Everyone doesn't win and you are hurting the vast majority of the collecting community. Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but when I started collecting over 20 years ago, nobody was flipping games and nobody was trying to maximize their profit in the collecting community. Even five years ago, there was still a huge group of collectors who did it for the love of collecting and wanted to help other collectors find cool items at the lowest price possible. In fact, I would venture that this profiteering trend has been within the past couple of years, probably right around the time grading popped up and it seems to be driven by a small group of collectors who believe that only their personal wealth and collection matters and that the community is only here to provide them with information and tips and possibly a customer base. I don't buy into that.

On the occasions where I end up with extra copies of a game or consoles, I either sell them at cost or in many cases just charge exact postage or if they're local, give the items away. If people want to profiteer off of other collectors, that's their choice, but I'm not going to congratulate them for it or celebrate their ingenuity or even consider them to be collectors. It's not positive for other collectors because it results in higher prices and an inability of collectors to find items they may want at a reasonable price.

We can argue about this forever, but I am really tired of the now regular threads in the "What's It Worth" forum here and elsewhere with people saying things like "oh, I met this former programmer from X game company and I told him I was a collector and he gave me all these amazing games for almost nothing, so how much can I sell everthing for?". Do you really think the programmer gave you that stuff so you could immediately turn around and sell it or was he under the impression based on your conduct and claims that as a collector you cherished his items and intended to preserve them? To me that's a form of fraud and misrepresentation. It's one thing to go to thrifts or garage sales or swap meets where nobody cares if you're a collector or not and pricing has nothing to do with your status. It's a whole other thing to use your collector credentials to get access to items at minimal or no cost all the while knowing you are just going to use them for financial gain.


Quote Originally Posted by Jaruff View Post
Why can't you be both?

Take me, for instance. I exclusively collect for Sega along with my vintage electronics collection. However, I would be an idiot to not maximize my profits on Nintendo merchandise so not only can I pay my bills, I can buy more items for my personal collection. I would be an idiot to turn down free, easy money. I would also be an idiot to not purchase any non-gaming item I know is worth money simply out of some "moral" pretext of selling an item for many more times is "wrong".

We live in a capitalist society. Prices are determined by the free will of individuals. Items are worth what people are willing to pay at the time of transaction. There's no "tricking" people into agreeing to "pricing theories". People pay the amounts they're willing to pay to have the item period. If you really want something, you overpay for it. If you want to maximize profits, you target clientele that is willing to overpay. It's simple economics.

You might have an ethical issue with someone like myself but it's very wrong to only assume that we're representation ourselves as "collectors" and we aren't actually collectors. You might have a problem with me using my collector knowledge to support myself and my gaming habit but it doesn't exclude me from being a collector. It's akin to insider information. Same goes for a guy like BeaglePuss and guys like him. How can anyone possibly be upset at him? He makes people happy by selling them rare prototypes, he's happy by making lucrative amounts of cash, and everyone wins. Everyone is happy ... but yourself and those that share your opinion. It's a bit selfish imo but everyone is entitled to their own opinions and that's the beauty of the world we live in.