Just because OP's premise turned out to be false, doesn't lessen the relevance of the discussion to this board, as evidenced by so many wanting to participate in the discussion.

I've qualified my opinion all along by saying there could be exceptional circumstances. Certainly a scammer would be one of them.

And I've said that generally speaking, there is no reason not to sell to the first in line.

But do you want to have to publicly answer questions if you do choose to sell to the second person? Should you have to? It seems to put you in a position to exercise LESS etiquette that way, given you might have to say something negative about a person you don't want to deal with, rather than just have it accepted that you have the prerogative to sell to whomever you want. We should all just respect that right, and not demand answers.

If I didn't sell to the first offeror, I don't think I would owe the Board an explanation, no.

Sounds like we are in agreement then.

B should be the answer because it is just that silly. Saying that it is A by a country mile because of all the off topic posts by a few that love to argue. Heck these threads are my daily dose of comedy.:D

Since we’re having so much fun, let’s take this to the next level, but with some facts that maybe aren’t all that far from what could realistically happen in our world.

Let’s say you’re traveling for work. You stop by a local card shop and see a piece that you’re interested in buying. You tell the owner that you’ll take it for full price.

The owner responds to let you know that he was supposed to take it out of the case earlier because he has a long-time customer who has single handedly kept the store alive that called earlier in the day and is coming in this evening to check that exact card out and most likely buy it for full price. So he prefers to wait until after that customer makes a final decision.

Does that sequence of events leave you steamed and ready to tell off the LCS owner for jerking your chain around? Would your answer change if you suspect he might just be playing you to get a higher offer?

Let’s take it a step further. You decide that you’re not going down without a fight, so you offer an extra 30% to buy it right now. The LCS owner, being no dummy, sells it to you on the spot.

Now let’s turn the tables. If you were the long-time customer who was planning to buy it that evening, would you be steamed to show up that evening just to find that it was sold earlier in the day by some Johnny-Come-Lately from NEW YORK CITY!!!??

I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that in general, I’m not too inclined to get very steamed about cardboard. If it was something I’ve been questing to find for decades, I’d be more likely to be distraught if I missed out, for sure. But probably not enough to tell anyone off.

How would you react, if you were on one side of this interaction, or on the other?

Oddly interesting topic and unfortunate initial post.

I kept reading to see if Phil responded with an apology, or some level of contrition for openly calling someone out and potentially damaging their reputation without having a shred of fact to back it up. Says more to me than anything on this topic.

I have had dozens of successful transactions on the BST both buying and selling and would not like someone questioning my ethics without proper cause. Did they all go perfectly, no, but we worked through anything behind the scenes like adults instead of whining to everyone on the board.

Bill

As I have said, my experiences on the B/S/T have all been a pleasure. But I am fairly certain that if shenanigans like having a deal in place, then someone offers to pay the seller more, and the seller then renegs, if that became known to Leon, pretty sure one or two things would happen. Seller would probably be warned to not ever do that again, or perhaps the seller would be given the boot to go peddle their trash elsewhere.

I'm not sure anyone here has or would advocate that is allowable. In fact, when it was brought up before, literally everyone who commented said it was wrong (and is a breach of contract).

And also the OP disappeared without a word. Just leaving those allegations out there after being proven wrong...Yet he's the one who brought up etiquette

I will reply to my wife or daughter to certain grievances they might have with the phrase "wouldn't it be easier to just let it go", to varying degrees of success.

Sometimes they will listen...and sometimes it will just end up getting ME in hot water with accusations of "minimizing" or "invalidating" their feelings.

Much like an internet chat board and most beaches or pools absent a lifeguard. Feel free to use at your own risk. ;)

Well now it's on page 3 of the thread. Go back to your law library, have a paralegal bring you your slippers and a martini, and calm down.

I'm not the one all worked up over a hypothetical that has universal agreement, so much that he felt it needed repeated on this page as well. :rolleyes:

Kudos to you! A man's word should be his bond.

:)

Just to beat a dead horse, back in the 1980s, when I was breaking vending cases by the hundreds, the typical way to sell was to mail out a pricelist to my regular customers in March (to take pre-orders which were estimated to ship mid-may, after the cards had been sorted,) and print ads in SCD and BHN. My partner & friend Carson Ritchey and I would go through the players we expected to be included in the sets, and come up with prices for them. The rookies were the tough ones to price, of course, but we did our best.

In May or early June of 1985, I got a call from a customer from North Dakota. His name was Brent Lee. He asked about Bret Saberhagen, who had been a little known rookie pitcher that I had priced at 7 cents. Brent said he'd take all that I had.

Given the dramatic shortcomings of having my pricelist printed in March, and the lead times for the SCD and BHN print ads, it was common for dealers to inform customers that prices, especially for rookies, was subject to change without notice. In other words, a dealer might publicly say he was offering Saberhagen rookies at 7 cents, but might very well not honor that price 3 weeks later when the customer called.

Anyway, I agreed to sell Brent all the Saberhagens I had, and a week later, when I'd gone through all my Royals boxes, I shipped him 1,400 odd cards, at 7 cents each, knowing by then they were selling hot at a dollar at shows.

Points being:
1. Circumstances can change between an offer and an acceptance, and changes can be made to offers reflecting this. Try responding to a print ad in a coin magazine in a hot bull market to see what I mean.
2. Once a deal is made, it's legally, morally, and ethically binding.

Word travels fast in this hobby, then as now, and backtracking on a deal does irreparable reputational damage. I think it's obvious, and everyone agrees, that is not the case here in this thread.

Yes, that's what many customers would say about stockbrokers back in the day!

It's interesting though. If you asked me now whether I should have become an actual stock broker many years earlier in the 1970's, I'd now say "Sure!" But if you asked me whether I'd like to be a stock broker now, I'd say "No!" Times have changed.

I understand that stock and futures (e.g. commodities) markets are about as pure and efficient markets as can exist. I'm also fully aware that other kinds of selling fall far short of these in terms of purity/efficiency. Unlike you though I find this situation to be sad.

:(

You can't possibly believe that to be true. It is the opposite of sad that a private sale of personal property is not as heavily regulated as the stock market. The last thing we need is more government interference in simple transactions.

I have stayed out of the conversation on purpose. The written rules on this forum are very unobtrusive on purpose.

If someone backs out of "a" deal, and no (hard) money was lost, then they probably aren't going to get the boot. It happens.

If it happens again, or very often, then that might change. But everyone gets a "grace" every now and then. The less rules the better!!! Which, I think, is different than most forums or groups. No one is going to force anyone to do anything. IF someone wants to sue someone over something, go for it. Net54baseball, like eBay, relies on Section 230 of the Federal Communications and Decency Act. I used to get all kinds of C and D orders and I almost always told the lawyer calling to F OFF and go read Section 230, then get back to me. None every did.

I'm curious. If
1. You had a unique item of a former player, let's say a vintage game used jersey
2. You list it for $1000, then go to a movie
3. When you return home, you have 2 people wanting to buy it. The first, timestamped at 7:30, is an auction house that will buy to flip. The second, timestamped a couple minutes later, is from the player's son. Turns out the player passed away the previous week and the family is in mourning.

Would you hold to your rigid, dogmatic principle of how pure and efficient markets should work (first offer to buy gets the cheese,) or take a more human approach?

I agree. We need no more government regulations. I'm arguing for a simple "A man's word is his bond" standard. That's effectively what's been in force in stock, bond and futures markets since late in the 19th century.

:)

This has nothing to do with a man's word being his bond. We all agree a man's word should be his bond (in fact, I've said a man's word can be a binding contract). This thread was about a situation where there had not been an agreement in place. No man's word had been given.

It's a topic that has gained traction. It's too bad if you don't like that. I really have nothing against you, so please don't take it that way. It's just that you come across as knowing everything about everything. That and you take a counter or contrarian view on anything and everything for whatever reason. Thus I take great pleasure in getting you all worked up. Just posting responses to get the last word in always proves I succeeded. I will now cease and decist lest I am held in contempt.

I have literally never been worked up on this site. You might want to try taking pleasure from something else, because judging someone's emotion over the internet is not for you.

Just because my view is often contrary to yours doens't mean I am taking a contrarian view. The irony is that most people in this thread have agreed with me. :rolleyes:

What always makes me laugh is when people like you tell others they are know-it-alls, when the reason you think that is because you think you know everything about everything. So when someone posts their position, you call them a know-it-all, not recognizing your own know-it-all tendencies.

I don't post to get the last word in. I just enjoy discussion. Just another misinterpretation on your part.

The real question is with 24 of the 125 posts did you get your point across yet or will it take another 20 or so?:eek::D:D:D

Depends if anyone wants to continue discussing it. This is a discussion board, if I'm not mistaken. :rolleyes:

I got my point across in the first post. Now I am just discussing a topic with fellow board members. Why is that a problem for you?:confused:

It's not like I'm just spamming replies. I'm only posting when others continue a discussion with me.

For the record, I appreciate your responses and agree with almost all of them. (not that it matters much)

Said 10,470 to 408.

Not a problem at all, post all you like. Like another member I get great joy in reading these threads. When one to three people have most of the posts in a thread trying to convince each other they are correct by repeating the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over it makes me smile.:)

Mark I have never claimed any of my 2.46 posts a day are anything special.:)

Man…I gotta find a way to catch up!

I don't believe any of us have been repeating the same thing over and over. As points are made, new nuance to the discussion is added. And those new points get discussed. It has nothing to do with convincing anyone of anything. It's just discussing a topic. I find it comical how many people shy away from any lengthy discussion mistaking it for something it isn't. If you aren't willing to engage those with different points of view, you'll never learn.

Ben, I appreciate every one of your posts. Just tweaking you for saying the other guy was posting too often.

What I have never understood (and this is nothing new here at all), is why people who aren't interested in a particular discussion just don't move on, but instead snipe at and sometimes mock the more active participants (as if THEY were somehow superior and above it all), criticize the number of posts, and completely mischaracterize the motives of the more active participants. As though they were being forced to read it.

In my opinion (aka whatever that's worth), if both offers are forum members, the timestamp rules. Uncomplicated rule for someone who tries to be fair, but uncomplicated.

...'go to a what?'

Agreed.

You and I have seen eye to eye twice today. I'm not sure how I feel about it. ;)

j/k of course. I always enjoy our discussions.

To me, having discussions with people who disagree, and having to articulate one's own views in response to other people's points, are how one learns. The world would be boring as hell if everyone agreed on everything. And yeah, the intolerance for discussion on a discussion board is just baffling.

Quick check on Gollum for his take:

That's how I was raised and continue to feel, even if it "wouldn't be financially prudent."

Just become more argumentative and you can post endlessly... :p

(And for the record, this is not a dig at BNorth, who has never seemed argumentative to me.)

Stop pretending, Peter. It's not a discussion. It's always a one way conversation when it comes to posts by you and the Ohio guy. What you two put out when you chime in and take over any thread is the final answer, etched in stone. About any subject. There's no discussion. You two know everything. All the world's problems could be solved, if only everyone agreed with you. But that's okay. It just is what it is.

Stop pretending. You think you know it all, and anyone making a point you disagree with is an argumentative troll who should stop posting. You're just a hypocrite who does the exact same thing you accuse us of. :rollseyes:

But you need to have the last word, so I know you'll respond.

See what I mean about certain people mischaracterizing motives? As if expressing an opinion is somehow intended to foreclose anyone else's, and to end discussion rather than to invite it? Weird.

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#143 Posts and not a single card. Acquired this one on B/S/T.
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I realize it wouldn’t go well, but I wish it wasn’t considered bad etiquette to rip people’s pricing when they ask too much for a card. Off topic I know.

agreed!!!!!

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To quote the great Dione Warwick song "Just Walk on By".
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acquired this off the bst many years ago!

A great singer. The perfect singer for many of the Bachrach/David hits.

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Damn Pete, that's a BST mic drop.