John Rogers: Ponzi scheme?

[Runscott]

Dave, it works out for them just fine. One of the big ebay card consignment sellers sent an email looking for consignments. He was charging less that what it would cost me total. Ebay is making it work for these guys, and protecting them. The only downside is that you are generally supporting both fraud and an uneven playing field for other sellers, including yourself.

Well, there's one more downside - if you are not willing to shill your own auctions, and the seller doesn't have a group of lackeys doing it for you, then you are probably going to get screwed.

[Sean1125]

Quick math places gross revenue for one large seller at $48,000 weekly.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by Sean1125

Quick math places gross revenue for one large seller at $48,000 weekly.

When you say "gross" do you mean total sales, or their total "cut" of the sales.

Most of that is going back to the consignors I imagine, with whatever left over to pay for overhead, labor, listing/merchant fees, etc......

[Sean1125]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

When you say "gross" do you mean total sales, or their total "cut" of the sales.

Most of that is going back to the consignors I imagine, with whatever left over to pay for overhead, labor, listing/merchant fees, etc......

That is revenue from their consignment fees. You then take out overhead to find their net. This is obviously "speculation".

Edit for misspellings.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by Runscott

Dave, it works out for them just fine. One of the big ebay card consignment sellers sent an email looking for consignments. He was charging less that what it would cost me total. Ebay is making it work for these guys, and protecting them. The only downside is that you are generally supporting both fraud and an uneven playing field for other sellers, including yourself.

Well, there's one more downside - if you are not willing to shill your own auctions, and the seller doesn't have a group of lackeys doing it for you, then you are probably going to get screwed.

Yeah, I'm not denying that it's working for them, it obviously is. I just don't see it as sustainable. If the consignments ever dry up for them, or Ebay changes their policies in the wrong direction on a whim one day, I see the pyramid crashing down at some point, with a lot of consignors holding the bag for their bankruptcy proceedings.

Rogers got in trouble because he saw a burgeoning market in vintage photos and got greedy and tried to corner the market for himself.........but he could never sell the inventory anywhere near as fast as he was buying it. It was unsustainable, while at the same time he flooded the market with what he did put out there, and actually brought prices down considerably in many segments of it. The higher end stuff, will always be higher end stuff, but it obviously wasn't paying his bills...........especially when he apparently tried selling higher end stuff outside the market to unknowing collectors........that wasn't actually higher end stuff.