Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Palmer
I feel I made some salient points, but they were all ignored because...why? The item in this instance was free? Because the profit was a nebulous "high"?
The size of the profit margin is immaterial. We are talking about the act of a re-seller discussing the profits of a sale publicly. Making a little money or a lot of money doesn't make the act any more or less classy, it's the act itself which lacks class.
I was simply trying to inject a little decorum into this area of the boards where I thought professionalism would be held in high esteem. I suppose I was wrong.
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No, don't get me wrong, I appreciate all of the help you have tried to give me, Adam. I just felt that in the instance of me trying to unload this figure so cheap (compared to market value) of course people were going to be curious. I make very little profit off of the person I sell these to overseas because it is more of "do another fan a favor" than anything else since the price point for me on these is so high. I don't get them for $80 a piece like people who have a physical store front. So the TRU error was the only reason I listed it so cheap and I can see why that would make people scratch their heads.
Normally I try to stay away from discussing profit margins, NOT because it is "tacky" per se but because the more people realize how profitable this is, the less profit there is to go around. If EVERYONE had bought up as many cases of the SDCC figures as I had (an argument being had in yet another thread) there would be a shortage of complete sets and the price would have been driven up on those to $500 or more, a price I couldn't afford to pay for one case of figures to part out. One other seller here who is even less "ethical" than I once told me "don't post your steals in your recent steals thread until the seller has marked the item as shipped and you see movement, don't trust those people not to see the deal you got and contact the seller to see if he/she will cancel the transaction and sell it at a slightly higher price."
At the end of the day, I am proud of myself no matter what anyone here says. I went from being someone who had NOTHING and was constantly having to bum food, rides places, etc. off of others constantly due to a pretty serious drinking problem to being accessible to customers nearly 24 hours a day. I went from being at the mercy of some pretty merciless re-sellers when I sold off my personal collection (this is not something I will discuss publicly, for fear of being stalked and harrassed again). I learned from my mistakes. I went from being nearly bankrupt and having very bad credit to having two accessible credit lines. I am not trying to take advantage of anyone. If you can find it cheaper elsewhere, help yourself. I have plenty of people who pay my mark-up happily to not have to deal with BBTS or EE, large companies who are inconsistent when it comes to customer service (I know this for a fact with regards to EE).
I just purchased a Mondo Leonardo to repaint the baby turtle bright green for a customer since Raphael isn't out yet. How many sellers would do that? I also won't charge any more for the repaint than I would for the baby turtle unpainted/as is. I have 100% positive feedback on eBay. There are really only two people here who will badmouth me, and those two people are clearly either mentally disabled or mentally ill.
I always have been, and still am, the GREATEST TMNTurtles seller EVER. Don't let anyone else tell you otherwise.