What Would Happen If... Eliminating LEs
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LOL. If they released too much, they couldn't sell all of them.
I would add to your statement of fair market value . . . I would say that fair market value is only what someone is willing to pay for it. A seller can ask any price. That doesn't determine the value. Only what someone will pay for an item determines the value.
The sharks are, and have always been, the problem. Sure, that gets partially defeated if we have LE sizes of 10,000+ or have every pin be open edition, but there really isn't any fun in that IMO. Part of the fun for me is in the exclusivity, having that rare pin that when I look at years later, I remember what it took to get and how hard I tried to find it.
Does the exclusivity have to come from being an LE15 though? For example, Jabberwocky has been looking for a Walt pin for 10-15 years now, and can't find it at any price. There is nothing about the pin's original release that made it special or valuable, but now it's impossible. Us old-timers can point to other pins that their original availability should by no means have made a pin difficult but yet they are. And there are many, many OE pins from 20 years ago that are now difficult for people to track down based on some of the pleading that goes on on FB, and while not "top shelf" are still $50-$100 pins. You can't find enjoyment in owning an item that was easy for you to get, originally, but now years down the road, people are desperate for?
lol @hopemax I promise I’m not trying to start any fires
My biggest question is, who here is happy to pay over $200 for a pin that retailed at $18.99...
lol @hopemax I promise I’m not trying to start any fires
My biggest question is, who here is happy to pay over $200 for a pin that retailed at $18.99... I feel like sometimes we as the collectors enable scalpers because we feed into their game. I get that buyers don’t set the price, but if no one buys at hiked up prices, the sellers are either stuck with shiny pins or are forced to lower the prices. I get that it is almost impossible to prevent people from buying at these absurd prices, but it needs to level out at some point or else people are going to be spending the average person’s car payment on the newest WDIs.
Let me reiterate that in 2010 I was able to purchase the Beloved Tales Little Mermaid for like $50 and you could routinely find grail type pins on eBay for under $75 bucks (pins that had been released years prior at that).
Like @hopemax said, maybe the true problem lies in the inflation of the pin trading community. Maybe an LE1000 could sustain the smaller pin trading community in the first decade of the 00s, but these past few years we’ve seen such a boom in the hobby and there are so many new collectors. Now an LE1000 doesn’t necessarily spread out as evenly as it did before, especially since scalping feels like its at an all time high as well. And maybe the fewer releases has a similar effect (fewer pins, more traders, higher prices)
I'll answer your question with a question: who here is happy to pay $300K for a house that sold 10 years ago for $150K or sold when originally built for $100K? The market changes and we must change with it. We must understand that value does not remain stagnant and we must adjust our feelings about what value is, and it isn't original cost oftentimes.
But this assumes normal market forces at work. Using real estate as an example, we now have places like Vancouver BC putting additional requirements in real estate transactions, because the market was being disrupted by foreign investors buying property that they were perfectly happy to have sit empty, while a housing shortage was making it impossible for residents to buy homes. They didn't just tell their residents to suck it up and find away to pay the higher prices. They recognized things were playing out differently than in the past, and that new rules were needed.
My example is apart from the shark issue, which I mentioned is a very real problem. Pins are allowed to increase in value over time without it being a result of foul play just like houses increase in value without foreign investors interceding and driving up costs.
The Little Mermaid Beloved Tales pin was used as an example. That price on the 'bay has been north of $900 for a while now. Believe me, I check on that often. That price isn't the result of sharking I would argue. My point is that we need to separate the explosion of so-called values when pins are first released (or even before they're released) with the understanding that pins will get more rare and naturally increase in value. For pins in the latter category, yes, I would be willing to pay a premium to get them because I know that if I wanted them at original cost, that ship has sailed a long time ago.
Wait so this all happened because of the PP owner and that was when people realized they could hoard and sell pins at ten times the original price?Except that some of us were here when the prices for certain pins spiked, and remember that it was because a specific buyer who also purchased a well known Pin database that is in a continual state of disrepair, was purchasing, or having his business partners purchase, multiples of specific types that went up for sale and hoarding them (at that point Ebay was not hiding the usernames of buyers). The manipulation may not be happening today, but the the floor was set via manipulation until the point where it became "normal." It wasn't talked about in public, because drama! But that is what happened.
I think the goal was for the failed pin grading operation, but the collateral damage was the perception of what was a fair price for high end pins. The tail wagged the dog and people assumed the prices must be justified, because of all the high end sales going on, and it was the "price to play."
Wait so this all happened because of the PP owner and that was when people realized they could hoard and sell pins at ten times the original price?
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