The Community Perspective on Reselling

Crowkillers

pvancil27 said:

Crowkillers said:

pvancil27 said:

Who's to blame when said people find ways around limits? Is it TLG's fault LFT Used Family members to get around set limits?

I most certainly blame Lego for not enforcing a ONE per HOUSEHOLD limit.

2 PER BUYER for a 20,000 limited run is nonsense...

Not to mention many Lego stores didn't enforce any limits.. Hell, there were quite a few selling the sets before the street date...

And that's why Lego deserves some of the blame, but limits wouldn't be needed if there was not a subsection of people who took advantage of situation in ways it wasn't designed to be used. And those people would exist if there wasn't a subsection of people with more money then brains.

Yeah, but if they would have limited one per household/in store buyer, it would have deterred quite a few resellers from buying these up and made it harder... Heck it may still be possible to get one now...

And if Lego had 10's of thousands of these sets sitting in a warehouse ready to go out, in a month from now they would still be sitting in a warehouse because after all, it is "Technic" which is like what? 10% of Lego's sales..?

This was a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation for Lego... You can't produce too many because it will conflict with your other crawler the #9398 and if you produce too many you may be clearancing them out at a loss, so you have to produce a small amount which in turn will be bought up mostly by resellers...

The best solution would have been for Lego to never release any information on how many that they were releasing...

pvancil27

Pitfall69 said:

pvancil27 said:

Pitfall69 said:

My attempt to lighten the mood has failed miserably. "Blue Parka" and "fun with police officers" resulted in me being called a d**k.

Fantastic.

That's actually another thing that annoys some people, myself included to a small degree. When someone doesnt want to engage the debate or feels they can't make a valid argument, they either try and be funny to change the discussion, or use the "We will agree to disagree" cop out or the "Not this argument again" complaint.

I don't get what you are saying. I'm thoroughly involved in the conversation and I'm not shying away from it. It was getting tense and I was just being me.

It is obvious you don't like me, even though you know nothing about me or anyone in here for that matter. I have no animosity toward you or anyone here. Especially @LostInTranslation for calling me a d**k for something that happened 25 years ago.

No matter what I say or do...what @LFT says or do, it won't sway you or other people that obviously have an issue with us. It is like someone voting along party lines without hearing what the other party has to say. To me that is ignorance. So, because I know what to expect from you and others of the like, there's no use trying to argue with you. You don't like it when I try to be funny and you don't like it when I'm serious.

Not sure how I have ever made it obvious I dislike you (or LFT since I had that one thrown at me too) but eh. That's another one that gets thrown out, the "you don't like me" argument that you can;t argue. There is not a thing I can do to disprove it, if I managed to it;s argued I just changed. So I'm not even going to try too.

I'm just going to leave you, LFT and anyone else who is a re-seller with a parting thought: Re-sellers in general do not have the well being of collectors in mind when they do what they do. You can argue their presence makes more stock available for collectors but that is not why they do what they do. To stand in a forum that is dedicated to collectors of LEGO and then act surprised when people don't like some of the things you do is either ignorance or obliviousness.

Pitfall69

No "retailer" has the consumer in mind when selling their products to them. It is all about the all mighty dollar. Consumers are manipulated and taken advantage all the time. It is business and nothing personal, yet people are taking it personal.

Crowkillers

My wife recently got into the modular buildings and is a collector of them and has the last 5, now how is she supposed to get a Cafe Corner or Green Grocer..?

Pitfall69

@Yellowcastle. I know that is your way of calling me a d**k without having to actually say it ;)

pillpod

BL them:)

TheLoneTensor

charlatan13 said:

At this point I hope a dedicated #41999 thread (with other lines and threads to come) can take root so that people can check it or ignore it at their own choice.

What, are the five (if you include this one) threads dedicated to #41999 not enough?

TheLoneTensor

pvancil27 said:

Pitfall69 said:

pvancil27 said:

Pitfall69 said:

My attempt to lighten the mood has failed miserably. "Blue Parka" and "fun with police officers" resulted in me being called a d**k.

Fantastic.

That's actually another thing that annoys some people, myself included to a small degree. When someone doesnt want to engage the debate or feels they can't make a valid argument, they either try and be funny to change the discussion, or use the "We will agree to disagree" cop out or the "Not this argument again" complaint.

I don't get what you are saying. I'm thoroughly involved in the conversation and I'm not shying away from it. It was getting tense and I was just being me.

It is obvious you don't like me, even though you know nothing about me or anyone in here for that matter. I have no animosity toward you or anyone here. Especially @LostInTranslation for calling me a d**k for something that happened 25 years ago.

No matter what I say or do...what @LFT says or do, it won't sway you or other people that obviously have an issue with us. It is like someone voting along party lines without hearing what the other party has to say. To me that is ignorance. So, because I know what to expect from you and others of the like, there's no use trying to argue with you. You don't like it when I try to be funny and you don't like it when I'm serious.

Not sure how I have ever made it obvious I dislike you (or LFT since I had that one thrown at me too) but eh. That's another one that gets thrown out, the "you don't like me" argument that you can;t argue. There is not a thing I can do to disprove it, if I managed to it;s argued I just changed. So I'm not even going to try too.

I'm just going to leave you, LFT and anyone else who is a re-seller with a parting thought: Re-sellers in general do not have the well being of collectors in mind when they do what they do. You can argue their presence makes more stock available for collectors but that is not why they do what they do. To stand in a forum that is dedicated to collectors of LEGO and then act surprised when people don't like some of the things you do is either ignorance or obliviousness.

But it is what they do, and they do make stock available, and they do so because - ta da - it makes financial sense for them to do so. Without them, there would not be stock of retired sets to purchase. They may not do it out of the kindness of their heart, but that doesn't mean that their heart is nothing but a lifeless rock of money-grubbing coal either. I remember LFT once talking about some forum people getting mad at him for not selling something he just found to them at (his) cost. He drove there, he did the legwork, he marketed it, and he's supposed to do all that for free? That's ridiculous. Maybe for a close friend, but for a casual internet forum buddy? A forum stranger? C'mon.

Do I agree with him for breaking the 2 limit? No, nor am I going to crucify him for it either (really, there are worse things to worry about). If this forum is solely dedicated to ONLY those purebloods that collect and build, and us mudbloods that collect, build, resell and speculate, then I'm clearly in the wrong place.

Yellowcastle

I think we really should be debating the behaviors and not the groups. And there is far too much noise coming from the fringe, deafening the legitimate issues. From the entirety of this thread, it would seem that 99.9% of participants are fine with the concept of reselling. I won't pretend I can speak for the one tenth of one pvancent.

It's the occasional behaviors that frustrate us and I would argue they're probably the exceptions but that doesn't mitigate the damage they do to the reseller name.

Here are the behaviors that rub me the wrong way...

Bringing resale musings into otherwise non-selling discussions.

Circumventing established limits.

Commoditizing sets before they even have a moment to breathe.

While I don't think Clearance behaviors should be 100% relevant since the store is trying to purge stock, cart hoarding sets bugs me.

Publicizing any of the above.

The funny thing is that I think you can talk about the aftermarket value of Set A quite effectively without book ending it with, "I grabbed 42 of them", "It took 3 carts", "here's a pic of my living room", etc.

Otherwise, I have zero complaints. :o)

But if we're talkin pet peeves, it's anti-resellers who cloak themselves in righteousness when declaring that resellers aren't doing it out of the goodness of the hobby. Of course they're not. But that doesn't make their niche any less valuable.

I can't stand spiders but I have no doubt they're integral to the ecosystem. I'm glad they're around when we need them but I have no qualms about giving one the stink eye if it strays from its thread. ;o)

charlatan13

tensor said:

charlatan13 said:

At this point I hope a dedicated #41999 thread (with other lines and threads to come) can take root so that people can check it or ignore it at their own choice.

What, are the five (if you include this one) threads dedicated to #41999 not enough?

I just thought it had spilled over into all those other threads and could just be condensed into one thread that people could choose to follow or ignore. Honestly, the emotions in here are a bit on the raw side for me so I'll just go back to lurking. Cheers.

Pitfall69

It is funny that you mentioned the "commoditizing of sets" When I was into sports cards I used to go to a lot of shows. One time, a dealer bought all of the other dealers sets while he was at the show. He ended up with almost all of them. After he gobbled them all up he proceeded to sell the sets for triple the cost of what he bought them for.

pvancil27

Yellowcastle said:

I think we really should be debating the behaviors and not the groups. And there is far too much noise coming from the fringe, deafening the legitimate issues. From the entirety of this thread, it would seem that 99.9% of participants are fine with the concept of reselling. I won't pretend I can speak for the one tenth of one pvancent.

I did debate the behaviors, but it was always rebuked as hypothetical or that I was a commie or any other. I never attacked anyone personally using the group concept instead of "picking on" LFT or any specific re-seller.

And you know what, I have no personal problem with LFT or Pitfall or anyone else I've debated so far, but you, YOU I do have a pretty big personal problem with Admin.

dougts

Yellowcastle said:

Bringing resale musings into otherwise non-selling discussions.

Agreed

Yellowcastle said:

Circumventing established limits.

Mostly agree, but if one doesn't publicize it, then it's a non-issue on the forums

Yellowcastle said:

Commoditizing sets before they even have a moment to breathe.

I have more trouble with this one. Some sets are obvious winners for buy and resell. Are resellers supposed to just wait some established period of time before buying? This would require a "reseller cartel" to establish and enforce the rules, which would be unenforceable in any case.

Yellowcastle said:

While I don't think Clearance behaviors should be 100% relevant since the store is trying to purge stock, cart hoarding sets bugs me.

I agree to a degree. If no one else is around, have at it. If others want something - particularly consumer not looking to resell, then share the stock in store before purchasing.

Yellowcastle said:

Publicizing any of the above.
The funny thing is that I think you can talk about the aftermarket value of Set A quite effectively without book ending it with, "I grabbed 42 of them", "It took 3 carts", "here's a pic of my living room", etc.

completely 100% agreed. There is a fine line between discussing reselling techniques and activities and bragging. Too much line-crossing occurs around here.

I would also submit that most (not all) collectors are very much aware of - and desire - the price increases on sets. the value of the collection is a very big part of collecting. Without aftermarket resellers, there would be little to no gain in value, and certainly very little or no sales data that would inform as to what anything is worth. Would this not affect collecting in a very core way? Collectors should't be so quick to wish resellers didn't exist. Heck, in most collectible hobbies - likely including LEGO - there is a TON of overlap between the reseller population and the collector population.

So to me the two takeaways are:
1) Resellers should be better about keeping discussion of future values and current scores in The Thread.
2) Everyone should strive to engage in less bragging and discussion of specific hauls - resell, clearance, etc, and talk more in terms of generalities.

samiam391

Yellowcastle said:

The funny thing is that I think you can talk about the aftermarket value of Set A quite effectively without book ending it with, "I grabbed 42 of them", "It took 3 carts", "here's a pic of my living room", etc.

Although I think we can make a notable exception for both DS and FB, in which case everyone is bragging about the amount that they don't have stored in their kitchen cupboard. :o)

pharmjod

Don't try to skirt the debate by injecting humor. It is annoying to some people, remember?

Crowkillers

Everyone that I know that is into Lego has MISB sets put aside somewhere... ;)

pvancil27

pharmjod said:

Don't try to skirt the debate by injecting humor. It is annoying to some people, remember?

So you disagree with what I said but rather then make a reasonable reply explaining why you simply throw a veiled insult in an attempt to be humorous. Makes sense.

pharmjod

I didn't think it was veiled actually.

pvancil27

pharmjod said:

I didn't think it was veiled actually.

So you disagree with what I said but rather then make a reasonable reply explaining why you simply throw a veiled blatant insult in an attempt to be humorous. Makes more sense.

Yellowcastle

^ Saying it twice doesn't make it any more relevant. Lets move on.

BlueMoonUSA

Yellowcastle said:

From the entirety of this thread, it would seem that 99.9% of participants are fine with the concept of reselling. I won't pretend I can speak for the one tenth of one pvancent.

I only just got the pvancil27 reference. It took me 10 minutes. Thought Yellowcastle had a spelling brainfart there for a while.

Awww....crud. Sorry for the thread humour :(

tamamahm

Pitfall69 said:

No "retailer" has the consumer in mind when selling their products to them. It is all about the all mighty dollar. Consumers are manipulated and taken advantage all the time. It is business and nothing personal, yet people are taking it personal.

Exactly.

rocao

doriansdad said:

Seems like the only ones crapping in it were you and the other admins as us resellers were doing fine and not putting down builders who did not leave enough sets for us resellers....it was you coming in putting down various resellers for not leaving enough sets for the builders. Maybe you need to appoint a fan of reselling to mod the buying and selling threads to keep it fair and balanced.

Each of our posts expressed an understanding and appreciation of the role of resellers, and did not call out any members specifically. If you care to review, they are located here, here, and here.

Anyhow, it seems the gloves are off now, so while you contend that we admins were the only ones threadcrapping, I submit the following comments that are rife with unsubstantiated claims, flip-flopping, and hypocrisy that show you were doing a good job of crapping up the place yourself.

Doriansdad on picking a winner:

doriansdad said:

With the site crawling I am not going to bother with 21103 or 41999. I will probably hit up the local lego store at opening tomorrow and grab one 21103 and keep my powder dry for better picks on BF.

doriansdad said:

This is still available to buy on [email protected] I personally do not see what all the fuss is about. Can't imagine we are anywhere close to 20k of these sets being ordered just yet (maybe close to 10k). Give it a few more months.

doriansdad said:

Well in my mind 41999 was easily the best pick of 2013 for price gains. Nothing else will come close. This one will be talked about for a long time....can't wait for the next "limited" release.

Doriansdad on how many were sold and who bought them:

doriansdad said:

I don't know if they will retire 9398 but I do know they have sold alot more than 20k 41999 and you can still order it on every shopping site across the globe.

doriansdad said:

Resellers alone would have consumed that many worldwide within minutes. I am guessing they had 5K for the USA and I know there were way more than 1k resellers buying 5-10 and still are.

doriansdad said:

Most went into the hands of fans and not resellers which is precisely why supply on the secondary market is so thin and the UK buyer can happily buy them all and control the market. So this was a success in terms of limiting the stock to resellers. The flipside of course is a large and quick spike in prices for the small amount of resellers who did manage to scoop some.

Doriansdad on getting along fine with other resellers:

doriansdad said:

I don't know what is dumber buying all 7 on the same account or bragging about it online with his name as his handle. Kids these days lol.

doriansdad said:

Given the price and restrictions resellers did well to grab 5 or 6 rather than the usual 50 or 60. Big price spike coming for this set after the noobs sell them all for next to nothing.

Doriansdad on striking while the iron is hot:

doriansdad said:

Thanks for the confirmation. Got my fill. Open box, remove packing slip, slap on label and collect $100 for passing go.

doriansdad said:

Not going to let these go for $300 lol.....$399 plus sleigh fee for santa to place this under the tree.

dougts

While I'm not going to attempt to defend everything @doriansdad says and does, it is only fair to put some of the comments of his above in the proper context - that of a very fluid situation that was changing extremely rapidly. Things that in retrospect look like obvious contradictions when viewed in a vacuum, can also be seen as possibly an evolving set of opinions when taken in the proper context.

Pitfall69

Should we all be held accountable for what we have said in the past ;)

legomatt

*Enters bar... detects tension... quickly turns around and walks back out before getting a pool cue to the back of his head...*

:oP

Crowkillers

<@:)

Clown Hat, Curly Hair, Smiley Face

Yellowcastle

To our resellers, are the concerns below unreasonable at face value?

Bringing resale musings into otherwise non-selling discussions.
Circumventing established limits.
Commoditizing sets before they even have a moment to breathe.
While I don't think Clearance behaviors should be 100% relevant since the store is trying to purge stock, cart hoarding sets bugs me.
Publicizing any of the above.

dougts

Yellowcastle said:

To our resellers, are the concerns below unreasonable at face value?

Bringing resale musings into otherwise non-selling discussions.
reasonable to expect this not to happen

Circumventing established limits.
reasonable to expect people respect the limits, with the caveat that it shouldn't be talked about if you don't (a wise policy in any case...)

Commoditizing sets before they even have a moment to breathe.
mostly unreasonable. Items that are going to be hot and everyone knows are going to be hot are going to be stockpiled. We can't put the genie back in the bottle.

While I don't think Clearance behaviors should be 100% relevant since the store is trying to purge stock, cart hoarding sets bugs me.
share with the little Timmy's (or Timmy's moms) looking for specific set(s). In regards to other hoarders/resellers - first come, first serve.

Publicizing any of the above.
agreed. keep the bragging to a minimum

dougts

I'd like to add that word on the street is that we can expect LEGO brand stores to start cracking down more on resellers in the near future. The store managers have all been given explicit recent training and direction on this front, and a 5 page memo was issued to stores as well. The employees have photocopied handouts they are supposed to give to resellers as they turn away their businesses. Employees who knowingly sell to resellers have been threatened with termination. One store manager has already been disciplined due to behavior supporting resellers.

Crowkillers

Yellowcastle said:

To our resellers, are the concerns below unreasonable at face value?

Bringing resale musings into otherwise non-selling discussions.
Circumventing established limits.
Commoditizing sets before they even have a moment to breathe.
While I don't think Clearance behaviors should be 100% relevant since the store is trying to purge stock, cart hoarding sets bugs me.
Publicizing any of the above.

Don't really see what is wrong with buying up sets that no one wanted...

y2josh

^^I'll be interested to see how that plays out. Seems like it would be difficult to enforce unless someone was buying massive quantities or they came right out and told you what they were doing.

Crowkillers

dougts said:

I'd like to add that word on the street is that we can expect LEGO brand stores to start cracking down more on resellers in the near future. The store managers have all been given explicit recent training and direction on this front, and a 5 page memo was issued to stores as well. The employees have photocopied handouts they are supposed to give to resellers as they turn away their businesses. Employees who knowingly sell to resellers have been threatened with termination. One store manager has already been disciplined due to behavior supporting resellers.

The Lego stores couldn't even pull together as one unit and sell the 41999 on the proper release date...

All resellers have to do is buy their sets at Toys R Us or some other chain and save money when those stores run a special..

To everyone pissing and moaning about resellers, where do you think you are buying your parts from on bricklink..? It's the same damn thing...

Crowkillers

y2josh said:

^^I'll be interested to see how that plays out. Seems like it would be difficult to enforce unless someone was buying massive quantities or they came right out and told you what they were doing.

I think the whole thing was buying mass quantities of sets and getting the V.I.P. points to use and buy more sets..

Crowkillers

How many people here have a bricklink store..?

Yellowcastle

By commoditizing sets, I mean harping on their aftermarket potential before we've even had a chance to appreciate them in their own right. I might be alone here, but I would love for this aspect to be broached much later in a sets lifespan. That being said, I guess there wasn't much of a lifespan for 41999 to begin with. It still irked me, though.

mathew

I think the days of Lego reselling are on the wane. There's way too many resellers out there now. Also "Limited Edition" reminds me of Baseball cards which eventually led to the demise of that hobby. To me, "Limited Edition" cheapens the product being sold because it's artificially imposed. It loses it's cool factor.

Crowkillers

The 41999 set's lifespan was killed last year when Lego announced that they were releasing only 20,000 of them.

Crowkillers

So how many of you guys use Bricklink on a regular basis..?

Crowkillers

Guess who makes Bricklink's heart continue to beat...

Crowkillers

You guys can bash on LegoFanTexas all you want, but anyone of you that has a Bricklink store is a hypocrite and anyone that has ever bought parts from Bricklink has supported resellers and I bet that you were happy about doing it...

So how many positive feedbacks do you have...?

rocao

I don't know if you followed this debate when it was raging over a year ago. Most of the anti-reseller sentiment revolved around distaste for 1) reselling discussion dominating the forum and making its way into many threads, 2) stories of shelf-clearing, dog eat dog shopping behavior and 3) the resulting stories and photos of stockpiles that was seen by some as boastful.

I actually identify myself as a reseller and am not on a crusade against most of the common practices, but I did find the discussions noxious at times.

Most people understand the integral role of reselling to our hobby, and though some are not appreciative, nearly everyone is tolerant of it. But the devil's in the details and that's what we're often debating when it comes to the market dynamic of minecraft, limited production run items, the perception of TLG's stance, clearance hunting, etc.

Crowkillers

No, I didn't follow this thread at all until the original 41999 thread was for some reason chopped up and merged into this thread...

But I simply do not see how anyone here that is an actual builder can think that it is just fine and dandy to get their "Fix" on the parts that they need from their "Dealer" of choice at Bricklink and then cry foul when another guy comes along who is doing the same thing as their previous "Dealer(s)" were doing...

It's just hypocritical...

SirKevbags

A fundamental problem is the co existence of of collectors and re sellers occupying the same space. Every time someone with a collector hat hears of a shelf clearence etc and its a set they were waiting for at discount its going to cause resentment if they couldn't get in on the deal.
The collector isn't entitled to the deal but to think that it isn't going to wind them up is unrealistic.

The current 41999 situation has been likened to ticket scalping/touting. How if people were not prepared to pay then there wouldn't be a market. How people should be more on the ball and be aware of release dates etc. All points with some validity but lets say this was a music board. Can you honestly tell me a scalper would be welcomed with open arms to a thread about how to get tickets to a sold out gig? I doubt it very much. More likely to be lambs to the slaughter no matter how many albums the scalper owned.

Re selling clearly has a place in our hobby. I don't want to see the subject or people driven off these boards but could it be discussed with a little more class and style? And collectors widen your friendship circle. That way when you miss the deal there will be someone at the other end of the country to sort you out at cost.

dougts

^ valid points, but i guess I don't see "collectors" and "resellers" as being mutually exclusive groups. heck, most LEGO collectors I know are also resellers - degrees vary widely of course. I'm sure the overlap is a pretty large percentage. I can't think of anyone I know - in person or on this forum - who is solely a reseller and doens't collect at all - yes, we know they exist out in the wild of course, but I'm choosing to focus on Brickset. So in a sense you could probably say with great accuracy that every reseller on brickset is also a collector. The opposite of course isn't true.

I guess my point in the end is let's not turn this into a "reseller" vs. "collector" paradigm. I think that's a false premise to start with.

SirKevbags

^ Agree with you completely. The cross over is everywhere. That doesn't mean the situation can't be handled better on all sides.

cheshirecat

I dont want to requote yellowcastles list but i think it's pretty much spot on and actually is simply about reselling spilling over onto normal shopping threads. Clear the ailes, post your pictures, talk about sets as a commodity to make you money, but not in the shopping threads. #41999 was a special event, a fan created model, a competition, a beautiful box and in every thread it was turned into a commodity, a fill your boots guys. For some of us I think it spoiled it. Like telling a kid mickey mouse is just a girl in a suit. We know it's happening but dont spoil the magic.

I think perhaps @LFT became a lightening rod because of his openness/behaviour but that was actually a separate issue about the [email protected] ban.

Finally we have those that assume this is about missing out, yet I can only see two mentions of people missing out, both second hand one of which has been sorted. For me, I got my two opening day, one will be my kids Christmas present irrespective of its value (up to a point!) the other went to a friend and is already opened and played with. I could easily have ordered more like most on this thread but chose not too.

oldtodd33

If anyone here doesn't like the resellers, do what I do and don't buy what they are selling. I have always said to myself, I will not pay above rrp for anything and with a very few exceptions, I stick to that. If I miss a set and it goes through the roof, I don't get one, period.

You can't compare reselling parts to reselling used sets to reselling new eol sets or hard to find sets. I have used BL before to get old parts I can't find. I do have a need to use resellers for that. But, to compare BL'ing for parts to sets is stupid. What are you going to do, ask a buyer to declare whether or not they are trying to BL a 41999 so you can triple the part price on every part. Let me know how that works out for you.

prof1515

In general, I'm in fair agreement with doughts' responses but I'll reiterate my own just for clarity.

Yellowcastle said:

To our resellers, are the concerns below unreasonable at face value?

I'm probably not a typical reseller as I don't really invest in my stock for the purpose of maximizing profit. I try to collect mint-condition boxes and by mint I mean flawless or close to. As a result, I often buy 2, 3, 12 of a set and keep the ones that are pristine while later reselling the ones that have slight blemishes. Still, I hold onto the unwanted sets until the value goes up a bit, then typically resell for the minimum going rate for a set (ie, if there's 50 for sale and 49 are selling for $100-$200, I'm ask $100; that one that's selling for $75 being an anomoly). And so, that said, we're off to the questions!

Yellowcastle said:

Bringing resale musings into otherwise non-selling discussions.

It's not unreasonable to keep such things in their own threads to prevent derailing the topic into one of speculation.

Yellowcastle said:

Circumventing established limits.

Circumventing limits is not illegal nor is it immoral but it is unethical. To discuss unethical behavior is to invite criticism and vitriol. While you shouldn't be unethical, people often are. Just don't be stupid and talk about it.

Yellowcastle said:

Commoditizing sets before they even have a moment to breathe.

I hate, hate, HATE speculation threads. I avoid that aftermarket speculation thread like the plague. I detest "valuation" threads as well.

Yellowcastle said:

While I don't think Clearance behaviors should be 100% relevant since the store is trying to purge stock, cart hoarding sets bugs me.

Buy early. Buy online. I haven't had a problem with any Lego non-limited release as long as I followed those two simple rules. If more people did the same, this wouldn't be an issue because the internet's a big place and there's a lot of places to shop from. If you're expecting to buy for below MSRP, you should equally expect not to get it.

Yellowcastle said:

Publicizing any of the above.

On Facebook every now and then someone asks me why I'm so political and post frequently about political issues and activities. It's because I welcome debate. Inevitably, those who ask usually do so because they hold a view that they can not defend, one which is not based upon the facts of the topic being discussed but rather upon their personal views and ulterior motives. However, they want to respond and expect that their response not draw any criticism. "Freedom of speech" (and "freedom of religion") is the argument that they attempt to use to speak their mind without reference to the facts of what's being discussed and to demand that their position not be challenged. You have the right to say something but you don't have the right not to be taken to task for saying it (likewise, you have the freedom to believe anything you want but don't complain if people call you crazy when you express your superstitious beliefs). Same goes with these forums. If you publicize unethical behavior or start talking about resale in a non-resale thread it's going to cause backlash. Start a new thread if you want to deviate into the realm of speculation or want to discuss possibly-questionable buying/selling practices. That way, the it doesn't cause digression, doesn't create posting wars, those uninterested in such topics can avoid it and that way moderators can look it over, keep it a clean fight or even delete it from the start for violating the site's terms of use.

cheshirecat

^ Agree with everything @prof1515 said, although i would say the first point isn't about derailing topics, its about not turning every thread about a toy that many of us cherish, think should be enjoyed and delighted in into another quick profit money making scheme.