Board 8 > People selling PICTURES of PS5s for hundreds of dollars.

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.businessinsider.com/scammers-selling-playstation-5-photos-on-ebay-2020-12

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What I find humorous is that eBay calls these people opportunistic and is forcing all these auctions down, yet they do nothing about the scalpers.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM7A-aJLVEE

man people still try to pull this shit? judge judy took care of it ages ago!

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This is an actual crime. Scalpers are awful as well but eBay makes good money off them so it's not surprising.

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People are selling PS5 boxes labeled "BOX ONLY NO CONSOLE" for hundreds of dollars, and people are bidding. Some truly can't be helped

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What was the one that got talked about on here like 15 years ago? Was it a picture of a boat I think?

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The best auction i think ive ever seen was during the ps3 era and it read...

"A Sony Playstion 3 of them"

Is everyone new to ebay or something? This kind of thing happens for literally every product imaginable. I know when I've searched for video games, there's always a manual only sale (despite showing the game on the photo) or case only sales for retail price of the game. I've seen it for other products too. It's an ongoing scam that ebay never has done anything about.

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I thought it was against ebay ToS to sell preorders of anything as an individual seller, but it's been a while since I checked
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BakusaiTenketsu posted...

yet they do nothing about the scalpers.

Businesses buy wholesale from manufacturers and resell at retail for a profit, with a price point that they feel people will be willing to pay.
'Scalpers' buy (usually retail) from businesses and resell for a profit, with a price point that people are willing to pay (often times auction).

I still don't get how some people have an issue with resellers.

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Imagine someone defending resellers

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guffguy89 posted...

Imagine someone defending resellers

It's hard for me to understand the difference. If a big corporation resells stuff they didn't make, it's ok, but if a small company/individual person does it, it's not ok?

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TomNook posted...

It's hard for me to understand the difference. If a big corporation resells stuff they didn't make, it's ok, but if a small company/individual person does it, it's not ok?

The pro-capitalism argument would be that the companies that are selling it in the first place (Gamestop, Target, etc) have earned the right to; they've made a deal with Sony to get the consoles and sell them, and they're being productive in providing a convenient way for the consumers to purchase them and for Sony to not have to set up their own fine distribution networks to deliver them to consumers. Scalpers are just grabbing and reselling the consoles without improving the experience in any way, and only have the product in the first place by virtue of being faster. They're middleman that no party benefits from having there. They're leeches

the anti-capitalism argument is that the retail businesses reselling the consoles is also evil

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The issue is that when a business buys the product they are not actively hurting the supply for said product and therefore do not artificially inflate the price.

When scalpers buy the product they are hurting the supply and inflating the price.

It's like buying all the hand sanitizer during the pandemic and reselling it for x10 because people are crazy over it.

For instance, let's say I am a multibillionaire and I decide to buy all of the cancer medication in the world and now I can resell it at any price I want. Of course there are laws and such that would actually prevent me from doing this but that's just an extreme example of the underlying problem people have with scalpers. While in the past smaller instances of it like with video games could be seen as simple entrepreneurship it's developed into a the rich get richer and everyone else suffers mentality.

Imagine unironically basing your life philosophy on Tom freaking Nook.

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there's no way to defend buying something like the PS5 solely for the purpose of reselling it for $1,000. You are a shitty person if that's you. You can paint it whatever way you'd like to help you sleep at night, but it aint reality.

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Ever watch LOST? Scalpers are Sawyer sitting on a pile of necessities that he grabbed out of the wreckage first and making people do outrageous things to get them even in life-or-death situations.

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I still see it as capitalism. You get the supplies and demand chooses the price. Production makes more when demand calls for it.

Doing it with medical things is thankfully illegal unless you are a hospital or drug company, then you can fuck people as hard as you want legally.


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A scalper is artificially impacting the supply/demand, though. They're shrinking supply without actually meeting ANY of the demand and then inflating the price based on the restraints they now caused. It hurts both other consumers for obvious reasons, and actual production since scalpers are making it impossible for them to actually meet the demand.

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To add to that, consoles themselves are produced at a loss these days especially early in their lifecycle, so saying "just produce enough to meet demand" sort of ignores that they're kind of expecting to actually profit off of the secondary products first, which scalpers are obviously not buying for each console they buy.

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StealThisSheen posted...

A scalper is artificially impacting the supply/demand, though. They're shrinking supply without actually meeting ANY of the demand and then inflating the price based on the restraints they now caused. It hurts both other consumers for obvious reasons, and actual production since scalpers are making it impossible for them to actually meet the demand.

You can make a case that first line resellers (retailers), should put a limit on the amount that someone can buy (many do this already). It won't stop dedicated second line resellers (scalpers) from buying from many different sources, but they can't be everywhere (in terms of both physical locations and websites) at once, which will delay their lightning speed and allow others to purchase things before them. Many first line retailers are greedy though, and don't really care. You can blame them just as much.

Also keep in mind that many scalpers are just regular people, and often poor, so they might be more dedicated to camping out if it helps pay some back bills.

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TomNook posted...

You can make a case that first line resellers (retailers), should put a limit on the amount that someone can buy (many do this already). It won't stop dedicated second line resellers (scalpers) from buying from many different sources, but they can't be everywhere (in terms of both physical locations and websites) at once, which will delay their lightning speed and allow others to purchase things before them. Many first line retailers are greedy though, and don't really care. You can blame them just as much.

Also keep in mind that many scalpers are just regular people, and often poor, so they might be more dedicated to camping out if it helps pay some back bills.

Most retailers DO have limits on things like this, but scalpers are writing scripts to allow them to use multiple accounts to get around that.

And nobody poor is scalping game consoles, let's be real, here. You're trying to twist it into something noble when it's not.

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Just like an Xbox box would sell for hundreds, too

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To me it boils down to this: The manufacturer that makes the thing being scalped, when they put a price on something that they are the only makers of (IE xboxes, or another notable thing in its time was Nintendo Amiibos) has essentially said "this is what it's worth. You must pay this price to get it." Scalpers then take that and go "Nah actually, pay double/triple if you want the thing" despite having no authority from the retailer to do so. They are forcing people to pay more than the stated and understood value of an object to acquire said object.

Is that capitalism? Sure I guess, but to me personally this "level" of capitalism is unethical. A scalper has put in none of the work into the production, planning, or selling of the object as the retailer has done, and is actively taking advantage of other people who in some cases don't have the same level of technical acumen (as it's been stated, some people are writing actual code to snag all the product before "normal" people can), so to me it's just dishonest. If I am willing to pay the price that the retailer themselves have said is what is fair, and not willing to pay double that, that is not a me problem. That is a "scalper taking advantage of people" problem.
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A manufacturer cant determine worth. Something is worth whatever people are willing to pay for it.

Really what should happen in a free market is that a new console starts off being $1000 or whatever crazy people are willing to pay to get it right away, and then slowly lower price as the highest price people are willing to pay drops, but that would be logistically complicated and generate bad will, so scalpers kinda naturally enact that.

(Not saying that scalpers are good or anything, theyre just a natural consequence of the product initially being worth more than the MSRP).

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Yeah I don't buy any supply/demand argument when scalpers are using bots to make it sometimes literally impossible for anybody else to buy these high-demand products and then selling them for double to desperate people. I mean you can call them enterprising or whatever for so obviously fucking the system to their benefit but it's a clearly shitty thing to do.

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I'm not saying it isn't a shitty thing to do! All I'm saying is that scalping would not be profitable if consoles were not being sold below their initial value.

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Supply/demand would imply they are putting their entire supply of unwanted PS5's up on ebay at once. But they buy them all out and then put up only a portion at a time to maximize profits.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

A manufacturer cant determine worth. Something is worth whatever people are willing to pay for it.

Really what should happen in a free market is that a new console starts off being $1000 or whatever crazy people are willing to pay to get it right away, and then slowly lower price as the highest price people are willing to pay drops, but that would be logistically complicated and generate bad will, so scalpers kinda naturally enact that.

(Not saying that scalpers are good or anything, theyre just a natural consequence of the product initially being worth more than the MSRP).

LotM pls

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LordoftheMorons posted...

I'm not saying it isn't a shitty thing to do! All I'm saying is that scalping would not be profitable if consoles were not being sold below their initial value.

"Scalping wouldn't be profitable if companies just fucked everybody over from the beginning instead!"

uh

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Again

Im not saying scalpers are good (I think theyre bad)

Im also not saying that Sony should actually increase their prices

Im just saying that theyve given people an opportunity to make free money by pricing the console below its actual value, and nobody should be surprised that people are going to take advantage of that.

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"Dicks are going to be dicks if they can be dicks"

Brilliant insight.

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I mean I made the comment in the first place because Emeraldegg said that Sony sets the value of the console, which is incorrect.

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Sony does in fact determine what the console should sell for. It is factually correct.

There is a certain value in their price strategy connected to not pissing off their userbase. If they sell a bunch for $1000 and reduce demand because people think they are a trash company, the consoles long term value will be crap.

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red13n posted...

Sony does in fact determine what the console should sell for. It is factually correct.

There is a certain value in their price strategy connected to not pissing off their userbase. If they sell a bunch for $1000 and reduce demand because people think they are a trash company, the consoles long term value will be crap.

They determine an MSRP.

Somethings value is what people are willing to pay for it (which, initially at least, is apparently above MSRP).

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Thats not true. Because to Sony there is value in selling more consoles and keeping their consumer base. If they do something that makes less people want to buy a PS5, the value goes down.

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To be explicit, I'm talking about the market value of the PS5. The MSRP does not determine the market value, and if the sale price is lower than the market value you create an incentive for arbitrage.

You can do things like put a limit on the number of consoles a single person can buy to try to tamp down on it, but at the end of the day the only way to eliminate scalping is to set the MSRP close enough to the initial market value to make it not worth the effort (and retailers have pretty weak incentives to even put up these partial barriers).

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Retailers dont actually care if people scalp stuff. All they care about is making it seem like they care so that there isn't any major public outcry.

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Scalpers are detestable, but what they're doing clearly works. I feel like we're at a point where consumers just need to be smarter and more patient.

If they stop falling for this stupid nonsense then scalping is no longer profitable and problem solved.

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But again, the scalpers aren't giving market value either because they are withholding supply from the market.

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BetrayedTangy posted...

Scalpers are detestable, but what they're doing clearly works. I feel like we're at a point where consumers just need to be smarter and more patient.

If they stop falling for this stupid nonsense then scalping is no longer profitable and problem solved.

There is a wealth gap to where the people buying from the scalpers literally don't care what they pay.

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red13n posted...

There is a wealth gap to where the people buying from the scalpers literally don't care what they pay.

Even then they have to at least be smart enough to buy the ones for 1000 over the ones for 2000 that I'm seeing.

Plus that doesn't explain the box only idiots. Like I'm honestly dumbfounded at how people won't even read the name of the item they're purchasing, especially at those prices.

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red13n posted...

But again, the scalpers aren't giving market value either because they are withholding supply from the market.

This is key. They are manipulating the market. And thus are making it impossible for the Manufacturer to set MSRP at the true market value (if that was something they were even interested in).

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it's definitely true that the laws of classical economics are based on price being fixed and the quantity demanded being determined off that fixed price

what's happening with scalpers is basically sliding down the demand curve from left to right and it's extremely difficult to prevent from happening with a private market

this is a luxury toy for adults so i'm not that concerned about it, but it's scummy as hell for people to do it with essential products, or non-luxury toys for kids
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SeabassDebeste posted...

but it's scummy as hell for people to do it with essential products, or non-luxury toys for kids

Yeah as we saw with the former earlier in the year. And as for toys, this happens with the hottest new toy every single year and it's shit. Ask any parent who tried to get their kid a Tickle Me Elmo in 96, Beanie Babies in 97, Furby in 98, etc. It was impossible unless paying up the wazoo to scalpers.

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BetrayedTangy posted...

Scalpers are detestable, but what they're doing clearly works. I feel like we're at a point where consumers just need to be smarter and more patient.

If they stop falling for this stupid nonsense then scalping is no longer profitable and problem solved.

I've heard of cases where the demand has fallen out from under scalpers (It's pretty funny) but it hasn't killed off the practice. I mean it's still kind of free money if that doesn't happen. I just feel bad for the people who get priced out of being able to reasonably afford a PS5, not so much the people who are willing to pay way too much to get one but can afford that too.

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paperwarior posted...

I've heard of cases where the demand has fallen out from under scalpers (It's pretty funny)

I remember this happening with a couple of amiibo.

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Yeah, while things like tickets could backfire badly as the value drops to zero if the event passes, things like the PS5 still hold value so even if no one buys it at the inflated price, you could still make most, if not all of your money back.

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Out of curiosity would people have a problem if sony let people pay $600 for the console to skip the line and get it over anybody else? Or if they were all put up for bid on ebay at the same time by sony?

I'm trying to figure out what fundamental issue is that people have other than that it makes it harder to get a toy that they want. As long as supply doesn't meet demand some people aren't going to get what they want. With scalpers theres two ways to get it: get lucky/hunt for consoles for sale or pay extra money. Without scalpers you only have one way.

I guess i'm just confused why people think people with more free time/are luckier are more entitled to a console than say someone with a demanding job that can afford to pay a little bit more.

(Note I don't like scalpers using scripts and such since they aren't really playing fair, but back when it was a scalper waiting in line overnight to get a console to resell i had no problem with it)

Imo the problems are really that there isn't enough supply, and online retailers don't let out the systems in a fair way

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This scam has existed for as long as sites like Ebay have existed, to be fair.

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Mr Lasastryke posted...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM7A-aJLVEE

man people still try to pull this shit? judge judy took care of it ages ago!

One of the only Judge Judy clips I've ever seen but a good one~

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