3 ms·

The guy is basically a flipper and provides no value. He buys up stuff off the market at a low price using his existing capital and then puts it back on the mar

The guy is basically a flipper and provides no value. He buys up stuff off the market at a low price using his existing capital and then puts it back on the market at a higher price. It’s literally no different than the market manipulation you’d see on World of Warcraft or some other game where there’s a marketplace. People with a ton of money would buy up items at a lower price and then relist them at a ridiculous price - all the while having bots to watch for any listings that were significantly under theirs to make sure no one would buy except from them. I hate how this is considered a “business”. What a joke.

themaninthedark 5y ago
I think that resellers have some use in a market. Rye bread for an example, I like rye bread but only eat it occasionally. Same with tomatoes and avocados. I and the farmers and manufactures can't deal with trying to juggle and maintain inventory. But cars on the other hand, if you were to set up your manufacturing side with some inventory(so not JIT), you could make every car to order. Imagine a world where you could go online, pick exactly every option and feature and then have the car delivered in a couple of weeks. Instead of the current reality of dealerships who hold a large amount of inventory, have to negotiate for deals and search for the features you want. I view it the same way that I viewed High Frequency Trading, sure the dealers and traders provide "liquidity" but the value for their margin they take is marginal.
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
  > Imagine a world where you could go online, pick exactly every option and feature and then have the car delivered in a couple of weeks. You can do this now: https://shop.ford.com/configure/edge/model/customize/se https://shop.ford.com/configure/edge/model/customize/se It just ends up being delivered/sold through a dealer. OK, so these days it will be more than a few weeks...
AussieWog93 5y ago
Thank you for your moral condemnation! It's especially appreciated as you fundamentally misunderstand how reselling works! For what it's worth, most of my stock comes from smaller resellers themselves. I will buy large lots that are inefficiently packaged (say, an entire collection of 500 games) and split it into optimally-packaged smaller lots that collectively have more value to the consumer than the lot I bought. We also repair and refurbish huge amounts of consoles (and onsell what we don't refurbish to others who do) and would probably divert an entire pallet of faulty stock every 6 months from ewaste. Of course, sometimes we do stumble across undervalued small lots and flip them for immediate profit. In these instances, we're absolutely flexing our capitalistic muscle all over people who can't afford to spend $20 on an undervalued N64 game worth 5x that.
gruez 5y ago
>It’s literally no different than the market manipulation you’d see on World of Warcraft or some other game where there’s a marketplace. People with a ton of money would buy up items at a lower price and then relist them at a ridiculous price - all the while having bots to watch for any listings that were significantly under theirs to make sure no one would buy except from them. I don't get it how are they manipulating the market? Are they really cornering the market? If they haven't cornered the market, and are matching just below the price of competitors, isn't that the exact competitive behavior we want, driving down price?
- bradlys 5y ago
  Are you asking about the WoW example? Let's say an item's near true market value is something like 10 gold (not going to get into how that is determined but let's just go with it). It's going for 10g normally. You have 10,000g+. You decide to buy out the entire market from 0-25g. You can do this because the market for this item might not be gigantic and/or you have so much gold to afford this. You relist the item for 30g. You setup a bot to buy anything listed under 30g before anyone has much of a chance to see it. The only listing people will see is yours at 30g and those above you. Since you cornered the market and are basically the only listing - everyone has to buy from you for 3x the usual price. You do this long enough - you get a ton of gold out of it. Usually - the way the games try to correct this behavior so it doesn't happen all the time is through listing fees and other such things. It's to curb this kind of behavior - some even have listing fees that are directly tied to how much more you are selling this item over what you could get for selling it directly to an NPC. (To the point where it doesn't make sense to even list the item - only makes sense to sell it to an NPC) It's extremely rampant in video games with any kind of market economy and thus why these mechanisms have to be put in place because otherwise it ruins the marketplace for many players. But - the great thing about our real world is that there are no controls for this! Thus, people can buy items for cheap, corner the market on that item, and make a killing. All the while - they take in real money from real people and give literally no fucking value to the system. They are purely rentiers.
  - jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
So they already replied and said they buy wholesale or refurbish, but even if they were purely flipping that still provides some value. If they can buy low and turn around to sell high, the obvious question becomes "why doesn't the original seller just sell at the higher price if that's what it goes for?" Either they are better at reaching customers who are willing to pay more (which provides value, that's a sale that wouldn't have happened if the customer doesn't know to look where it's cheaper) or the original seller just wants cash now and doesn't care about getting max price (in which case the reseller is being paid to supply liquidity and take on some risk of not being able to offload it or it goes down in price).

themaninthedark 5y ago

I think that resellers have some use in a market. Rye bread for an example, I like rye bread but only eat it occasionally. Same with tomatoes and avocados. I and the farmers and manufactures can't deal with trying to juggle and maintain inventory. But cars on the other hand, if you were to set up your manufacturing side with some inventory(so not JIT), you could make every car to order. Imagine a world where you could go online, pick exactly every option and feature and then have the car delivered in a couple of weeks. Instead of the current reality of dealerships who hold a large amount of inventory, have to negotiate for deals and search for the features you want. I view it the same way that I viewed High Frequency Trading, sure the dealers and traders provide "liquidity" but the value for their margin they take is marginal.

HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
> Imagine a world where you could go online, pick exactly every option and feature and then have the car delivered in a couple of weeks. You can do this now: https://shop.ford.com/configure/edge/model/customize/se https://shop.ford.com/configure/edge/model/customize/se It just ends up being delivered/sold through a dealer. OK, so these days it will be more than a few weeks...

AussieWog93 5y ago

Thank you for your moral condemnation! It's especially appreciated as you fundamentally misunderstand how reselling works! For what it's worth, most of my stock comes from smaller resellers themselves. I will buy large lots that are inefficiently packaged (say, an entire collection of 500 games) and split it into optimally-packaged smaller lots that collectively have more value to the consumer than the lot I bought. We also repair and refurbish huge amounts of consoles (and onsell what we don't refurbish to others who do) and would probably divert an entire pallet of faulty stock every 6 months from ewaste. Of course, sometimes we do stumble across undervalued small lots and flip them for immediate profit. In these instances, we're absolutely flexing our capitalistic muscle all over people who can't afford to spend $20 on an undervalued N64 game worth 5x that.

gruez 5y ago

>It’s literally no different than the market manipulation you’d see on World of Warcraft or some other game where there’s a marketplace. People with a ton of money would buy up items at a lower price and then relist them at a ridiculous price - all the while having bots to watch for any listings that were significantly under theirs to make sure no one would buy except from them. I don't get it how are they manipulating the market? Are they really cornering the market? If they haven't cornered the market, and are matching just below the price of competitors, isn't that the exact competitive behavior we want, driving down price?

bradlys 5y ago
Are you asking about the WoW example? Let's say an item's near true market value is something like 10 gold (not going to get into how that is determined but let's just go with it). It's going for 10g normally. You have 10,000g+. You decide to buy out the entire market from 0-25g. You can do this because the market for this item might not be gigantic and/or you have so much gold to afford this. You relist the item for 30g. You setup a bot to buy anything listed under 30g before anyone has much of a chance to see it. The only listing people will see is yours at 30g and those above you. Since you cornered the market and are basically the only listing - everyone has to buy from you for 3x the usual price. You do this long enough - you get a ton of gold out of it. Usually - the way the games try to correct this behavior so it doesn't happen all the time is through listing fees and other such things. It's to curb this kind of behavior - some even have listing fees that are directly tied to how much more you are selling this item over what you could get for selling it directly to an NPC. (To the point where it doesn't make sense to even list the item - only makes sense to sell it to an NPC) It's extremely rampant in video games with any kind of market economy and thus why these mechanisms have to be put in place because otherwise it ruins the marketplace for many players. But - the great thing about our real world is that there are no controls for this! Thus, people can buy items for cheap, corner the market on that item, and make a killing. All the while - they take in real money from real people and give literally no fucking value to the system. They are purely rentiers.
- jallen_dot_dev 5y ago

jallen_dot_dev 5y ago

So they already replied and said they buy wholesale or refurbish, but even if they were purely flipping that still provides some value. If they can buy low and turn around to sell high, the obvious question becomes "why doesn't the original seller just sell at the higher price if that's what it goes for?" Either they are better at reaching customers who are willing to pay more (which provides value, that's a sale that wouldn't have happened if the customer doesn't know to look where it's cheaper) or the original seller just wants cash now and doesn't care about getting max price (in which case the reseller is being paid to supply liquidity and take on some risk of not being able to offload it or it goes down in price).