which may in fact be borh harder to find complete then H1 and is a superior adventure by just about anyone's standards and yet consistantly falls well short of the $100 range in auctions.  The common denomintor in this is Cougar and not much else.

I was selling H1's for $100 10 years ago, before Coug had bought his three houses and grew man boobs.  The "common denominator" is SCARCITY of COMPLETE product.  H1 came in that crappy skinny box (like no other TSR product every published before or since) that is ALWAYS crushed, sometimes even in the shrink; it included counters, often missing or separated;  buildings that were supposed to be cut up, and supported a system (Battlesystem) that never became popular or caught on with the gaming public.  You couldn't SCRIPT a better instant collectible than a complete set of H1 Bloodstone Pass!  I have been selling on the internet since 1994 and in that entire time, H1 has been one of the most highly sought after AD&D collectibles ever.  Cougie could have never existed (wishful thinking) and it would still go for $100.
 And to say that something Coug did over a year ago is still having pull in the market just doesn't make sense.  If he isn't bidding them up, then the H1's are getting what the market dictates. Whether or not it's a "good" module (highly subjective anyway) has no bearing on what it will bring in the marketplace...ST1 and most of the Wee Warriors stuff is crap, as is a lot of the "collectible" stuff out there, yet it goes for high prices based on perception.  In the case of H1, it's even a little bit of reality as it's damn hard to get one of these in complete condition when everyone else that needs one is bidding against you. Should B10 be worth more? Probably.  Is it a Coug plot? Doubtful.
 The point is, it's damn hard to manipulate the prices on the market on anything that's not a super rare. Cougs attempted corner of the H1 market didn't change prices except for the short run.  Creepy's attempted manipulation (pay twice what something is worth and then try to sell it for four times what it's worth) was both laughable and pathetic.  Doug's buying up of Dragon #1s for over the "set" price may be an investment; I know I had it pegged as a "rising star" the minute Dragon magazine announced their cancellation.  Personally, I don't know that I would invest in Dragon #1 to the extent Doug has....do I wish I had 4-5 stashed away?  You bet.  Investments in collectibles see the most return when you can puchase an UNDERVALUED product and sell it for the maximum.  Right now, certain collectible RPG items are NOT undervalued IMO....while stuff like Dragon #1s, White Boxes, certain SW items, are.  I wouldn't be surprised at all to see both Dragon #1 and a white box go regularly for $300 in the near future...without any sort of market manipulation.  We can even get into the entire "Why does Dungeon #1 go for so much?" when it's one of the more common mags of the entire run (more perception there) but it's not important unless someone starts buying them all up anyway.
   The fact is that this is a pissing contest between you and Doug and always has been (your first post concerning him way back when kind of tipped it off) and has nothing to do about market manipulation or whatever  I honestly don't know who you are thinking you are helping by harping on the fact he's buying up Dragon #1s....it's a far cry from spotting shillers and thieves on Ebay.  The fact is most of us would, given the chance, take advantage ofa market to buy low and sell high.  Right now, I wish I could, but it's just not in the cards.
  If I was looking for a Dragon #1 right now, Imight be pissed off (as I'm sure King is in his quest for certain Traveller items), but I guarantee I'd find one. Anyone paying an inflated price for anything doesn't have the patience to be a good collector anyway.

Mike B.

Badmike wrote:I'm starting to see a common denominator here...

Mike B.

You're right of course. It's funny though that the common denominator here seems to be you keep "vouching" for people who aren't turning out to be so great....

Badmike wrote:  
I honestly don't know who you are thinking you are helping by harping on the fact he's buying up Dragon #1s.  
Mike B.

Of course you don't.  You view people who drive the prices as being good for your business. As a matter of fact you love to see this crap happen, as it not only allows you to get the positive end result of higehr prices without having to be the "bad guy" by doing it yourself.  You know you claim to have the hobby's best interest in mind all the time, so since thats the case can you please explain how its good for anyone and I mean anyone else for one person to buying up all the Dragon #1s?