Quote:
Originally Posted by Huysmans
With all due respect, this is a two way street. Its laughable when dealers/sellers whine about low ball offers, especially considering its usually the pot calling the kettle black. Do dealers not BUY their material as cheap as they can get it?? Do they not constantly low-ball people to get material??
Brent
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As with most commodities, the sports card dealers I know don't need to low-ball, they buy in bulk as this provides them a cheaper price per card rather than wasting their time haggling prices on a few singles here and there. As a collector, I expect to pay more for a "single" card than I would if I bought the same card as a part of a large grouping of 5000 vintage cards. While some dealers do flip singles profitably, most dealers focus their attention on buying these larger groupings of cards with a lower price point per card as they realize that breaking up these larger groups and offering them to collectors as singles, small lots, etc. is where their profit will come from.
If collectors were to become more willing/able to buy these larger dealer type lots, than yes, I suspect that card dealers would have to become better hagglers like a very small percent of collectors are due to the increased demand/prices. IMO, it is not likely many collectors are willing/able to tie up their money and time investing in these dealer type lots.
Some years back, I sold off a run of near complete Topps sets from 53-75 (all of my duplicates) to a nationally known dealer. He spent 8 hours going through these cards. We spent the next 2-3
minutes negotiating the sell price/payment terms and agreed on a price we were both very happy with....he did not have to haggle with the price because it was a fair price for buying this large of a run of cards and he knew there was a slew of profit to be made by selling these cards as singles.
Dealers do not need to haggle if they buy in bulk