Why is it that resellers never price competitively? Why do they all demand absolute top dollar on everything?
Competition in the reselling scene seems to be completely backwards. One will list something for one price, then someone else lists the same thing for even more and the more expensive one gets sold. How the fuck does that work?
>>3270845
People just buy whatever pops up. It seems completely ludicrous, but I've just recently seen F-Zero GX go from 25 to 30 to now 35 and even 40 in a matter of months.
Because buyers are stupid and a lot of resellers take reselling personally/are stupid. New buyers don't know what the fuck they're doing and buy based on hype, fads, investment potential, and what other equally uninformed buyers say and pay. More educated and experienced buyers see rising prices and start to panic and buy at high prices against their better judgment. Resellers are in it for huge profits and won't dishonor themselves by taking a penny less than top dollar. I recently saw an auction end at $99.99 with no bids only for the seller to immediately relist it for $399.99 BIN with no Best Offer option - if that doesn't scream indignant, butthurt reseller I don't know what does.
>>3270845
Because some sucker will pay. Because some sucker will pay.
>>3270845
I charge fair prices on my sales, I look for decent auctions then sell locally @ vgpc pricing. there isn't any retro game stores or anything in my area so I make a little money which I invest into my own collection. It's the same as when I was in high school and sold weed to smoke for free. Nothing wrong with reselling just there are a lot of unscrupulous people trying to get rich. I probably make more weekly than a majority because I deal in smaller margins but more volume.
>>3270848
>F-Zero GX
I've seen the same thing. Why is that? Was it mentioned by some e-celeb or something?
>>3271278
It's adored by hipsters.
>>3270845
Worked at local vidya store. I will tell all.
Are you ready for the awful truth? Have you prayed to Samus today yet?
Prices are set by a careful procedure calledchecking the average going price on ebay.
>>3270867
>>3270845
This.
I'd imagine it's that most resellers either paid a lot for what they got or their holding out for a whale.
They don't have rent to pay I feel like for the most part or do it as a side-gig so they're not worried about cycling product. You constantly want to be moving product in a store because your capital is locked into your stock, so when you make a sale it frees up the capital to buy more stock. Resellers just don't seem to follow this either intentionally or they're so bad at business that they don't understand it.
Say you have 500 bucks, and you bought 5 copies of Earthbound for 100 each. So you have 5 copies of earthbound, and zero cash. What a reasonable business would do is sell the Earthbounds for 25% or so mark up (so sell for 125, making it a fast sale of a ~200 dollar game) and then you free up the money to buy something else while pocketing the rest.
It's why I don't get Ian's bullshit stories about Luna's prices. They continually rise in tandem with eBay, yet they obviously were fine making a profit with it at whatever price it was at.
Theres also this really inherent pettyness with games for some reason. No one wants anyone to get any kind of profit off of them whatsoever. So you see people pricing everything super high because they're afraid someone might scalp it.
supply/demand
competitive prices are easiest to meet when supply and demand are concrete and discrete.
there is no such thing in collector reselling economics. the demand is tenuous, vague, and subjective. are you in the market to play the game? then the competition is against free emulation and dirt cheap digital download. do you want the authentic experience of original hardware? is it more of a mantle trophy? or is it some misguided attempt at investment/savings?
the supply is incalculably limited. can anyone say how many copies of a particular game are out there and in what condition? can an individual buyer be expected to account for that any way if he holds the only copy that he knows of?
>>3273427
Yes, but the question OP asked is why they don't price competitively. That is not pricing competitively.
