BST Flippers
 

Feels odd to sell something nice on BST at what is a very reasonable price to a fellow board member, only to see it at an AH very quickly for more than I sold it for.

Yeah, I realize, that's how it works. When you sell something to someone they can do what ever than want with it. Just seems like when I sell to a board member I'm selling at a good price to a fellow collector and assume they are collecting it and not flipping.

I know, get over it.

How about the inverse- seeing cards on BST for 30%+ more than what the literal same card just sold for in major auction houses like REA, Heritage, etc., often days before

Peeves notwithstanding, The owner of the card can do as they wish with it

it goes both ways...and i've been there and yes...it's annoying.

almost as annoying as selling a rare card on the bst on the cheap because it came back from TPG'er as altered...only to see it turn up later in a super high grade holder for the issue selling for multiples of what i sold it for.

i've won way more than i've lost in this game...as I'm sure most of us have.

I've found deals happen with people I've known and dealt with here for a long time. Sort of a paid dues mentality. If we have a 15 year relationship then I'm going to discount and pretty much all other members have done the same for me.

The fact is that many board members are dealers.

If you get your price it shouldn't matter what the buyer does with it.

Sent from my SM-G981U using Tapatalk

If the item has been on the BST for a long time and nobody picked it up, then all good, take a chance (pick it up and try to resell it). However, if a board member puts something up on the BST at a fairly reasonable price, then, just my opinion, don't immediately purchase the item to put it up for sale again. Allow a board member to get it for their collection. If a lot of time passes and nobody has bought it, then it's fair game.

It would be nice to think that the members on this board are considerate of other board members as hobbyist first, and not a bunch of capitalistic butt heads that just want to make a dime off the hobby.

I have bought a few things from the net54 BST. Just check my signature below. In every case I feel like I was given a personal as well as a great deal. It's one of the things I love about this forum. Heck, I finished my '53 Bowman complete set here, and in near record time too other than just going out and buying a complete set. I didn't acquire any of my cards to sell, much less flip. Like you, I would find that annoying.

I do not sell unless I am either upgrading or if it is something that is something I no longer want for my collection.
So if I sell it then it means I got the price that I wanted.
And it is a price the buyer is happy to pay so it is a positive transaction for all.
Once it is his/hers they can do as they chose.
If I wanted more for the price or felt I had better options then I should have explored them.
Since I did not and got what I agreed to sell it for then no complaints

The only time I would be frustrated if I only sold it because the person I was communicating with said they needed it for their collection to complete a set or what they needed. If they then flipped I am a little annoyed because i gave it up under false pretense and i thought I was helping them out. But again I sold it so it is theirs

I'm not a big seller, but my take on it is once the buyer pays for the item, it's theirs. That being said, if a buyer told me it was for their collection, only for them to flip it a month later, I would feel mislead, and it would impact my future dealings with that buyer.

100% agree, plus I would add there are many hobbyist, including myself, who support their collection by flipping cards. There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing so and to think less of people being hobbyist because they flip cards IMO is just wrong.

When I offer something for sale I expect it is going to a collector since I do not wholesale. If that price ends up being less than it is worth and the buyer turns out to be a flipper or a dealer, who cares. Had my chance.

Have had guys try to get me to lower y price by telling me they are collectors and the card is for their PC and never being sold and then asking if I can do better. Answer is usually, nah.

I think there are a variety of reasons one might choose to sell.

E.g. sometimes, I buy things from auction houses and then realize I don't really need them. Since I fear that the market is going to take a dive some time during the next year, I offload the card sooner rather than later. I don't try to sell for much more than I purchased the card for, but I wouldn't necessarily fault someone for doing so.

Or maybe someone's financial situation has changed, and they need to sell. Given how much the market is fluctuating right now, its hard to say what a fair price even is. Obviously the market decides as something is just worth what someone else is willing to pay.

I would be a bit annoyed if I sold something for a reasonable price to someone on Net54, and they turned around and sold it for a sizeable profit, but I also wouldn't be shocked.

I guess that is what I should have said in my post above. I too would find it annoying, but I know it happens and I would not be surprised or shocked.

Are you going to pay my bills why I wait for some arbitrary bs time frame to pass. When did collectors become so entitled? Don’t want to see your item up for resale so quick don’t ask a price that leaves meat on the bone.

I think it's all about context.

If it's a normal transaction with a stranger, the seller has no right to dislike it. They got their price, the buyer may do whatever they want. Of course, the buyer may always do what they want once it is their card, but there are many times I think they ethically should not flip, and the seller can rightfully be a bit annoyed by it.

For example, a significant chunk of my boxing collection has come, from members here and elsewhere, with some personal understandings. What I collect in that realm tends to be tough material that one simply cannot go get elsewhere, but is only worth $20-$1,000, with great fluctuation because of the small buyer market that makes things hard to price, and gives sellers of very scarce material little incentive to move a card (if there's 6 of it known, why bother selling it for $100? $100 isn't going to make a fiscal difference for the seller, and the card is low risk, possible high reward if it's rarity ever catches on). I'm not so much getting a good deal usually in the financial sense of it's value in the here and now, but because I am a collector and not a seller (I occasionally sell duplicates after my trade/giveaway partners have picked my extras clean), people who otherwise would not sell have many times opened up items to me for my master set building. Personally, I feel that these deals come with a sometimes stated and sometimes unstated understanding: they are willing to part with the card largely because it is going to another collector who is not going to put the card back on the market and make it about money. If I turned around and then flipped that card, that wasn't really for sale originally until we got to talking and discussing our favored sets and my master set projects, the seller would be rightfully justified in feeling upset or angry over it, because they sold me the card essentially as a collector-helping-another-collector. I have even had some here decline my offer and sell me a particular card I need for less than what I offered them. If I was to turn around and flip it for money, this would be wrong.

Now, it would be my right in the legal sense to do anything I want as the card is now my property, but I would feel it was doing something wrong, and the seller would be justified in feeling the same way, as we did the deal in the context of one-collector-helping-another-collector and not a profit-centric deal. If it wasn't for these kinds of deals, I'd have nowhere near the amount of 'good' material that I have, and an actual majority of my 'best' cards I have secured in this way, from one collector to another, a card not really for sale originally that I acquired by virtue of not being a seller and being a part of the money side of the hobby. And of course, all of those cards are still in my well-loved collection with no real chance of entering the market again until my death.

I only complain if the buyer gave me the it is for my collection and asks for and gets a discount. Otherwise I don't care if someone can instantly sell a card for way more than they paid me. I just flipped a card I recently bought on here for way more than I paid.

People have brought up a lot of reasonable possibilities where one might sell a card or item they've recently bought. I know I've done it before if my collecting focus changed (which it has an annoying habit of doing) or if I had second thoughts about the purchase. Unless it was a sweetheart deal, I generally wouldn't bother the seller to ask for a return/refund but just take my lumps and resell it. Which brings up a point..

In a sense, I think selling at an auction house is the least annoying (to me, at least) way of dealing with it. The person might turn a profit or might end up losing out on the transaction, but they aren't really attaching a specific price to it. Seems like a very neutral way to dispose of it.

If I were one to be annoyed by these things, I think it would bother me much more to have someone buy it and then list it for 4x the price on ebay. That said, even that wouldn't bother me much. If I sell something, I try to forget about it entirely....

How much more did it sell at the ah? Remember, they get a cut.

Entitled - No. A collector/hobbyist - Yes. Do you believe waiting a week is going to solve someone's problems with paying bills? That's really insightful. :p

I don't get too annoyed by it, it is theirs to do with what they want.

I do get upset when someone gets you to sell something either cheaper or something you weren't really looking to sell because they had been "looking for the card forever" or it is their "dream card" to then see it a few days/weeks later for sale. That will tick me off.

This thread is basically the reason why I do not post the actual sold for price in my listing. I try to price high enough to not only satisfy myself, but also to discourage flippers. I am never selling out of need to sell, at least not yet.

But past experience with a buyer matters when it comes to discounts.

For me $NOT SOLD is okay, and so is $OLD.

For clarity here, I do not sell snot.

If nothing sells in a lot, I may offer a discount as a percentage reduction without changing the asking price.

I am not a fan of sequential price reductions to bump a BST listing that is initially listed well above market value.

I do not assume any responsibility for not following any of the rules or preferences above.:eek:

Would it be considered rude or against the unwritten rules to state when selling, "No dealers please". Nothing personal, but people who buy a card and flip it for a quick profit kinda piss me off, and it would really piss me off if it was my card. And yes, I know it's wrong to feel that way, but all dealers do is help to jack up prices.

Good comments.

Like someone said, there are a lot of reasons why people sell. Sometimes I buy a bit too much and feel like I need to sell to balance the scales a little. Sometimes I have my heart set on something and then something else comes along and I want more and all of a sudden would like some collecting cash on hand. Can be a lot of reasons.

People can sell anything they want. I get it. I guess there is a part of me that thinks "Yeah, I could have sold at an AH for $1000 too with a little more effort . . . . but I sold it someone here for $600 because I was trying to do a good thing for a fellow collector and not milk them to the last drop."

Yeah, don't be a nice guy and do a solid for someone . . . . squeeze them for every penny you can get. Sure. Good logic.

No good deed goes unpunished, as they say.

One of my favorite expressions since I learned it from a friend who grew up in Jersey.

Ha agree. I’d hope n54 is to sort of look out for each other at least a little bit.

Lol. Well didn't grow up in Jersey but residing there last 26 years.

A real NY/NJ expression I like is "not for nothin . . . "

"Not for nothin. . .but I could have sent it to the auction house myself."

To me, the only legitimate complaint is when the buyer lies to the seller.

Net54 feels more like a community to me than a trading platform. In fact, I find this to be its most endearing attribute.

People who treat it like a community are more inclined (in my opinion) to feel slighted when another member uses the site as a means to flip cards for a quick profit.

Early during my time here, there was a T206 Titus for sale on the BST. The seller didn't realize the card had risen dramatically in value. Consequently, their asking price was roughly 15% of the going rate at the time.

That BST thread turned into a discussion which I found fascinating. Quite a few members voiced opinions very similar to what I've read here.

How about when….
 

You post something, it’s been up for 15 minutes, and someone you’ve never dealt with asks for a 35 to 40 percent discount. Really?

Angyale

I simply reply with, "sorry, no."

Just to be clear, what is the going rate for snot from a retired Obgyn living in Palm Springs?

Net54 needs to institute a rule.

Once you purchase a card, you must hold onto it for a minimum of 5 years.

Dealers don't determine prices though. Buyers do.

If you want to sell something for below market to a fellow collector as a kind gesture, I think it's on you to ask the right questions first before selling it to someone. It's a kind gesture and I certainly see the value in it, but you would be wise to recognize that this is a free market we all swim in, and if you just post some random card for half of what it's worth and let anyone buy it, no questions asked, you're effectively throwing meat out to the wolves. Whenever I "pay it forward", I always make sure I either know the buyer already or at least sniff them out first.

And all potential buyers always tell the truth when sniffed, but are the wolves honest.:rolleyes::rolleyes:

I never use the “it’s for my personal collection” when trying to get a card. If I want the card, I just get the card, no explanation needed.

Just remember, a lot of card collectors tell taller tales than fisherman.

I guess it depends on how you view the N54 BST. Is it a marketplace or is it a forum for like minded collectors to get together and exchange cards, memorabilia, etc. I would like to think it’s the second but with so much money in the hobby now, that’s probably naive to wish for. The answer to all your questions is 💰

I think the BST is both a marketplace and a community. If I see a card listed for $100 and I feel it's worth $300 I will buy it and flip it. Most times those buys are for my collection though. And if I tell someone something is for my collection it's true and I won't be flipping it anytime soon. If someone gives someone their asking price then what's the big deal? Knowledge is king.

BTW, I have had the ole crying ,weeping issue before where a member said he didn't mean to sell me a 30k card...cried and whined to undo the deal and said he was keeping it and would die with it. But for some reason he had me send the card to REA and I got a check from them (many years ago now). I won't ever trust him again.

edited to say, after more reflection, I would actually trust the person in my situation again. I think he had some very serious personal issues going on at the time. He's a good guy...
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The thing is this, if I was a seller (which I most definitely am not), and I negotiate a deal whereby I am helping someone out, for whatever their reason in their collecting, and they turn around and flip, then I would not be annoyed, I would be downright pissed. If I sold and no special deal, and someone bought it and then flipped, that's on me.

Agreed. Members shouldn't by lying to each other in order to make a profit. If that's they way they do business, they should take their deceitful immaturity someplace else. There are plenty of online cesspools for that sort of behavior.

If I'm negotiating I usually preface the negotiation with "I'm buying for resale." If I am just paying someone's asking price I just pay.

Don't sell a card for less money than you are comfortable with. After you make the sale, let go of it physically and emotionally. What happens to it from then on shouldn't be the least bit your concern.

When you sell a card, you also sell the rights to the buyer, for him to do whatever he wants with it.

Please don't take this anyway except one more opinion. If I have something up on the BST for 300 and a newer guy offers 175, I am not offended. I would probably make a counteroffer.

every thread should...

https://luckeycards.com/n184oneil.jpg
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+1 Agreed

And as usual Leon has some great cards to post

100 percent.

That would turn me off for future transactions too. Empathy is not a strong attribute of mine. I'd be more apt to reverse a deal if the seller were honest with me. "Hey, I didn't do my research and screwed up. Any chance I can refund you and make it up in a future transaction?"

I try hard not to personalize a transaction nor commoditize a relationship. I don't care if you want it for your collection, have a personal connection, etc.: that's very nice, but not a basis for a discount. On the buying side, I also don't care if you've had it for a long time, have more than my offer into it, etc. We reach a deal or we don't based on item value. And once the card changes hands the recipient is free to sell it for whatever he wants. No buyer or seller remorse allowed, except in the abstract (I sold a W530 Wagner some years ago for <10% of what one went for in Heritage this weekend. D'oh! But the deal was still fair and free when made).

Exactly. When someone tries to get an item for a lower price because it's needed for his collection, my thought is, okay, you're building a collection by buying things. So, why is that deserving of a discount from me?

If you're selling puppies, yes, you want them to go to good homes, and not end up in a laboratory to be experimented on. But collectibles - when you sell something, let it go.

I've always thought that telling me how much you want the card for your PC is a good reason for me to hang tough or even raise the price there, Smeagol.

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...us%20cards.jpg

Personally, the only time I've sold cards that aren't dupes is when another hobbyist does the "I need it for my collection" angle (of course doing due diligence and be sure of its truth). If the card will mean more to them than me, I let them have it. As often as not, I don't even charge and just mail them the card for nothing. I'd like to think we reap what we sow, and I know I've been the beneficiary of this many times, securing cards not really on the market for a fair price (or sometimes even less than fair) because the seller knows I am passionate about that set and the card has great significance to me. Treating this hobby as a vehicle for money is, I think, not fun and ruins the magic. I prefer to try and enjoy it as a hobby and pay it forward and help fellow hobbyists when I can. It's been more than repaid in kind, and I think this type of approach to selling and trading and giving is much preferable to trying to shake loose every penny I could get from another collector. It's a much happier place when true collectors are helping each other and rooting for each other rather than trying to exploit every dollar. I'd rather leave bucks on the table and collect happy than take every scrap off the table and worry about how much my collection is worth.

But then again, I guess I'm old school and I haven't made a penny off this hobby (quite the opposite, in fact).

Great perspective

I don’t see anything wrong with flipping and am sure I’ve sold one or two items I’ve purchased here on impulse and later realized I don’t really need. That said, I’m transparent in my transactions—if I express an interest in a piece because of a personal connection to it or because it fills a while in my collection I’ve been trying to fill for years, that piece is staying in my collection. Integrity matters.

That said, if someone lists something for a fair price and someone buys and flips it, I’d say that’s great for both the buyer and seller.

This. I don't sell things unless they are doubles as I'm more of a hoarder than a collector at this point, LOL. But when I do sell something, it's only to someone who has expressed interest in something I have that they need for their collection. A few times such a person has turned around and sold the item pretty quickly.

I agree that once I sell it, it is theirs. But that doesn't mean I have to ever sell to them again which I don't.

jeff

I’ve done some deliveries but I’m not an ObGyn.

I do not live in Palm Springs but I’ve been there.

I am retired though and I am living.

That said I would say $7.00/shot.

That price was determined by a snowman algorithm regressed to the mean and differentiated to account for viscosity variations, before multiplying by pi and dividing by the lowest common denominator of 2562 and 7833.

I can also reassure you that a Koufax curve ball does not drop faster than a sine wave.

Oh and I do have an Ivy League degree in Mathematics. There was no one in our program who knew Snowman.

I sell infrequently but have always set what I thought was a fair price and stuck to it. I hope you make money if you are flipping it, as maybe you come back and buy more. I have never done the “friends” discount where an item has different prices depending on our perceived level of friendship.

When I buy I stick to the same thing. I don’t ask for friendship discounts and will payup if I need a particular item.

Handling it this way I have never had hurt feelings on the friend discount topic or getting mad if someone made money off buying from me.

My two cents.

Something tells me a lot of flippers will be going by the wayside once they start hearing from the IRS next year.

+1 Jeff well said

271. Flipclipper
Stopping someone dead in his tracks who’s trying to sweet-talk you out of a card for next to nothing, because you know full well he’s only looking to grab it to immediately resell it at a big profit.

Thanks for clarifying. I thought that was a crock-blocker. :D

This is why it isn't a good idea to sell cards to a friend. :D

I hate when someone resuscitates a thread of something I was bitching about 8 months ago and can no longer remember the point or what set me off. :D

LOL...it happens frequently, it seems. It's like WTF...that is old.
We have had 18+/- yrs old threads posted to the top before...
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Flippers
 

It has been a good discussion. Glad somebody resuscitated it!

Flipping
 

I'm not a dealer, I'm a collector. I have flipped many items that I have bought on eBay. If I see something that is worth more than the listed BIN or the highest bid, I am very likely to buy it and flip it or trade it later. It's like finding money in the street. Will you pick the money up, or will you pass it by ?
I would say by no means could I be described as rich or well-off. I'm just a working class guy. It is a way to pick up extra money to help finance my collection. It helps.
Now, to flip on net 54, that is a more touchy matter. Once I bought an item on net 54 that the other member priced way too low. I felt I should have given a heads up to him, but I didn't. It did make me feel a bit guilty. I didn't flip the item on net 54, but I did trade It to one of my trading partners. It was a very good trade for both of us.
As far as someone flipping something I sell, it doesn't bother me. Now if someone lied to me and said how much they needed it for their personal collection, and could I give them a break on the price, and then they flipped it, that would definitely leave a bad taste.

The problem with flippers right now is there are wayyyy more sellers than buyers. This will continue in 2022.

Things are not going to be as easy as they were in 2020/21 for the flash sellers.

It's almost comical over on facebook card groups...People are routinely posting cards from the junk wax era looking for advice on selling...grading, etc...thinking these cards have significant value. The pandemic may have given these cards a life...but now they appear to be back to junk status where they belong!!!

They may be junk and almost completely worthless but they are by far my favorites. It is like throwing cash out the window of a moving vehicle but opening junk wax is the most fun in collecting cards. I used to love going to games and watching those guys play baseball.:D

No doubt they are fun…overproduction of the cards to go along with the overinflated steroid stats. A bloated era indeed!!

Not for the cards I'm looking for unfortunately.

As for the issue, I've always thought that flipping cards here you just bought elsewhere, or buying a card here just to send to an AH is in bad form and goes against the spirit of this site. But as others have mentioned many dealers are members and all are free to do as they please with cards they bought. I don't like it, but it is what it is.

Agreed. I think we're seeing a glut of many modern cards probably due in part to the PSA backlog getting cleared and huge numbers coming to market, but like Jesse, not noticing any declines in the cards I mostly look for.

Back to the original premise.

This happened to me on a recent sale. Two weeks after the sale, the card was listed in a Sterling Auction. I considered buying the card back for less than I sold it for.

And in fact the card sold the second time for less than I received in the initial sale.

So I guess I did okay. The odd part was that when I inquired about the listing in Sterling, the original buyer claimed that his collecting focus had changed. Plausible deniability I suppose, but the timing is still suspect.

One of my favorites
 

Seller.... Im selling this because my collecting interests have changed.
Me..... I will take it!
Seller..... Okay I will ship it as soon as it arrives from the auction house where I just bought it!!!! ( Wow your collecting interests sure changed quickly!!!)

I guess the bottom line is if you buy something on BST and offer up a song and dance about how its your dream card you've been searching the 4 corners of the globe for, can't believe this is really available, and, hell, appreciate a nice discount among friends, its really not cool to put it up for sale next month. Gaming the system. No one's "collecting interests" change that fast.

Other than representations like that, you are free to buy a card and save it, burn it, put it in some one's vault, or list if for immediate sale, just like any other buyer.

Purchased a 14-card t206 lot not long ago on B-S-T. So as not to burn any bridges, made it known to the seller I only needed a few of the cards for my set-build and would be relisting the rest. He said he was cool with it. Could be wrong, but I feel like honesty has the potential to go a long way, even if it is, "hey, I'm probably going to try and resale this thing."

I've probably said this before, but unless you are using a sob story (anything from "My hamster died and he wanted me to have this card" to "I need it for my set and have been looking for 742 years") I don't really care what you do with a card that I sell privately. I got a price I was happy with, godspeed.

I am the same way and most I know feel the same way. Do what every you want with the card after you buy it, just don't lie to me to get a better price so you can instantly resell it for more.

Who has bigger tall tales, collectors or fisherman? :D