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The Community Perspective on Reselling
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Let's take the case of Minecraft shortages in the run up to Xmas last year. The reality of the shortage was that it affected everyone wanting the set: children, adult collectors, and resellers alike. Anti-resellers latch on to the situation where children are being deprived of the joy of a present. They seem to view this rather concretely and feel empathy, whereas some resellers approach this more abstractly saying the beneficiary is hypothetical and thus remain unattached. Resellers also have suggested that a parent will simply pay more if the desire is great enough, or buy a different present. I think both perspectives have merit, and there is a whole spectrum between, and I think that's why we have so many differing views.
Earlier this month I was making the rounds of Target clearance aisles. I didn't find much at the first couple stores but finally found 3x Mines of Moria for 50% off. As I was putting them into my cart, a middle aged man turned into the aisle hurriedly with an empty shopping cart and saw me. It was immediately clear to me that he was also there looking for clearance LEGO. He asked me in a somewhat crestfallen tone if I was going to buy all three. I told him "I was planning to... but you can have one." Were I not approached, I would have bought all three and not thought any more about it. It's quite certain that if I had left any, someone else would buy them, so I was opting to benefit rather than leaving it for someone else. So it would seem that, for me, compassion changes my behavior when presented with a real person rather than a hypothetical person.
In talking with the person at greater length, it turned out that his involvement with LEGO is similar to mine. He is a collector, builder, and reseller. He told me about his Amazon storefront. He told me that he was doing the same circuit of Target stores, and had gotten to each of the other stores just before me, so he actually manged a decent haul. All of a sudden, I didn't feel any empathy for him. Nothing had changed; it was still the same set at a $40 discount. But his usage was now known, and since he was effectively just asking that I hand over money, had I known, I probably wouldn't have.
I now know why there is never any Lego on the clearance isles at Target when I get there. Resellers are saving the Lego from people like me "damaging and devaluing" the sets. LOL.
It looks like "@LFT" needs to be added to the acronym list.
This thread could be renamed "Why Little Timmy doesn't get a Crawler"
In all seriousness, MOST offerings are 2 years. You have plenty of time to pick them up. I'm glad for resellers, both of parts....and sets.
I've benefitted from both, shopped saavy, and gotten things I missed during a time that I was out of Lego.
That being said, a quick flip is understandable, admirable from strength of initiative, and completely disruptive. Correct me if I'm wrong, @prof1515 , but the collapse of the Star Trek action figure line declined because of too many "chase/promotional/limited" varieties ( You just SEEM like you love Star Trek, for some reason).
The collectors were exasperated. Now, it's two different things physically, but not conceptually. Really, as long as this blatant PR-showroom-buzz-hype kitch is more scarce than prevalent...it'll all be ok.
Resellers are a big reason why Lego keeps value, just like any other collectible property. It's all symbiotic. You'll have people that abuse the system, especially with cases like 41999. You'll also have a much larger population with sets people missed. The more, the merrier.
I actually don't know much about the Star Trek action figures aside from the Mego line from the 70s. I never got into collecting the Playmates line from the 80s and 90s and only recently have begun collecting the Art Asylum/Diamond Select line that began in 2000. It died off but that might be related the lack of any Star Trek series or movies until 2009 (when the license for figures went elsewhere). I know that the AA/DS line did have some SDCC exclusives and more recently a "Mirror, Mirror" line that was available via various vendors at SDCC. However, those vendors also sold them on their websites as well (ie, Entertainment Earth had the Mirror Universe Chekov which they might still have a few of last I looked).
It hasn't hurt Hasbro with their Star Wars line though. What seems to be hurting them, according to my friend who is a big Hasbro SW collector, is the inconsistency and lack of even distribution (nothing new in the action figure business but irritating nevertheless from the sound of it).
I know an old guy that has some old cigarette (tobacco) cards that are worth about £5K each on the open market. He has a full set of 20. At least, he tells me he has them. They are stored in a bank vault. He views them once every five years, along with many others he keeps there. Does he enjoy them? It is hard to tell.
So what's the difference between a hypothetical person and the real person in front of me? The real person in front of me is (usually) a parent looking for a deal on LEGO for their kid (very often the kids are with them).
If I share the set, odds are it will go to that kid. If I just leave them on the shelf, odds are they'll go to the next reseller in line. That may or may not be true everywhere, but I know it is here, I know I compete with other local resellers who do the circuit as well as I do, so frankly "Little Timmy" is likely to miss out regardless because multiple resellers are picking the stores.
I don't know what you do for a living, but I assume you have a business, or a job, or you do something for money.
Whatever that is, how would you feel if I came in as a customer and wanted a discount, and in return, maybe ask you to work for less money so I can get a better deal?
How would that make you feel?
You earn money somehow in life, whatever that is, you probably feel that you earn that money and would be offended if someone asked you to work for less, just so they could have a better deal.
That is the same thing you're saying to resellers, you're suggesting that the "Al's" of the world shouldn't get their profits because... someone else should get cheap LEGO?
Just food for thought...
I have a few friends that were hardcore supes serial about collecting ST figs. They did all that we do here. Collect, resell, and trade. The decline of the IP popularity back then, and the desperate hunt for chases completely killed the line.
Do people really expect them to leave the golden goose sat on the shelf just so anyone who wants one won't miss out?
Imagine walking through a Target and seeing a $100 bill just laying on the ground in the toy isle.
Would anyone here suggest just leaving it there, so a poor parent who can't afford much LEGO will pick it up and buy their kid a $100 LEGO set?
It is really the same thing, since leaving sets on the shelf is just leaving money on the shelf, when reselling is your business.
Are the "rules" of this game any different if it is your hobby side business to fund your own LEGO purchases vs. a full time business that funds your life?
Which brings it down to ... Honey, I only went with one hooker not 50. :-D
To be honest it's not very respectable work. It's just a way for some people to make money. But so is gambling, stealing and prostitution.
Surely though the reselling debate has been well and truly smashed and bashed around by now. Yes people hate resellers, I get that, and some resellers hate those people, but we are love LEGO for different reasons which is why we all frequent this forum.
The company I work for resells services. Why? It is easier to resell Internet Services, then pay for engineers to look after the servers and maintain the solutions 24/7. What makes it even better is that we have in house skills to build them ourselves along with the equipment but why add the stress and frustration, killing ourselves trying to fix a bug that is caused by Microsoft or whomever or because we missed a setting. The sole aim of the business is to make a profit and deliver a service to the customer who hasn't got the expertise to do it themselves. We purchase a product for x and sell it for y. Does that make us bad people? I think not. It is paying for our skills and knowledge along with investment, whether time, or money.
To me it doesn't matter the reason for the buying of LEGO, whether it is to build, sell, so long as it gets bought. Does it really matter all that much what people do with the LEGO they purchase so long as they buy it and keep LEGO making more LEGO so we can buy even more and continue to get unique sets etc?
People will pay whatever they feel is reasonable. Whether it be £2000 for a UCS MF or £350 for a #41999 Technic Crawler then they will pay it. If they don't want to pay that then they won't. They will either try to negotiate or not bother at all.
Anyway, just my two cents and I will go back to just being an observer of this thread. :D
To be honest the majority of re selling talk has in recent months been confined to the relevant threads. Therefore if its not your cup of tea its been easy to avoid. If we can return to that situation then it will go a long way to restoring a little more harmony.
I have some that I do open (but only if I have one or more kept mint for my collection) and then I find that frustrating because I have no where to put them anyway, they fall over and break apart, they gather dust and are difficult to clean, etc. Where's the joy in that? :-P
I still haven't displayed the Shuttle Expedition that I built last year because it's a half inch (about a centimeter for the rest of the world) taller than any shelf in my house. I don't want it on a table because it's too easily knocked over and I honestly don't have any tables for displaying it that don't serve functional purposes. So, it sits in a box, only assembled as opposed to still sealed and worth more like the other two copies which remain mint.
When Tiger Wood's wife found out he was cheating on her, she was prepared to work through it and forgive him for it.
When she found out it wasn't one, but more than a dozen, that is when she picked up the golf club and chased him down the driveway.
Who are you to say where his enjoyment comes from? Perhaps he just likes looking at the boxes. If that makes him happy, more power to him.
I fail to see what is so controversial to you. You play with childrens' toys after all. ;-P
It is in no way the same thing, but to be honest, the "right" thing to do (in my opinion of course) is to turn it into the store manager. You never know who dropped it, it could have been a Grandma on a restricted budget or a Rich Kid who gets 500 bucks a week allowance. Either way, It isn't yours to take.
Having throught about it, I really do think most people's issue here at least is from how they come across when they post in a lot of threads about their stockpiles and how they refuse to let something sell until it hits XXX dollar amount. Without arguing if re-selling as a profession should be comparable to other professions, there is also a fundamental difference in that re-sellers do one of two things, either 1) Provide little to no benefit except to themselves by simply buying a product and instantly reselling it for a profit (41999, new Gamesystems around Christmas, Tickle me Elmos ect ect) or 2) provide a future benefit to consumers at the expense of current consumers. If Bob is a Mechanic that won't work for less then 50 an hour, his working or refusal to work does not cause either of these issue. That is actually a fairly interesting POV. Would you say that a consumer does not have to be a collector but a collector is a consumer? (Or rather, that collectors are a sub-group of consumers?) That's an association fallacy, You assume if you don't take them some other re-seller will. You don;t know it, can't prove it. Call it naive if you like, but to me Id rather think that passing things don't always mean a "bad" person gets them. The Wal Mart doing clearance here still have a lot of their sets that went on clearance two weeks later. Not everywhere is a re-seller hell. Also don't justify doing something by saying "well others do it" or "If I don't someone else will." Just say I got there first and wanted them all.
Some of the issue is also the fact posts get moved instead of deleted. I wouldnt have known about any of thise recent flare up had these posts not gotten moved here (and hence never would have been involved) had this thread not been revived.
I mean, the toys that I played with as a kid are still for the most part in pretty good shape. However, they're not in the boxes and thus not worth all that much except for those which are relatively rare. Modern toy manufacturing doesn't produce many such cases, especially with companies like Lego which manufacture hundreds of thousands of each set. Additionally, toy collecting has become a much larger hobby and there's more awareness of it as well which means that unlike older toys there are far more examples of well-cared for toys and even sealed toys. That makes condition all the more important since value has and always will be tied to that regardless of scarcity.
To that end, I have to imagine there are many people who feel similarly about this set - people who want the set because they think it's a cool set and not because it could potentially be a pile of money.
When I got my first car, I washed it every day and kept it clean. People tend to take care of things that they cherish and Lego is not an exception. I like nice minty boxes for my collection and just because I add a Lego set to my collection doesn't mean I have to build it. Some sets look plain boring to build, yet I need it to complete my collection, so I buy it and put it away. If I want to build it, I will buy 2. One to build and one to put away. One could argue that this type of Lego enthusiast is more beneficial to TLG because we are buying more than one copy.
Actions figures are meant to be played with. Cars are meant to be driven, but people collect both and enthusiasts want both mint.
In the end - he can collect the way he wants, and we don't have to understand or agree with it. And others can collect the way they want and still call themselves collectors whether he agrees with it or not. We all love LEGO, and that's all that matters on the collector front.
Now, back to bashing resellers... ;-)
Then also dont spoil the hobby for others by turning every thread about a new set being released into a simple comodity, thats an exageration but with 41999 it certainly felt like that. This is a fan\collectors site and just like some like to collect sealed boxes, many have a real passion for the product opened or sealed and seeing it portrayed as just a means to make money withun hours of it being released will and does upset/annoy some people.
i think kevs point earlier about the response that ticket touts would get on a music fans site is spot on, some of us may seem like haters but compared to what that respinse would be were probably angels. to be clear im not a hater, my view has been modified by discussions like these.
To be fair, I wouldn't suggest just leaving it on the floor... but I would suggest taking it up to the service desk. It seems more than likely that someone is going to realize they dropped that.
EDIT: Didn't realize @pvancil27 had more-or-less already said the same thing.
On a side note is there any hate for resellers buying up on the secondary market? Just curious.
One more question - given that we now know lego has no intention of enforcing limits on their exclusives depsite their suggestion of "2 per household" is it fair game to exceed the limits on the next exclusive?