[G1911]

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.