#reseller

[utena-fanmerch]

Revolutionary Girl Utena and Anthy fantasy pin on Mercari

Discontinued by Moonrabbitpins

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[shesafiend]

New items up on Poshmark!

[pizzawithwine]

Your grandma’s sweater

[chromeconnor88282]

Shop now! Authentic chrome Heart reseller

[dreamsaberflipper]

A Handmade Brass Chrome Motorcycle statue. I just thought to put the action figure there for added effects.

ebay.com/usr/dreamsaber

[recycledmillennial]

These thrift teddy bears are built different.

[jerryapp]

Traditional saree

[puppyfinds]

1993 Spot Eric Hill Plush

[bobsliquorstore]

New Age of Sneaker Heads

In a land before the time of the hypebeast era, you were able to stop by your local sneaker shop to purchase the new release of Michael Jordan’s signature shoe the “Air Jordan” without hardly having issues. Sneaker collecting was an affordable thing to do, waking up the day of a shoe release knowing you will definitely get a pair. The internet age changed the sneaker culture forever.

Today's sneaker collecting has changed for the worst, for the consumer at least. You are lucky if you are able to buy sneakers at retail before the resellers get their hands on it. With a “lottery system” you have to win in order to buy the sneakers, what kind of lottery is that?! Resellers usually buy up the shoes in store and online for retail and resell it above the retail price. Forget about going online to purchase the sneakers, resellers create computer bots that buy up the shoes moments after the release!

(DJ Khaled with his ridiculous sneaker collection.)

The global sneaker resale market is estimated to be worth around $6 billion by the end of 2025. It is a good time to be in the resell business. A lot of fortunes have been created on reselling sneakers. Some brands and stores limit the amount of the same shoe you can buy, to prevent resellers easily buying up a whole release. It's not as easy for the reseller to buy a whole release, but they still find ways to get the supply they need.

Bots have been an ongoing problem with online releases with high demand. Bots are coded to immediately buy merchandise online, down to seconds of a release. The government has been trying to regulate the bots problem by sending warning letters to people using the bots to purchase things for resale; with no drastic changes to the bot problem.

Sneaker companies build up hype by creating a scarcity of supply. The low supply of the shoes makes the shoes very valuable to the reseller market. The resellers build the hype around brands by the price tag they put on it. Today there are platforms like GOAT, StockX SNKRS, and the old faithful eBay, where you can find sneakers on the resell market. These platforms attract hundreds of millions of visitors a year to pay reseller prices. StockX single handedly facilitated 37 million transactions in a year.

(The godfathers of the sneaker culture, Run DMC.)

Early pioneers like Run DMC and Michael Jordan paved the way for the hype of the sneaker culture. Air Jordan sneakers and hip hop are biggest contributors to the rise of sneaker collecting.  Nike executed marketing genius by implying to consumers that the Air Jordan shoes will help you soar in the air like Michael Jordan. Young minority kids from the inner city would buy these shoes to emulate their favorite athletes and rappers. Over time, the sneaker culture crossed over into pop culture; edging out minorities who created the sneaker culture.

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(The first Air Jordan commercial that appeared on televisions across America.)

As the sneaker industry attracted a broader audience, minorities have been pushed out due to the higher price tag that retailers and resellers put on it. What used to be an affordable hobby for black and brown kids became a hobby exclusively for consumers with deep pockets. The sneaker culture has been gentrified, abandoning the black kids that created the sneaker market. With the soaring price tags of shoes, the more dangerous it is to own a pair.

(An early article about the dangers of owning Air Jordans that Sports Illustrated released on May 14th, 1990.)

The hype around the popular sneakers have made it dangerous to own a pair. In the 90's, America had it's first glimpse of how dangerous it can be. Articles started to spread about robberies and murders over the highly coveted Air Jordan sneakers in Chicago. With the high ticket price on the hypebeast sneakers, they are valued like jewelry. Many innocent civilians lost their lives over a pair of sneakers as the years go by. In 2015, it was estimated that 1,200 people die in sneaker related incidents every year!

Even though the sneaker industry has its dark side, there’s also a bright side to it. With the crossover into pop culture, the sneaker culture has been a way that people from different cultural backgrounds to connect through shoes. People meet at conventions, camp outs, boutiques, forums, social media; all in the love of sneakers. Some collectors meet their best of friends at one of these meet ups to buy, sell, or trade sneakers. The sneaker culture has brought people together like collecting baseball cards.

(A glimpse of what a Sneaker Convention looks like in Toronto, Canada.)

Times have changed but the essentials to sneaker collecting are still there. Going to great extents to find places that sell the rare sneakers is what the sneaker culture is all about, even going to resellers is part of the game. Sneaker collecting has been embedded into popular culture, creating a bigger market for sneakers. A broader audience brings the good and bad with it. Though sneaker collecting changed a lot, sneaker collecting is not going anywhere any time soon.

[utena-fanmerch]

Revolutionary Girl Utena Manga Variant Enamel Pin on Mercari

Discontinued pin by Dreenicorn / Adreena Coleman

[shesafiend]

Oops. Another Mall Goth Drop. Also, I take offers and am super good with bundle discounts etc. I want these items enjoyed but others as much as I enjoyed them.

[blazehedgehog]

Juat curious if you have any thoughts on the Taylor Swift ticketmaster thing from months back and how it went down and also people calling out tickermaster's monopoly?

Would you believe I've never gone to a concert before? Never had the money, never had the access. I am very in the dark as to what Ticketmaster did, outside of the fact I've heard friends and others on the internet complain about Ticketmaster for years and how they only seem to be feeding the scalping market more than anything else. I can see their Consumer Affairs profile has a lot of unhappy people.

Given that the Ticketmaster app advertises "buy and sell your tickets" I'm assuming they went in the same direction as every other major online retailer and opened themselves up to letting users resell their items online? Leading to the proliferation of people buying up huge stocks of items and then flipping them for a higher price.

I hate that stuff. If you were to ask me, that's a top ten reason for the inflation we're currently experiencing. Covid got people to realize they could buy up stuff like hand sanitizer and toilet paper and resell it online, and now suddenly they do that with all kinds of stuff. I run into it all the time when grocery shopping, because I do a lot of my grocery shopping online.

Jiffy brownie mix was normally $0.98, but I go looking for it now and some reseller wants me to pay him over $6 for it.

You think Walmart or whoever cares? Of course not. They take the scalper's money (for the initial sale) and then get a cut of what the scalper sells it for (the resell). A successful scalper is a double dip for the retailer. They have a financial incentive to not only allow scalping, but maybe to even encourage it.

And what do you think happens when the manufacturer sees people paying $7 for ketchup? Well, golly, that's now lost revenue, isn't it? Supply and demand, mother effer. "If people are going to pay Johnny Assclown $7 for ketchup, they should be paying us $7 for ketchup."

Out of everyone in this equation, the resellers care the least. Everybody suffers except for those filling their pockets.

I dunno what happened with Taylor Swift but I'm willing to bet it's the same garbage that's making everyone's lives miserable in the rest of the world.

Taylor Swift is cute tho

[digitalmovietiger]

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[supermomshiesstuff]

[rootfish13]

Here are my thoughts on the Squishmallows fad. I was around during Beanie Baby mania and used to be a toy reseller on eBay and have seen toy collectibles come and go, particularly these speculation bubbles that always burst.

Collector's are emotionally invested in their Squishmallows. A baby's first toy is usually a plush animal they hold tight for comfort and security. It's a mother substitute, a transitional object that mimics her qualities, it is soft, can be cuddled & stroked, on a symbolic level it links to maternal care. Most people's childhood plushies holds tremendous sentimental value. When collrctors cuddle their Squishmallows it taps into very primal early feelings of comfort & safety. Squishmallows popularity soared during the pandemic because it helps consumers cope with the pandemic's stress & anxiety.

Another appeal is the rainbow capitalism of the brand, they've released Squishmallows as being nonbinary & having they/them pronouns, they've made ones with LGBT rainbows plastered all over, making collectors identify with their product even more. Kellytoy is owned by a much bigger toy company, Jazwares. They can claim about really caring about their customers & inclusivity all they want but at the end of the day it's all about brand appeal and maximizing profits. I'm sure they really care about the Chinese factory workers who make these plushies and their working conditions aren't horrific at all.

The other big appeal is their collectibility & value in the secondary market. With over 800 different characters to collect while urging you to "complete the squad" plastered all over their site it taps into the completionist mania of the collector. They also have "select series" small limited runs of characters only available to purchase on their site. This creates rare Squishmallows and an artificial scarcity, increasing their desirability & value. They know what they are doing, it's no longer just a plush toy but a valued collectible totally feeding into the secondary market & resellers.

This attracts people who see Squishmallows as a way to make money. So you get scalpers & shelf clearers who buy up an entire store's supply and jack up the price for resale. You get people using bot programs on websites so they have an unfair advantage of buying the rare Squishmallows first, clearing out the supply in record time and the item you just had in your cart is no longer available when you enter your payment information. This is on top of competing with the normal collectors on hunts for their personal collections. Not to mention the original intended target audience, children, getting a slimmer chance of buying the ones they want with their family on a normal shopping outing because some guy needs to add to his hoard of hundreds of Squishmallows or someone trying to make a quick buck.

Squishmallows, and to a larger extent all collectibles, are not investments they are speculations. Their value will not increase forever. Rare ones can be re-released by the company making them common and tanking their value. And like all speculative fads the bubble will eventually pop leaving people with worthless collections. Beanie Babies are the perfect example of this. Do not put any more money into them than you can afford to lose. A great book to read on this is "The Great Beanie Baby Bubble". I was around during Beanie Baby mania and nothing I've seen since has come close to that fad, EVERYONE was buying them thinking they would strike it rich.

[dreamsaberflipper]

A 2015 Average Joe's Dodgeball Halloween Costume. This movie was extremely funny.

ebay.com/usr/dreamsaber