Stop bugging people if they don't reply instantly

General
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I’ve been buying/selling/trading for years on various platforms, and this mostly pertains to Facebook (read: Virbank).

It is staggering how many people apparently think I have nothing to do all day but sit on Facebook and read/reply to their fucking messages about Pokémon cards. If I message someone expressing potential interest in a card, chances are 50/50 that if I don’t continue the conversation within an hour they’ll send me four messages in the span of a couple hours asking if I’m interested, “let me know,” “just tell me if you want it,” etc. etc. etc. Also worth noting that I obviously understand that in some potential deals, time is of the essence. I am not talking about those deals. I am talking about cards that have been listed for days with no takers.

The same goes on the seller end! It can be the middle of the workday, and someone will message me asking for additional pics of a card I have listed or something, and if I don’t reply immediately they will keep fucking messaging me BEGGING me to get back to them ASAP. I have a full-time job that is not buying and selling Pokémon cards, and sometimes I just cannot get back to you within a couple hours for one reason or another.

DO NOT DO THIS SHIT. I have refused to work with potential buyers because they are simply too fucking annoying. I can already tell that they’re the type of person who’s going to want me to, like, livestream myself going to the P.O. to drop off their $20 card (exaggeration, but you get the idea).

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

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red flags and block button work wonders. build up a client base worth dealing with. :blush:

the approach i have done at least. last thing i can do while painting a wall or caulking is to check my phone as well all day long. stay strong brotha :stuck_out_tongue:

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Virbank has some real gems on it from my experience but there’s a lot of shit to go through as well. Same for any FB group but the bigger they are the more shit you gotta deal with. If I’m selling I try to cross reference their names with Pokemon Trade Feedback first before getting to their PMs, just saves a lot of time and effort. Same for buying, if they’re a serious seller, look them up and see what they’re reputation is. The actual talking time should take less than 10 minutes. Obviously if you’re at work/busy that’s one thing but any time I’ve had people say they’ll get back to me, they don’t. 10 minutes or less is when I know if a deal is happening or not.

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If you use facebook messenger on your phone, you have an option to make your online status invisible. Downside is that you also can’t see the status of other people. Since doing that, I’ve noticed people message me less. I use a laptop often and when I’m on that (= browser) my online status is visible and the message flow in more. It’s a way to have some control.

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Times are changing and have changed. There has never been a more FOMO-driven period in collectibles. You’ve been doing this for years, secondary to your primary job and personal/familial responsibilities… but right now we have entered a full blown middle man / flipping-reselling era in collectibles.

Those individuals harassing you to buy your stuff are stressing to create a sense of urgency and present you with hard to resist (or to what they think) is offers and conditions/terms (cash ready, I’m PayPal ready, can have someone pick up local in X city, etc.) because they also are creating a sense of urgency and fomo-induced sales strategy to prospective buyers they want to resell your item for. That margin of profit is that individual’s potential earnings of the day or week.

The opposite scenario is just as equally applicable. Sellers having tentatively secured product or items locally or elsewhere and have bought time to be able to find a serious buyer who is willing to pay a price that yields them some margin.

A disproportionate amount of individuals and I mean more than we can even think of are 110% immersed in this lifestyle right now while being laid off from work, refusing to go back to work and collect subsidy and do this to make extra income, etc.

Good luck it’s only going to continue at least for the next few months unfortunately… :confused:

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In all my time using messenger never realized you could go invisible with it

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Block, best tool ever created

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This is a pretty solid analysis of the situation.

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*chuckles softly and knowingly to himself*

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So can I have my cards back from psa now or

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100%… what started as just a surge in individual’s beginning buy outs / entering the reselling and flipping domain (for modern) is beginning to become saturated with just “deal makers” in terms of higher end product both sealed / graded / and raw.

The reselling lifestyle had already become VERY crowded and as of the beginning of September, VERY toxic in the Pokémon community. Things I would only see in the Funko Pop niches, Hot Toys, etc. Sports matured quickly beyond the logic of “why am I going to overpay for retail product” with all the money being thrown there to begin with, it was still “cheaper” than paying retail price for a hobby box from an LGS / online. So paying 15$ for a 7$ pack for the retail exclusive products which have poorer odds but still offer an incentive to set build or pull many lower end variants still made sense. Since paying 50-75$ a pack for a hobby box but with guaranteed autos/relics/numbered cards is out of reach for many.

This came to Pokémon and gradually progressed (took a solid 6 months early Covid to September) to the point I was starting to feel embarrassed with what I was reading and seeing. The toxicity, the insults, the showboating, etc. It became VERY obvious that people turned their free time and subsidy cheque collecting into a full blown profitable, but stressful and competitive business.

Now within the last 6-8 weeks, you had certain guys on IG / the forums / groups who were lowkey doing what many have been doing for years. It isn’t abnormal for a wealthy person to have a personal shopper from each of their favorite high end boutiques and brands. Same thing with watches, collectibles, etc. Those same guys, without naming names, literally behind the scenes, secured specific items, started creating noise and buzz to increase demand while also drying up supply. Cha Ching! Winning formula no? Pay 5k today (or agree to pay 5k), take 24 hours and turn it into 7.5-10k? No brainer!

Now fast forward the last 2 weeks, you’re dealing with major fomo-induced rush to get in on positions or enter the market, but you’re being challenged and competing against the people who have been learning and doing this for 6 months (and in those 6 months, many of them acquired skills and knowledge that has taken long time collectors/sellers years and years to acquire). So the same guys who learned the stock schedule for every Target, Walmart, Best Buy, etc. Turned that business into a well oiled machine are now jumping in on the middle manning deals.

It’s like drop shipping for high end items lol… it’s crazy. The majority of eBay listings for high end that aren’t from a select handful of experienced sellers (who are mainly on this board), the sellers don’t even have the item in their hand physically. They’re testing the market and waters. It’s sickening. I was trying to do what would have been my biggest ONLINE transaction ever a few weeks ago (30k), but the eBay seller barely had feedback, was a nobody and no one I’ve seen online on any social media platform, etc. I ended up figuring out who the person was and reached out personally and tried inducing an in person meeting (seller lives a few hours from me).

Deal falls through, now he wants 5-6x the original amount… he messages me and comes clean and tells me (after I showed him 50k in cash) that he doesn’t even have the item in his possession? He knows a “guy” who has it. And now that he knows I’m liquid and saw how connected I am across the country and well networked, he wants me to “partner” with him? So I can finance his flipping ventures.

l m a o

Imagine I had bought the listing on eBay. Paid, payment cleared. But this guy isn’t used to receiving such large sums on PayPal right? Maybe they hold the funds. Maybe they take longer to deposit. Then he needs to go to his bank and pull out the 50k so he can go and actually physically pay the real owner of the item? Canada isn’t the States you can’t just walk in and ask for 50k. You need to go to 10 different banks and get 5k if you’re lucky. Or order the cash and wait around a week.

So after I pay, I’m likely only ever getting the item shipped out 10-14 days after? Now imagine the same guy buying (me) was doing the same thing. Looking to flip the item. Locked in the buyer, now I need to buy time for 2 weeks to keep him on ice?

Just imagining how financially destructive this all sounds for individuals turns my stomach upside down.

Another example, someone asked me to find him a buyer for a sealed WOTC box a few weeks back, I wasn’t interested at the time (big mistake on my part that’s for sure lol with the “new” price of that box) and I hooked him up with another buyer. Didn’t even ask for a finder’s fee nothing. My buyer friend tells me they agreed to some cash and some PayPal. The guy who reached out to me to help me sell the box, comes clean to me and says he just started “flipping” Pokémon, and he’s short the cash difference to pay the *actual* owner of the box… I go but you got paid right? He’s like yeah, but I ended up getting too much of it on PayPal and because my PayPal account is new they froze the funds for an extra period of time and now I’m in too deep I can’t pony up the rest of the cash to pay off the seller, can you lend me the cash to cover the bill?

I was dumbfounded. I told him to go borrow off the streets and pay the street rate so he could learn the hard way about fu$!ing with people’s finances and livelihoods. You made your bed kid, sleep in it!!

Haha sorry for the rant, I’m just continuously mind blown at the crap I’m seeing and I’m living right now. The system is entirely BROKENNNNN!

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Good ted talk. Would come again.

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The worst is when they do it through ebay. Even if you block them they can still message you and then you get the “why isn’t it letting me buy it” messages also.

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That sounds like a colossal pain in the ass, and I’m sorry you had to deal with it. I get irritated when shit like that happens to me even with pretty low-value transactions, so I can’t imagine the frustration with that amount of money potentially changing hands.

While I’m grateful for the spotlight on the hobby because it’s, like, quadrupled my (still negligible) net worth since the beginning of quarantine, it’s brought along a massive uptick in scummy behavior and all-around bad stuff. I honestly enjoyed collecting a lot more when it was pretty much limited to PokéGym trades and occasional eBay buys. Of course, it’s cool to see celebrities legitimizing Pokémon collecting as a hobby and investment, but there’s a massive influx of people who couldn’t give less of a fuck about the sentimental and cultural significance of the cards and are just here to make a quick buck.

I realize this phenomenon has already been discussed at length here on other threads, and is sort of veering off my original topic. But the people who have been here for a while and have a genuine interest in the hobby are easily distinguishable from the influx of “entrepreneurs” looking for a piece of the pie. Ironically, the latter group, only in it for the business angle, tend to expose themselves through a total lack of professionalism and respect.

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Yup exactly… but don’t get it twisted the same people you speak of are indirectly contributing presently to a much longer term problem that will surface. Imagine if you used to have at all times 1000 SKUs/items listed on eBay, and you averaged 250$ the order and sold about 10% of your inventory (100 items). You’re used to averaging about 25,000$/mo. Now all of a sudden, by listings things you either didn’t seem as “attractive” in the past / just some higher end stuff, these same sellers are able to 4x their average monthly sales let’s say to 100k by selling 1/4 less (so 25 items averaging them 4K).

What are they beginning to do? Remove existing listings of the “cheaper” / “more modern” / “less desirable” stuff, OR 3-5x the price of them, essentially pricing out people from the get go for something that should remain accessible and fun for all levels of collectors and hobbyists.

The proof is often in the Buy section of the board. There are many people looking to add what seemingly is cards or slabs worth a few hundred bucks, that are being hoarded or being held by certain individuals who happen to even notice the buy thread, and who are opting not to offer any up because at this point it seems too much like “small potatoes” for them.

It’s sad because if forcing prices up across the board (which entirely makes sense to some degree), outpaces the total cost basis for a collector to acquire the card or slab themselves, it will have a long term negative effect on people’s holdings and the collector market in general. If we stop feeding and satisfying the demand for seemingly available and not scarce product that aren’t too hard to grade either, we will end up with a massive increase of supply.

Example —> if a pack fresh/nm-m/10 candidate card sells for 5-25$ and nothing in the pop report suggest the card is a seemingly difficult for one to grade or comes from a series of poor print runs, the card in a 10 used to average about 150$. Now that same card is getting pulled off the market (creating a false sense of supply issues) and simultaneously the few people deciding to keep their listings on the market, noticing that supply is “dwindling” (although nothing other than the fact there are few listed on eBay suggests this), decide to 5-10x the *real* going market price. Now that 10 is being listed at the cheapest available price of 1000$+.

The problem is, the price of the raw cards for anything but base, aren’t adjusting anywhere as quickly as new sold for X grades prices keep breaking. And they won’t either. So when the huge (unwarranted — unwarranted because there isn’t an issue with supply of either pack fresh/10 quality raw OR sealed product to chase said card NOR any issues in grading) gap becomes too big that it outpaces the cost basis of “synthetically” manufacturing the desired graded slab, then demand dries up entirely at those crazy prices + the market gets flooded with more supply (because the guy who does NOT care about grading and breaking and chasing and who is just a loyal collector and customer who buys 9s and 10s as is as he pleases and never cared about the margin or mark up the seller was making to have gone through the hassles… ends up with 10x the amount of graded slabs of that one particular card he only wanted 1 of and paid the same to manufacture 10 of them.

What took 10 years to slowly build up and provide both market efficiency and stability as well as sound investor/collector rational and logic, started becoming volatile 6-7 months ago and hitting the market at different points, but at a much, much, much slower pace of what we’ve witnessed in the last 6 weeks. The market has entirely short circuited, and when the dust settles, it will be a whole new landscape and territory for EVERYONE, both old and new to be able to navigate in.

Good luck with your future sales! Haha
So while it’s all fine and dandy and gravy for everyone selling their base bulk or bulk graded commons for record breaking and extraordinary amounts, the fact they are becoming less inclined to sell stuff for cheap and creating this fake sense of supply issue, is going to bite everyone in the ass long term, mark my words. The greed monster has taken over everyone everywhere.

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You can block messages from blocked buyers. There’s a checkbox somewhere.

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Me and my ebay blocked bidder list are best of friends.