>Drac!
>You sound like you don't think anyone should 
>make money on anything. :-)

I didn't say that. ^_^ (*laughter*) I have no 
problems with people who only want one cel out of 
an auction lot and who sell off the others even 
if they can sell off the others well enough to 
pay for the whole lot - golden for them! Someone 
who bought a cel, kept it for months/years - I 
have no problem if they sell it at "market 
price". Someone who allows another collector to 
buy a NFS cel from their collection, but the 
other person offered them too nice a profit - I'm 
all for it! 

For dealers, I have no problem with the dealer 
who spends money to go to Japan to buy cels for 
resale. . . I also have no problem with the 
dealer who takes the *TIME* necessary to nurture 
relationships with Japanese contacts to aquire 
their cels for resale - even if they never set 
foot on a plane.

But the people who go out, **buy up something 
that any collector could have bought on their 
own** (that's realy the key difference to me 
between a dealer and a profit monger or useless 
middleman) on their own, walk out into your 
parking lot (to take your example) and sell it 
for 25 times more. . . . Those people are the 
lowest of the low. They might as well stand next 
to your cash register and charge people $144 for 
the privilage of being able to buy the thing for 
$6. They're the people who damage hobbies all for 
the love of nothing more than money. I think this 
of people who snap up desirable cels from online 
sites and sell them on Ebay. . . Or mark them up 
for sale on their own site.

And as for just an example. . . You said you 
would have made a lot more money off the Beanies 
if you didn't have a contract to sell them at 
retail price. . . Would that have stopped the 
profit mongers? I doubt it. They would still buy 
up your stock and sell it to the poor schmuck who 
wasn't there first. So maybe then you'll raise 
your prices more. . . You'll still have Mr. 
Profit-Monger sitting at his stand in your 
parking lot. Somebody has to decide to be the 
stopping point. . . Or if not that, then to at 
*least* not be the starting point.

I'm right there for enough updates with nice 
things in them that I could probably make a 
killing on Ebay too. And it's something that *IS* 
tempting from time to time. So often I watch the 
bid rise on a really nice OVA Miyu cel up for 
auction or watch another site update with a whole 
bunch of things I want right after I've put a lot 
of groceries on my credit card. I don't have 
endless funds for cels. However, in the end, my 
ethics always win out over the money. . .

In a strange way. . . . Whenever I'm really, 
REALLY temped to buy and "Ebay" a cel (can "Ebay" 
be used as a verb? ^_^) of a popular character 
I've just seen in an update, but I leave it 
there. . . It seems someone here on the Forum got 
it and they're so happy to have gotten it, and 
they can't believe they got it for so little, 
they thought they would never have a cel of this 
character. . . Suddenly it doesn't feel so lousy 
to lose the auction or watch the other cels I 
want go on hold. ^_~

Once again. . . It's the Golden Rule. Everyone 
complains that things are cut-throat but a good 
way to reduce the cut-throatedness of things is 
to stop being cut-throat ourselves. ^_^

Many Sharp Smiles,
--Drac (ohmigawd! I'm feeling all mushy now! O_O)

(^_~)