NECA Raphael MIB C9 Packaging $65 SHIPPED
 

Will be shipped in NECA box. Figure is unopened and box has very minimal damage if any. I really need to unload this.

Why so cheap?

I will tell you via PM. It did sell on eBay for $100 shipped actually, came back to this thread expecting to simply put a big fat SOLD.

Is this the one you bought from me? My last unit? Why are you taking a loss? I am willing to refund/return it for you.

Didn't take a loss, made $70.

The one I bought from you was for an overseas member. It ships tomorrow.

This has been SOLD via eBay.

Glad to hear it. What the heck were you selling it for to make 70 off it?!?!

You bought it from me for 90+shipping (i forget that total), plus you had to ship it overseas. That means you had to charge like 300 + for that thing!

Tres gauche

What does that even mean?

I ordered one from Toys R Us for someone here for actual price + actual shipping as a personal favor.

After a week of waiting (no shipping update or notification or anything), you put yours up for sale, and I snagged it, sure I would have to cancel the TRU order. When I called, the lady told me she would cancel it out since she saw where a label had been created but the item had never actually shipped. Said it would be 7 to 10 days for the refund to process.

A few days ago, a NECA Raphael shows up at my door from Toys R Us. :tconfuse:

Tres= very in french
Definition of gauche
a : lacking social experience or grace; also : not tactful : crude it would be gauche to mention the subject

Not sure which one of us it was directed at though.

A little of both. Talking about profit margins in front of customers/potential customers isn't illegal or immoral, but it is very, very tacky. When buying from a middle-man, customers know they are paying a somewhat inflated price to cover the service of that middle man...that doesn't mean that fee should be discussed publicly. It's kind of like going to the bathroom. Everybody does it, but that doesn't make it an appropriate topic of public conversation.

Conversations like this are better suited for private messages.

The biggest flaw in this logic is that for some people [like myself] this is their main source of income or ONLY source of income. What you described is basically the job description, the backbone skill to being a successful re-seller. Otherwise you're losing money or only breaking even, 'cept you never really break even since there is so much work involved if you don't know what you're doing.

Is being a construction worker like going to the bathroom? I would imagine that being a doctor, nurse, or sanitation worker is like going to the bathroom since there are times one might have to deal with pee or poo. So there would be aspects of those sorts of jobs that might not be dinner conversation.

HOWEVER:

If I were dating someone and she introduced me to her parents, and one of them asked me what I do, and the other said "don't ask him that, Marge! Talking about what you do for a living is like talking about going to the bathroom!" I might reconsider marrying into that family.

Coro and I don't always see eye to eye sometimes, but he is a veteran who served in some branch of the military, so I don't think anyone is in any position to regulate his free speech if he fought for ours. Just my opinions.

My comments are in dark red.

The father of the girl in the scenario I created might want to know what my profit margins are.

Profit margins are everything. Customer service is important, yes, and being able to spot a poorly listed gem on eBay (or poorly priced gem) is important, but if you can't demand a high enough profit margin, those things are meaningless. Especially since eBay bends you over with their fees, making it even harder to bank.

You're the one who made the bathroom analogy. I just ran with it. I think many of us do treat our threads like a co-ed bathroom where any sort of conversation goes. :twink:

JFC that red text is painful to read... I don't really see why it was in poor taste between two sellers talking about prices in a related thread about sold units.

I changed it to dark red. Not much better, but it's tough to find text colors that are easy on the eyes against the dark gray background we have here.

Regarding why it's in poor taste...if you sell at item, do you say "Thanks for buying this item for $100. I only paid $60 for it. I made $40 off of you."

If you sell an item via PM in a thread, do you come back and say "This item is sold, I just made a cool $30 for my investment."?

No? Why not? You're not saying anything untrue or inherently mean. However, you are possibly indicating to the buyer, whether directly or indirectly, that they could have spent less money if circumstances were slightly different. They could have searched ebay or found another retailer. Instead of feeling like they got a deal, they start to regret the purchase and feel like they overpaid. Not all customers will feel this way, but some most definitely will. And if you want to be successful as a re-seller, why would you willingly risk making them feel less than stellar about their purchase? Especially when this risk is 100% avoidable by relegating these types of conversations to private messages.

Why do you think retailers don't openly show their profit margins right next to their prices on the shelves? They don't want their customers to feel they've been taken advantage of.

It's the same reason you don't discuss pay with your co-workers publicly. Discussing it openly will only breed contempt. Sure, you could walk into the office and brag about your salary, but don't you think THAT is a little gauche? It's effectively the same thing, especially when talking about people who re-sell items full-time.

No, but that would have been really distracting, though. People can't read price tag labels to begin with (experience from working in retail) having another price on the tag would just confuse people even more. Plus, I'd expect every able-bodied person to understand that stores and retailers buy their stock for a significant lower price to sell with profit so that they don't go under.

You should, though. Especially in the US people have extremely varying degrees of salaries among their peers with same education and period of employment, when discussing salaries it's not going to create contempt for the coworker it's going to highlight that some are underpaid.

You have hit on the point I brought up initially. Yes, people understand that stores and retailers buy their stock for less than they sell it for. In general, people are fine with that concept. However, most don't want the actual figures thrown in their faces for the reasons I listed above. This is the bathroom analogy that Kings is so fond of. We all know it's happening, but it isn't classy to talk about it in public.

And I'm not saying that you should never discuss salaries with co-workers. I'm saying that if you feel you must, do it with discretion. If you're having a work meeting and you're all gathered around, go ahead and rattle off everyone's salary one by one. You really think everyone is going to be feeling great in that moment?

Honestly, I can't say that I've ever been asked by a lady's father what my income is. In reality, it's none of his business and I'd find a respectful way to tell him as such while finding a way to assuage his obviouse reservations about me.

A nice profit margin is the effect, not the cause. You must start with the skills: the customer service and the knowledge. These are the cause. If you master these, the profit margin will fall into place. If you try to put profit as #1, you will surely compromise your customer service, which will in turn hurt your profit margin. It's a vicious cycle.

And I've never understood the "eBay takes advantage of us" mentality. If you put your items on ebay, you are piggybacking onto a HUGE infrastructure with a built-in audience of millions of potential customers cultivated over years. They ask for 10%-15% overall, which is less than many auction houses and if done properly, there is very little risk involved. If you don't like the fees, stick to craigslist. Watch how your pool of buyers changes. Also, take a friend with you or agree to meet in a police station and try not to get too frustrated when the buyer doesn't show up for the 12th time. I pay my ebay fees happily.

Okay, to re-cap:

I purchased a NECA Raphael from Toys R Us for a buyer overseas. After a week, there was no notification of shipment. Both the buyer and I started to become impatient. Around the same time, Coro put his last one in stock up for sale DIRT CHEAP. I snagged it, and called Toys R Us to cancel my order. the lady told me that she couldn't see any evidence that it had been shipped, and said she would put in a request for cancellation.

A few days after the payment was refunded, the NECA Raphael arrived from Toys R Us, a company who CLEARLY needs to get their sh!t together, since she had trouble pulling up my account at all when I called and I order from them multiple times a year.

Coro wanted to know why I was listing the Raphael so cheap instead of just returning it to him for the price at which I bought it. Why? The Raphael I was trying to unload was NOT the one I ordered from Coro. It was the one that Toys R Us shipped to me ANYWAY even though I canceled the order for it.

The profit margin was large, since I got it from TRU for free due to an error on their part, but it was purchased from someone on eBay. This buyer paid only $100 for it. He didn't know I got it for free, nor did he care. All he cared about was the fact that he got it for around $20 less than the going rate.

This ENTIRE conversation was irrelevant and unnecessary. We shouldn't have to "resort to PMs" or hide our conversations in secrecy. Marking up items you buy to make a profit is not exactly like taking a ****.

Can I get this thread closed yet? Anyone on moderation "duty" today?

Anyone catch Raph and Leo up on ebay for $19 + $20 shipped from Hong Kong?

You can bet your @$$ that's a scam.

Anyone willing to test that theory?

And this is why I don't see any issue with the talk about profits since the TRU figure was free, of course there'd be a high profit.

Nah, I've had my fill with too cheap to be true bootlegs

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.

I posted what I did to try to help you make better, smarter decisions with your business. It's coming from a place of experience, but ultimately it's up to you whether you listen or not. I think sales threads are a place where you should list items for sale with clear terms of sale and a direct interface with potential customers. If you equate your sales threads to co-ed bathrooms (your words) where you discuss profit margins and mask profanity, then let's just say we agree to disagree.

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.