The Re-seller sucktitude

[fireheart]

Unless you have things like an irrevocable line of credit from a bank, a physical storefront, and the ability to order in the millions of units, manufacturers and wholesalers will not give you the time of day.

Depends on the wholesaler. There's a wholesale company designed SPECIFICALLY for those with ABN's and an actual business name and they're designed for small businesses (no, it's not Costco)

[Naaman]

This was one of the things I hated about collecting Star Wars figures for about the first 3 or 4 years when the Power of the Force line came out.

Lego Star Wars is the same. They buy new boxes, rip the figures out and put them on E-bay for £10 or more then sell the rest of the kit dirt cheap...(which is good if you want a cheap Lego kit )

[KellyHabersham]

This was one of the things I hated about collecting Star Wars figures for about the first 3 or 4 years when the Power of the Force line came out.

I quit collecting them entirely because of that kind of stuff.......don't have easy access to stores that would sell them, and the ones I could get to, the re-sellers would clean them out.

[Shalom]

I had to explain this to my boss once. I don't recall what it was, but there was some commodity in short supply, and one customer wanted to buy all of it. Boss wasn't concerned: after all, he's getting his money, right? I convinced him that yes, whether he'd sell 30 units to one person or 1 unit to 30 persons he'd be making the same monetary profit either way, but nevertheless, one way he'd have 1 happy customer and 29+ pissed-off ones, the other way he'd have 1 pissed-off would-be customer and 30 happy customers. Put in those terms, he saw the light.

(And back in 2001 when the anthrax scare was going around and fluoroquinolones were in short supply, one "patient" came in with two prescriptions for something like 90 tablets each of ciprofloxacin in both strengths we carried them. I glanced at these prescriptions, my BS detector started chiming, and I said I'd have to confirm them with the doctor. She got all pissy and started shouting that there's nothing wrong with them, she works in the doctor's office, and so on. This of course only raised my suspicion levels. She took them back and left. I dunno if her doctor/employer wanted to have some in stock in his own office, or if she was trying to corner the market on her own and set up her own little illicit pharmacy for people who were paranoid about every little bit of white powder they happened to notice. Sure, Aid of Rite would make the same profit either way, but I wasn't gonna let this person clean me out because she was either paranoid or greedy (or both), and then not have anything left for someone with a resistant UTI or some other actual disease who really needed the ABX, rather than merely the fear that some hypothetical terrorist was going to target a nobody living in a nowhere area of New Jersey.)

[MoonCat]

I remember when the Elmo dolls were the hot item. We had dozens of people placing ads to re-sell those stupid things. The prices they were asking were ridiculously high...I recall somebody asking $1000, another one listing at $1200. The first year or two, they actually sold! Then they started getting to be too common, so most of these jerks couldn't sell their extras. I can't say I was sorry.

[Seanette]

I work in a thrift store, and resellers tend to bug me. They're hovering at the doors like a flock of vultures ten minutes before we open, they're rude to those of us working there demanding that we either bring more carts of goods out for them to pick over or that we let them browse the back (in direct violation of policy and in the latter case safety rules), and IMO worst, they're snapping up donated items and keeping people who would actually USE them from getting them at affordable prices so they can profiteer on charitable donations.

[fireheart]

I remember when the Elmo dolls were the hot item. We had dozens of people placing ads to re-sell those stupid things. The prices they were asking were ridiculously high...I recall somebody asking $1000, another one listing at $1200. The first year or two, they actually sold! Then they started getting to be too common, so most of these jerks couldn't sell their extras. I can't say I was sorry.

I also remember hearing about that! Hoo boy, talk about nuts!

[EvilEmpryss]

I was only a kid when the Cabbage Patch craze hit, but I remember the lady across the street was batshit crazy for those ugly dolls. She had two whole rooms in her house filled with the dolls and their accessories. One room was for her personal collection, the other was filled with extras. She would go to the stores when new shipments came in, grab as many of whatever it was that she could, then go home, sort through them, and put classified ads in the paper for the rest (this being TBE -- the Time Before Ebay). She tried to offer me a doll for something like $75, telling me that I should tell my mom it was such a deal she was offering me.

I just thought she was insane. I was a tomboy and was more interested in her son's BMX bicycle.

[Catwoman2965]

Beanie babies. I never quite understood that one either. I have a family member, who is in her 50's who has several tubs of them. "Because they're an investment" um no, sorry, they are not. I do believe there are a few worth money, but most, not so much. Then again, she also bought the whole collection of Wizard of Oz barbies, and another "collectible"Barbie. I asked what for, and she said, "to display" ok, whatever floats your boat.

[Kanalah]

Oh boy, let's see

My mom's store stocked beanie babies. We had a "call list" with over 1500 people on it. We'd call 150 each time we got a new shipment in and they could only buy 5 max.

One of mom's friends sold pokemon cards, magic cards, dragon ball action figures, etc. Mom would go to the toys r us and clean them out. Used to embarrass me so much. Sometimes she'd order a case from wizards, when we had AOL dial up.

After the divorce, Dad stockpiled GI Joe figures. He still has an entire room of them, stacked floor to ceiling. His reason were - he wanted to buy stuff so he could be in debt and not have to give mom more money :rolleyes; and also because he thought he'd sell them on ebay for big money. It's been 20 years now, he smokes like a chimney and has cats he doesn't clean up after. Yeah.

[Monterey Jack]

Beanie babies. I never quite understood that one either. I have a family member, who is in her 50's who has several tubs of them. "Because they're an investment"

The comic strip Foxtrot did a good weeklong run of strips about the Beanie Baby craze back in the day...

[An Haddock]

Beanie babies. I never quite understood that one either. I have a family member, who is in her 50's who has several tubs of them. "Because they're an investment" um no, sorry, they are not. I do believe there are a few worth money, but most, not so much. Then again, she also bought the whole collection of Wizard of Oz barbies, and another "collectible"Barbie. I asked what for, and she said, "to display" ok, whatever floats your boat.

I've had people bring them in to sell on Ebay - only to find that if they can get $20 for a couple dozen of them they're lucky.


And does anyone remember a story in the news from around a year ago - there was a guy who would habitually go into Toys R Us, repackage high-end Lego kits in boxes for other, cheaper items, then sell them on Ebay for a profit. And the guy didn't need the money... he was a banker or stockbroker or something and made well over $100k a year at his regular job. When they finally busted him he had dozens of Lego sets in his home he hadn't sold yet.

found it:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headline...rom-toys-r-us/

[Gizmo]

Oh boy, let's see

My mom's store stocked beanie babies.

My flatmates ex had an entire attic of beanie babies. When they moved house there was 3 2.5 ton trucks of *just* bags of beanie babies.....

[Fudgethatkay]

My friend is a re-seller...

She is actually good at what she does with it, but knowing her, she isn't a pretentious prick about it either.

She also isn't the "buy in bulk one certain item and make many people cry" type, but she IS the one who goes to secondhand shops and gets brand named clothes...

She recommended it to me this summer.....

[Sapphire Silk]

(And back in 2001 when the anthrax scare was going around and fluoroquinolones were in short supply, one "patient" came in with two prescriptions for something like 90 tablets each of ciprofloxacin in both strengths we carried them. I glanced at these prescriptions, my BS detector started chiming, and I said I'd have to confirm them with the doctor. She got all pissy and started shouting that there's nothing wrong with them, she works in the doctor's office, and so on.

She probably DID work in a doctor's office . . . and stole the prescription pad.