Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999
From: Jim Geary
To: cgp
Subject: Re: Franklin Mint Scrabble Game
I check ebay:scrabble once a week, and there's ALWAYS a Franklin Mint set for sale. The prices are always high, consider they wholesale for about $125.
On Wed, 18 Aug 1999, Kathy Gray wrote:
Oh, sorry, Jim...I don't look at e-bay that often, just remembered someone asking about it.
I wasn't being critical, just informative and concise. No sorry necessary. Actually, I prefer if Scrabblers stayed away from ebay, thereby keeping prices down for me. :)
BTW, where can you get one wholesale for $125?
I knew I shouldn't have mentioned the thing about the $125. It was a friend of a friend who bought them wholesale. If I ever get bored, I'll go into business selling them.
Ebay purports to be a revolution for buyers, but it is actually a revolution for retailors. It gets people to buy things at the maximum point on the demand curve rather than the minimum(P*=MC) on the supply curve. It's an incredible rip off for the consumer. The only things I buy there are "things available nowhere else," such as rare music (although I did buy a new computer thru ebay direct from a manufacturer last year and got a state of the art system for $500 less than retail.[1]) But if you're an average joe buying something like a FMS set, you're probably paying too much; you just don't realize it, because you're still within the bounds of your demand curve -- it's just that you're higher than you would be under the standard economic model, where suppliers are forced to come up with a price closer to equilibrium.[2]
JG
[1] The difference here is that there is massive info available on computers. People "know" what they should expect to pay, so the advantage was in eliminating the middleman. I'd imagine most people would be quite surprised if they knew the true cost of Franklin Mint Sets. This phenomenon is not so for computers. Still this probably isn't recommended unless one is moderately savvy enough to install OS's or replace motherboards oneself.
[2] This can be engineered in reverse by having collectives or consumers play retailors against each other, but this is much more difficult[3] to organize and there is no massive upside potential on which to capitalize in an IPO ala Ebay, so it probably won't happen soon, not that I haven't been thinking about it..
[3] Well, I've done it on a number of occasions. A recent one was at a rock concert where it appeared a number of scalpers were going to take a bath. I assembled them and announced, "I am going to spend exactly $x; who is going to give me the best ticket?" They all made their best offer(see, eBay in reverse), and I ended up sitting in row 2 for TheWho. (100% true.)
Last Modified 9/24/00
Back to Scrabble Correspondence Page
Back to Scrabble Main Page
Back to Jim's Main Page