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Scalping is part of any collectible hobbying!!!

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Truer words have yet to be spoken. It is just unfortunate that money ultimately is the driving force behind it all. In a sense it is similar to the phrase, it takes money to make money.

It is very difficult to get into collecting without having the financial backing. I'm sure there all collectors are capable of dishing out $25 for a PODM pin on release day, but are they able to physically get into the park (some are not fortunate enough to live within a reasonable distance), do they have to skip work (what i did for LKPODM- doctors appointment *cough cough*), and are they willing to camp out? Most people are restricted by these factors because they can't afford to risk skipping work (basically a one time deal for me) especially how the economy is now, companies are looking to "become more EFFICIENT". Don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm angry or bitter at those who can and are willing to go to extreme lengths to obtain awesome pins, I'm just saying that it is unfortunate that there is no way to even out the playing field. The way things are now, if i wanted to get my girlfriend a the Mulan PODM (one of her favorite movies of all time, she's chinese lol) i couldn't just casually pick it up at the park after work, so i'd have to find it somewhere online where id be facing a 100%+ markup. It is human nature to take advantage of the system, especially when there's money to be made.

Anyway, the main point i was trying to convey was that it is unfortunate for those who aren't as financially stable as others, because there are people who are die hard fans but simply cannot afford to spend $100+ on a single pin. As Cicada states, that's just the nature of the beast and that's what makes it so gratifying when you finally get that grail.
 
For me, scalping is a part of this hobby. Just like it is for baseball cards, Legos, any hot action figures, etc. The key, to me, is patience. I've been collecting pins since 2003, and I am still trying to get my grail of one of the first surprise releases, which is Pinpics #3742. I continue, to this day to search for this pin and I will have it! However, I'm not going to pay $300 for it either! Patience has been a key and will continue to do so. I am of the mindset of that if a pin is suppose to be mine then I will have it. If it's not in the cards, then I wasn't meant to have that pin!
 
I don't mind folks charging whatever they want for their pins; that is their prerogative. I do however take issue with buying out the entire stock of something in order to control the market. That's just bad form, IMO.
redstorm63 said:
Patience has been a key and will continue to do so. I am of the mindset of that if a pin is suppose to be mine then I will have it. If it's not in the cards, then I wasn't meant to have that pin!
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That is exactly my philosophy, and it is the only thing that keeps me sane sometimes. Patience goes a long way in preventing that "I've been taken" feeling. When visiting an auction or seller site, I try to remember that I'm not shopping for a pin; I'm shopping for a price.
 
Wouldn't the most logical business decision (not necessarily the best for us, but for Disney) to bring back Disney Auctions? Instead of Disney making a few dollars on each pin and then someone else making a couple hundred on Ebay, Disney can be making hundreds which in turn gives them more incentive to make more pins.
 
If they actually produced pins of the same quality as the old Disney Auctions designs, that would be wonderful! Not sure how much that would affect the secondary market though. I was not around during the original Auctions; anyone remember what impact, if any, it had on reselling?
 
Merryweather said:
So, for my part, if I know a seller, I quietly e-mail them to take it outside Ebay. Why feed Ebay more $$ for fees?
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I'd be careful with that. Per Ebay:

We don't allow our members to use eBay to contact each other to make offers to buy or sell items outside of eBay. Also, members can't use information obtained from eBay to contact each other about buying or selling outside of eBay.If you receive an offer to buy or sell outside eBay, please report it.
Make sure you follow these guidelines. If you don't, you may be subject to a range of actions, including limits of your buying and selling privileges and suspension of your account.
 
There were a lot of problems with the original Disney Auctions which is why the pins were moved to Ds.com. I don't know if anyone around can remember this but some of the pins would sell out as soon as 30 seconds ie the P.I.N.S. pins while the LE 100's were a Dutch auction and would last 7 days. The quality of the pins were out of this world, you couldn't compare them to anything out there. This is why some of them still hold the value they do today and a few of the Stitch's actually sold for over $200 originally.
 
I disagree completely, are you kidding? My arpits dont smell at all. Lol
but good way of explaining it. Not sure some of these traders would like to be thought of as scalpers though.
Im losing my hair so i have no need to be worried about being scalped

happy trades
kirk
 
It seems this post might be very relevant again, so I decided to bump it up in the hopes it might ease some of the drama lately, especially with the April releases right around the corner.
 
I totally agree with the original post. Well said... No one wants to pay $$$ for a pin but, hey, it's what we do for our hobby.

That being said, my finances are tight so most pins I can't afford (because I love Tangled, dammit!) I just have put things in perspective... Cell phone bill/car payment or pins. Obviously, usually the pins lose. Instead, I get extra happy when I can get a special pin because it's not an everyday thing.

That is my take.
 
ok.. i now change my mind. I guess if its part of all the colletion hobbys... it must b the cool thing to do and ok. Im not sure what i was thinking b4 when i said just cuz everyone dose sumthing dose not make it right. silly me
 
Like to preface this statement by pointing out that the tone is neither angry or nasty. If I was able to record these words and post them here I am confident that people would be able to hear the genuine sentiment behind it and not simply read into it as a hateful, mean or snarky. If you like to troll my posts and just ramble off some defensive garbage feel free to but at least have the decency to READ the entire post and not just skim to find something to jump on. (see the pink friendly and sweet tone? Please read the following as if your favorite princess was saying it, that would be the actual tone, not the one some members seem to hear)

I agree with this 100% if there were a larger percent possible I would agree with that. While I understand the resale market, it is very rare that you will see internal flipping of a collectible in a forum type setting where the members that are doing it are also actively schmoozing with other members and expect to be embraced by the very people they are taking advantage of. My concerns here are simply that it is difficult to truly develop friendships with members that are flipping pins at 400%+ markup for no other reason than they can because they make sure to amass all of the supply. I cannot/will not pay those kinds of prices for pins but the real problem lies in the fact that I will also not trade with or sell to them either for the same reason. I genuinely try to help fellow collectors not assist ebay sellers/back door ebay sellers make money off of other collectors.

A "trading" group should be just that, yes I know capitalism blah blah blah, no where is it quite as apparent that price fixing is going on as it is with these pins. I have never collected anything with such limited supply so there has never been the ability to effectively corner the market and let greed be your pricing guide. Honestly LE300 of anything when controlled by less than HALF of that amount of people is never a good situation and people screaming about "capitalism" are sidestepping the real issue of a Monopoly. That along with the ability for them to self govern, dodge any and all fees associated with legitimate selling and keep the collector at the mercy of the sellers greed. How this can issue even be argued as anything other than that is very disconcerting. There are laws in place to prevent nearly every single other Monopoly type of situation for just that reason....If you control the market you get to gouge the buyers, which has been been the case from the beginning of time. The Sherman Antitrust Act was drafted in 1890 to prevent just that, so this type of thing is nothing new by any means.

Not sure if your Transformers group allows members to sell at outrageous prices or not but in any hobby it will create animosity among collectors if a fellow member is gouging. However the similarity between the two is quite different as the supply for Transformers greatly outweighs that of these pins. Even the SDCC exclusives are not anywhere near the minuscule 150,300,500 or even 2000! They are not only sold at one select location for the most part and Hasbro sells directly online to anyone that wants to buy not just locals for almost all of their exclusives including SDCC.

I hope that someone can finally actually hear that I am neither bashing re-sellers nor the idea/ability to make money. I have said several times that my mother supplements her SS by selling things be they used collectibles or new items that she gets from stores or conventions and that makes a difference in her ability to live. I know the secondary market sucks for those that cannot afford to use it but I also understand and respect the need for it. My problem is that being a member of what is hailed as a "collectors forum" is being utilized by a select few to gouge the real collectors and it is not a practice that benefits the community as a whole, only the seller, which by all accounts cannot make people feel as they are part of a "community" when the only people allowed the benefits of one are those that are able to mule the lines and assure that they can price set this hobby.

Where is that chick with the ice cream? oke:'ing a pixie (like I don't know her name LOL) She is the resident Zen waitress. Hoping this one can slip past any drama and be discussed rationally for once.

Also I would like to say that it is very clear that some members of this group are in agreement with my feelings. They are ebay sellers (may not let others know but I have bought from them on ebay) but they NEVER sell here on the forums EVER!! I believe it is to avoid the very things I am talking about, mistrust, hurt feelings etc. and if they are actually collectors they would not want to be seen as a flipper or gouger because they want to be able to trade in a community where they are not judged or disliked for their practices, do they flip pins? Yes they do, do they do it here nope.

My father always told me "don't &*(^ where you eat" which is basically don't mix business with pleasure, eg, don't date your co-workers, gossip about your boss and so on. Seems like a messages that is being missed by most.
 
I guess things are worth what you believe them to be. Like I was saying to the postman about my missing pin, to him it's just a piece of metal but to me it was something more.
If people will pay the price, then it's clearly worth that much to them.
 
This point had been brought up several times and i just still don't fully understand it. Who exactly are the "true collectors". To my understanding it seems like the "true collectors" are those who have no access to places like WDW, DLR, DSF, WDI, Etc and that the SoCal traders take from them. Are there no "true collectors" in SoCal?
 
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