> bojay1997 wrote:
> There may be 800 registered users, but by my count there are only a dozen or so people who regularly post. You may not understand this, but not everyone who collects sealed games visits forums or this forum in particular. In fact, a few of the folks I regularly trade with visited this forum once and never came back because they thought it was too focused on grading and buying and reselling on Ebay which a lot of old school collectors don't agree with.
>
> Another thing you may not understand is that not everyone collects to make money. Like a lot of collectors, I make a very good living and I'm not really looking to sell stuff to the highest bidder. This is my hobby, if I need some extra money, I know how to make it without selling stuff on Ebay. I like trading and building my collection or finding stuff at a discount rather than spending ridiculous amounts of money on Ebay. If I find a good stock of harder to find items, I will help other collectors to get them at the same price I paid for mine. They often do the same for me. That's what being friends with fellow collectors is all about. I'm not rich by any means, but there are some collectors I deal with who are and they are always looking for bargains. I guess that's how they stay rich.
>
> At some point I will post some photos, although with over 15,000 items in the collection, a lot of it is boxed and catalogued at this point and would require a little bit of effort to get out and photograph. The "1997" is the year I registered that user name, not my birthdate. If you do a Google newsgroup search, you will see that I was posting on video game collecting newsgroups since the infancy of the Internet. If anything, you guys are the newbies since I have never seen most of you before this site got going a year ago.
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> In closing, I'm not trying to be critical of what you're doing here, only pointing out that there are alternatives to Ebay and competing with one another and causing prices to continue to become artificially inflated. I think it would be nice if everyone here started looking out for one another and tried to help the others find those items they have been searching for rather than just looking to cash in. That's all I was saying.
You are absolutely right on most accounts. This forum is mostly full of two-faced scavengers. On the outside, they are friendly, they point the finger at resellers, but it's too hypocritical when you go and do the same thing. Games get bought not because of any sentimental value, but only because other collectors think they are good, and the fact that they actually want the game for collection purposes get's taken advantage of. I myself have regrettably fallen into such activity as well as a result of spending too much time on these forums, making impulse buys of games just because I thought it was a good deal, when really I have never played the game before, and I do really regret it now.
And you're right it absolutely does inflate game prices when half of the bidders are trying to buy the game and flip it for a little bit of profit, rather than keep it for their own collection. If resellers didn't bid on games I could definitely see prices going right down.
Ideally, collectors would try to help eachother out rather than rip eachother off. But the amount of greed I see from most users on these forums is just un-measurable, hate to say it. Only a few people on this forum are actually willing to lend a helping hand. If you were to announce on here a desire for a certain game, I'm sure 90% would find one and resell it to you at price + 50% rather than tell you where to get it yourself. I would love to know what community you are a part of.
On the other hand, you say you only do this as a hobby, and yet your collection exceeds 15,000+ items? Where do you even fit all those games?
