muaddib5 wrote in The Noble Knight Dragon #1 Conundrum:Anyone else think Noble Knight's prices are artificially inflating values in the collector's market?
Thunderdave wrote in The Noble Knight Dragon #1 Conundrum:Could just be posted as a legit rare that attracts attention to the site (well, it just did anyway).
benjoshua wrote in A new online OOP RPG store:One more thing to consider. I have often shook my head at the ridiculous prices offered by Noble Knight, and some other sellers, especially on most of their super-rare items. However, I now wonder whether their approach is not only not insane, but may, if fact, be purposeful and helpful overall to their bottom line. Here's what might be going on.I wonder if the price their highly rare items at ridiculous prices serve as bait or window dressing. Many buyers hear about Orange B3's, woodgrain box sets, or other rarities and search for sellers on the internet with those items. And since sellers like Noble Knight have these kinds of items in stock, potential buyers visit their web-site. It can become a win-win situation. If the buyer actually buys the item, the seller made a killer profit. If the buyer doesn't buy the item, I suspect many buyers look for something else they can afford and when common items appear at more reasonable prices, then the contrast could lead them to buy one or more cheaper/common selections. I realize that approach would probably not work well with this more discriminating crowd, but for many buyers, it could serve as an effective business model. And it's not the kind of thing they'd ever confess. They just laugh at all the criticism as the money rolls in.
muaddib5 wrote:Anyone else think Noble Knight's prices are artificially inflating values in the collector's market?
ExTSR wrote in The Noble Knight Dragon #1 Conundrum:muaddib5 wrote:Anyone else think Noble Knight's prices are artificially inflating values in the collector's market?Items are offered for sale at retail (including brick 'n' mortar, payroll, and web overhead)...Items are purchased and delivered entirely satisfactorily...Free Market commerce, seems to me.Thus, I take issue with the word "artificially".Yes, high prices from certain comprehensive sources (NK, T&T, some very few others) are affecting the collectibles market.Praps by broadening the number of dilettante collectors? (folks with one or two RealCool/tm items frex)F
TheHistorian wrote in The Noble Knight Dragon #1 Conundrum:That price is completely in line with NKG's normal pricing of about 2-4x what one can find things for elsewhere. Why this continues to be news is beyond me. They have costs which need to be covered, and private sellers don't, so they charge more. A used car would cost more from a dealer than a private seller. This is normal.
Agent Cooper wrote in The Noble Knight Dragon #1 Conundrum:First I think we have to ask the question, is it even possible to artificially inflate these values?I'd say no, not on your own. You'd need to collude with a majority of other sellers of the same item and convince them to list at the same inflated price in order to accomplish this. And even then I think you could only really do this on an item that is so rare and ardently sought after that collectors would be willing to pay that fixed high price no matter what.In the cut throat free market private collecting world where prices are driven by what buyers are willing to pay, I believe this would be almost impossible, especially in the age of Ebay.
muaddib5 wrote in The Noble Knight Dragon #1 Conundrum:The seller states he's been collecting for years and has multiple copies of Dragon #1 and thinks his is fairly priced due to the condition and scarcity. I've been watching the listing and no one has bit at the $475.00 BIN.
muaddib5 wrote in The Noble Knight Dragon #1 Conundrum:TheHistorian wrote in The Noble Knight Dragon #1 Conundrum:That price is completely in line with NKG's normal pricing of about 2-4x what one can find things for elsewhere. Why this continues to be news is beyond me. They have costs which need to be covered, and private sellers don't, so they charge more. A used car would cost more from a dealer than a private seller. This is normal.Not so much "continuing to be news" as pointing out that over pricing appears to be having an effect on overall valuations. Thanks for your input!muaddib5
Grug Greyskin wrote in The Noble Knight Dragon #1 Conundrum:muaddib5 wrote in The Noble Knight Dragon #1 Conundrum:Not so much "continuing to be news" as pointing out that over pricing appears to be having an effect on overall valuations. Thanks for your input!muaddib5Pricing is valuation - selling price, that is. NK is expensive, but I doubt they are listing at their price level just to mock us - that 2-4x level clearly works for them, meaning they must be selling an acceptable volume of products at that high end to keep them in business. For the $475 BIN in question, well, if no one bites, he will have to reevaluate and drop his price. If it sells at $475, then that is a data point towards a "true" value. Perhaps that is too much for a more educated or patient buyer, but in the end the market will set the value.
muaddib5 wrote in The Noble Knight Dragon #1 Conundrum:Not so much "continuing to be news" as pointing out that over pricing appears to be having an effect on overall valuations. Thanks for your input!muaddib5
TheHistorian wrote in The Noble Knight Dragon #1 Conundrum:My observation was that they generally seem to fall in the 2-4x range for MOST things I've bothered to look at. Not new items, of course. So this seemed to be in that rough range and was thus unremarkable to me.If the original suggestion was that NKG (or anyone else's) high prices draw the average price up... I suppose it's possible as an unintended side effect, but there are plenty of people charging "too much" on ebay, amazon, etc. and that stuff often just sits. NKG are a (the?) major dealer, but even still, they rarely have anything THAT rare, at least by the standards of the Acaeum, so there are other options to buy things, and thus the influence of their pricing, intended or not, would seem to be limited.Also, as far as condition... there are certainly some folks here who care, but the vast majority of RPG buyers (even collectors) don't care that much. Nowhere near the detail that comics collectors (which is what Mike(?) based the original scale on) will go into describing the minutiae of defects. In my experience, the grades could really be Shrink / Mint / Average / Non-collectable and that would be sufficient for most transactions. The point being, there is a huge range before any premium for condition gets added on. And the Acaeum valuations, while a great starting point, just can't keep up with actual sales for some things. Even if they could, it only takes a couple of determined buyers to cause it to be thrown out the window for any particular auction.
Deadlord wrote in The Noble Knight Dragon #1 Conundrum:Ah, my fine desert rodent, you have struck the metal fastening pin upon the cranium. At the end of the day, everyone buys what they want for the reasons they want. His copy will likely sit there for the conceivable future. However, by posting it at that price, he draws the uninformed in by the "wow look at that" factor, which likely causes many of them to look at his other, DECENTLY priced items. IMO he is a VERY good businessman.In the very near future I will be down to a stack of books the height of my 4 year old; my collecting days are done. I have owned some amazing stuff, some literally unique, and I have passed them on to others at what I hope were fair prices. I was never very concerned about the money and/or condition aspect. Some collectors are, and if they are willing to pay what we consider inflated prices, that is their right. In the VERY old days, we did a lot of trading, and value wasn't as much of a factor, but along came eBay and all of that changed. NK knows exactly what he is doing; if he didn't, he'd have been gone long ago.
muaddib5 wrote in The Noble Knight Dragon #1 Conundrum:Deadlord wrote in The Noble Knight Dragon #1 Conundrum:Ah, my fine desert rodent, you have struck the metal fastening pin upon the cranium. At the end of the day, everyone buys what they want for the reasons they want. His copy will likely sit there for the conceivable future. However, by posting it at that price, he draws the uninformed in by the "wow look at that" factor, which likely causes many of them to look at his other, DECENTLY priced items. IMO he is a VERY good businessman.In the very near future I will be down to a stack of books the height of my 4 year old; my collecting days are done. I have owned some amazing stuff, some literally unique, and I have passed them on to others at what I hope were fair prices. I was never very concerned about the money and/or condition aspect. Some collectors are, and if they are willing to pay what we consider inflated prices, that is their right. In the VERY old days, we did a lot of trading, and value wasn't as much of a factor, but along came eBay and all of that changed. NK knows exactly what he is doing; if he didn't, he'd have been gone long ago.I'm not sure "VERY good businessman" is the first term that comes to mind when most think of NK :roll: Whatever floats your boat I guess, like the BIN listing for Dragon #2 at $395 that was just posted. Out of 96,887 listings, the first 10 pages are items at or above $195.00. To me, this sounds more like the hedge fund manager who raised the $13.50 per pill medication to $750.00 per pill overnight than a "shrewd" business stragety. But that's just me.Thanks,muaddib5
