Flipping Cards

[old-baseball]

Rob - I agree I'd much rather sell to someone in the hobby than someone that is solely here to turn cards for a profit. But I have to say that in your example, the the $100 card is sold for $75 thats the sellers fault not the buyer. I think we all know who else collects what we collect and have a fairly good idea what the other guys need. If you put a card out on B/S/T for 75% of what a fellow collector would pay, and it's snatched up by a "flipper", that's your fault. There's no reason that it couldn't have been offered directly to a group of fellow collectors.

Fast forward to a week later, this time the card's on Ebay $125, too bad for the previous owner, but he got the $75 he wanted. Now if one of his fellow collector pays $125 for the $100 card because he's been looking for it forever, that his business. He doesn't have to part with the $125, it's completely his choice. We, the collector (I don't consider myself a "flipper") really control the hobby because we pay what we think something is worth, not because of the price in a guide or what somebody has it listed for on Ebay.

I know were on the same side of this issue but cards only have the value that they do because we're willing to pay.

Jim - I too hate to see people take a beating on a flip but like everything else you have to understand what you're getting into. I now also understand what you're driving at in talking about artificially driving up the value of a card. It's not right.