Mandos
3 of a Kind
This is exactly the issue. Who is going to post as feedback on a transaction that they got fleeced?
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Best Way to Identify Positive/Negative Interactions (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter BarrieJ3
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Does anyone here remember that PCA secondary 1’s sold for $49 a rack originally. Or that Gopherbluesman GCR’s were .80 each in the group by? A new person on the forum seeing these facts if they look close enough would think there is nothing wrong with trying to make a quick buck. Most here have done it not so blatantly but in some form. So everyone take a good look in the mirror before burning someone at the stake. I know what I’ve seen in my total time between the blue wall and here. How much were the Wynn tourney chips again? Yeah, I thought so…
Venturalvn
Full House
Jesus Christ people... One of the guys was literally reselling with a markup in the exact sale thread in which he bought the chips before it was even marked as SOLD. Get a grip on the conversation.
If anyone thinks any NAGB Paulson chip originally sold for $8 to $12 each you are smoking crack. Don’t get me started……
QueYo
Pair
New guy here with a question.
I saw on the TCR sale page where he said "We try to do things so people can acquire a complete set at good prices." I don't know that I believed it when I read it, but I sure believed it 10 seconds after the sale start time when I couldn't order the chips I was coveting. Obviously there is high demand and those chips could have been sold for a higher price.
With blatant flipping like that, do people like TCR continue to sell at a reasonable price, knowing that people are buying just to profit?
I saw on the TCR sale page where he said "We try to do things so people can acquire a complete set at good prices." I don't know that I believed it when I read it, but I sure believed it 10 seconds after the sale start time when I couldn't order the chips I was coveting. Obviously there is high demand and those chips could have been sold for a higher price.
With blatant flipping like that, do people like TCR continue to sell at a reasonable price, knowing that people are buying just to profit?
There is only so much a vendor can do when they have a sale to the internet. Jim does put limits in place and blatant flippers are a fact of any hobby. How much is that Honus Wagner card again? Those kinds of flips are disguised as auctions, just like here…..
OP
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Every thread turns into this eventually. We give too much credit when we assume people will read the thread beforehand or apply critical thought when posting. We need a flair to threads like "Serious responses only please".
Huge can of worms. Bottom line below:
1. TCR does at most times sell large batches of chips under the maximum value that he could.
2. Also, if he sold at maximum value it would take extraordinarily more effort to sell everything. It seems to reason that he sells at a price point most conducive to his process, time, and bank account.
If you want to go further, there are many more parts to the story. But the above is a synopsis of the two sides to the coin. It's a symbiotic relationship, he is going to make the most money the easiest by selling to us here, and we also see a regular influx of chips at reasonable near market prices.
The only reason I stepped into this shitshow today was because I’m a little tired of the double standard that exists here. Dude messed up a little based on some past things that are here for anyone to see. Let it go, it will happen again. Don’t be a hypocrite.
Mandos
3 of a Kind
There was a LOT on this topic in the thread that is no more (alas), but the common theory is that Jim sets his prices where the chips will sell quickly because it doesn't make sense for him to keep an inventory in stock and deal with selling it over a long period of time. He certainly COULD make a lot more off of his sales, but there would be other tradeoffs (higher risk, more inventory management, storage costs, etc) and it's a business model that works for him.
I should also note that chips go in seasons, and the hot chip from the latest chip room sale won't necessarily be as high in demand if another sale comes along soon after, so while the flippers rarely lose money, there's no guarantee that everything in a chip room sale will sell for x% more on the open market (see Jumers et al.)
bergs
Royal Flush
That's not flipping.
I don't think anyone here has a problem with someone buying chips, hanging onto them, and then eventually selling them for the prevailing market price. That's fairly normal commerce.
Here's what I've got a huge fuckin' problem with, and so should everyone else who isn't here just for the money - I'll use an analogy to make it simpler.
You're at the grocery store and you need a pot roast quickly for dinner. You don't have time to go anywhere else but your local store. You get there and there is one pot roast left. You walk over to it and someone notices you walking over to it and rushes in and picks it up before you do and says "Oh, you want this? List price is $19.11 but give me $25.00 and it's yours".
They add no value to the transaction. They don't even want the pot roast - but they know that you want the pot roast, and even though it's readily available for purchase, they inject themselves into the process to turn a quick buck as a middleman.
That's what flipping is. Or, call it extremely short term chip investing if you want. They buy chips that they don't want and never intend on using with the express and sole purpose of flipping it off to someone that would've bought them if they hadn't gotten there first, but now they're charging a 50%, 100%, 200% premium for no additional service or purpose whatsoever.
Hey, if you're cool with that, let me know what chips you're after and I'll see if I can find them and buy them before you do and then sell them to you at a 500% markup. Via la wheeeee!
bergs
Royal Flush
FWIW, his prices definitely have gone up since additional demand was generated via additional users here. So there is some dynamic at play where he charges more and can still move his inventory in an interval period that he deems acceptable.
You can put any spin you want on it, it is price gouging which is what the other guy is accused of. I can point out many many cases where flips were and are disguised as auctions then people use the market value argument. Let’s call this what it is.
Mandos
3 of a Kind
Agree 100%. I feel like after the IG sale there was a significant bump in his pricing after some of those were selling the next week for a 100% markup.
Mandos
3 of a Kind
I love how cryptic this thread is as people talk around things: "the other guy"
Let's use another thought exercise. For a rack of IG $5 claws, auctioning them off two weeks after the TCR sale they were sold in with the starting price the TCR sale price, to me, is flipping.
Auctioning a set of PCA secondary chips that were felted a few times in the past 10 years and are now being sold because the seller is having some life run bad and they need money with a starting price of $1, but they sell for $6000 when they were purchased for $2000 originally, to me, is not a flip.
Nuance is key. Anyone here that pays attention knows the difference between the two scenarios. I'm team Bergs. His analogy above is perfect.
IG $5 claws now routinely sell for $325 - hasn’t been that long…
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Yeah the point was not to flesh out the million shades of grays. I can say it until I’m blue in the face, we are not going to nor should the goal be to identify a sliding scale of flipper behavior, as well as what we deem acceptable.
It should be to identify the most egregious and intentional flipping with no goal in mind except financial boon at the expense of others - the most widely held and applicable definition of “flipping” as detailed above by Bergs.
And even then, they should not be mistreated or on the end of negative behavior, as that is their right and how they view PCF. Instead, my OP is simply asking how I, as a member, can be made aware of those folks who do so in the shadows and PMs so as not to support them.
It should be to identify the most egregious and intentional flipping with no goal in mind except financial boon at the expense of others - the most widely held and applicable definition of “flipping” as detailed above by Bergs.
And even then, they should not be mistreated or on the end of negative behavior, as that is their right and how they view PCF. Instead, my OP is simply asking how I, as a member, can be made aware of those folks who do so in the shadows and PMs so as not to support them.
Lil Tuna
4 of a Kind
It’s always going to be a buyer beware environment. It is each persons choice on who they would do business with and how they do it. It just comes down to individual choice.
Of course. If you want to spend the tree fiddy for a rack of worn IG $5 and you know that they're at a premium but want them anyway because you must have the PCF minimum of six racks of $5's for your IG set, go right ahead. Power to you. Same as the NAGB chips. The market was set to what they've been selling for, like it or not. People want them because they look pretty and they're Paulsons. How they got to that point would be digressing away from the point of this thread and would be best served to be discussed elsewhere.
The intent is more to warn the newer posters here that may not know the difference, see that they got bilked, and never come back.
bergs
Royal Flush
So you’re cool with paying $500 for chips that you could’ve gotten for $300 if there wasn’t a cadre of flippers just randomly inserting themselves into transactions purely to turn a buck with zero value add?
Get whatever you can anyway you can, that’s the mantra now?
Seems to be. People want what they want and they want it now! And apparently they don’t care about the money.
My mantra is I can’t afford it so just let it go…
I'm 100% on board with this. I think we (all of us) need to find a way of doing this without creating more issues.
That's all I want here brother. I'm all ears about how we can do this.
I think the key is simply for users to educate themselves as to what relative FMV is when buying and selling, as well as learn what the best common practices are around here for transacting. Most relatively active chippers more or less know what an egregious open-sale flip is when we see it. There is only so much we can do here within the confines of the rules if users are not going to take the time to learn the ropes. Using the "block"/"ignore" function(s) when people see or encounter "undesirable" practices can be a helpful tool as well.
The only thing I would like to see rule-wise is considering a way to cut down on "thread-fluffing", something that has been discussed a few times this past week. "Nice price", "great seller", "if someone doesn't buy these in x amount of time I will", etc. can be true sentiments, but if that is the case that person's price, reputation, feedback, etc. should speak for itself. A newbie coming by and seeing those posts when they don't truly apply can actively be deceiving, and no one can state anything to the contrary as it would be "thread-crapping". As previously mentioned, chip education is the best way to combat this, but some people and newbies simply don't have the time to learn all of the intricacies which can more or less be exploited by such posts.
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bernielomax
Full House
When I started getting serious about buying chips, I spent a lot of time searching old ads to see if the seller's price was on par or within a reasonable range of recent comp sales. Not everyone has the time and is willing to read through all of the old threads.
What about rather than a "positive/negative interactions thread", maybe some sort of a "historical sales/comp database/list" where members can see previous prices paid for certain chips.
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