Post your suggestions for a "forum guidelines" post to be stickied at the top.

[Rodey]

WE love FlyingDonut!

[Aces]

Far more irritating than dealers posting their wares is stupidity like this:

 

http://boards.collectors-society.com/sho...;gonew=1#UNREAD

 

"PM me for details"??? WTF is that?

 

This guy's a knob, PM me for details.

 

"PM me for details" probably means "My asking price is sky high and I don't want to post it in public for fear of being sued after people have heart attacks."

[divad]

We'd have to toy with it, but it might look something like this.

 

You're a dealer if you:

 

1. Have a web site with an ecommerce component, or

 

2. Have a brick and mortar establishment, or

 

3. Have more than yourself providing labor to buy and sell your comics, or

 

4. Have a tax ID associated with your comics business, or (this one is mostly a self-elimination guideline)

 

5. Are an ebay BLANK (do they have a seller classification that puts you in the dealer category?)

 

 

This could be tweaked, but you get the idea. For the most part, we'd expect dealers to self-eliminate. Those that don't would be informed through community response, and moderation would step in where ever a dispute formed.

 

*spoon*. That means I can't post in here anymore, because I (1) have a tax ID because I don't want to *spoon* with the IRS, and (2) I am an eBay powerseller because I sell books online.

 

You're telling me that when I put books up in the forum and sell them to forum members, I'm somehow in the wrong because after they don't sell here I list them on eBay?

 

Sure you can On the "new and improved" dealer "sweet direct sales to forum members" marketplace

[nik]

So if you are an Ebay Powerseller you can or cannot list books in the Forum Only Marketplace?

 

 

I am so confused

[Architecht]

So if you are an Ebay Powerseller you can or cannot list books in the Forum Only Marketplace?

 

 

I am so confused

 

At the moment, it's irrelevant. It's being discussed. Perhaps the ebay powerseller designation is too strong a measurement of dealers?

 

Or perhaps the ultimate conclusion is that dealer or not doesn't matter. All that matters is cut price buying and selling. We'll see.

[BrianR]

So if you are an Ebay Powerseller you can or cannot list books in the Forum Only Marketplace?

 

 

I am so confused

 

At the moment, it's irrelevant. It's being discussed. Perhaps the ebay powerseller designation is too strong a measurement of dealers?

 

Or perhaps the ultimate conclusion is that dealer or not doesn't matter. All that matters is cut price buying and selling. We'll see.

 

I don't know if we're going to stop all dealers from posting here then It should be all dealers including those on ebay / ebay stores. I think if you want to be truly fair you can't pick and chose. For the record I like most of the people this will exclude from the current marketplace. I have dealt with several. I personally think we should allow some forum members that truly participate and give something to the community to sell exclusive offer here.

[143ksk]

2. Allow everyone, but limit it to board-exclusive offers, and the hassle of make board-only offers will keep the spammers at bay.

 

3. Related suggestion: require dollar values on all sales offerings. This may allow the community to self-police enough to keep spammers at bay better. This may be a good idea regardless of whether we take #1 or #2, but there's some speculation that this requirement may make it feasible to allow dealers.

 

Of the options presented, I like these.

 

I concur.

 

[BrianR]

2. Allow everyone, but limit it to board-exclusive offers, and the hassle of make board-only offers will keep the spammers at bay.

 

3. Related suggestion: require dollar values on all sales offerings. This may allow the community to self-police enough to keep spammers at bay better. This may be a good idea regardless of whether we take #1 or #2, but there's some speculation that this requirement may make it feasible to allow dealers.

 

Of the options presented, I like these.

 

I concur.

 

 

thumbs up for this as well for me

[divad]

There goes the neighborhood!

[qualitycomix]

There goes the neighborhood!

 

I signed up on the boards before you. So does that mean you should leave? I'd hate to see the neighborhood go downhill too much more.

[Architecht]

I'm really interested in the fact that some of the dealer sales that have been creeping into this board have not met with many objections. On the contrary some of it has been treated as a boon to the buyers here.

 

I've been mulling over the restrictions proposed. If I were a sharp dealer looking to grow volume and a loyal customer base, I think I'd do what qualitycomix is doing, running aggressive sales of harder to move books on these boards. My hope would be that I'd generate more sales on other higher priced items to customers who are now comfortable dealing with me and thus willing to pay a mild premium for that comfort.

 

The draw of doing that here is that you know you're making an offer to a fairly serious and committed group of collectors. In other words, you're not discounting things hoping for volume and having them bought by one-time buyers you'll never see again. Basically, it's a loss leader.

 

From that perspective, taking out the crystal ball I think if we change the rules we'll see more of that kind of activity here - more dealers willing to offer loss leaders to move inventory and recruit customers. My guess is that the reaction of the boards to this in general will be favorable.

 

HOWEVER. Many people don't have the kind of confidence in their business practices to take those steps because they're not convinced they'll end up with a loyal customer. Those types of dealers will be more than likely to hit this board and conform to the rule of a forum-only offer (for a day) and an up front buy it now price (at a noticeable premium). They won't be doing it necessarily to make that win-win loss leader sale. They'll be doing it to advertise the book. If somebody buys it at the inflated price - GREAT. If they don't... well... maybe somebody will contact them anyway after it's sat for a while and will make a lowball offer that they're willing to accept. They're fishing for business, basically.

 

The thing is, though... this same kind of practice is going to happen with collectors too. The principal question here is this:

 

If dealers are allowed, will they make many more "fishing" posts than collectors. You could argue that because of the volume of books that "dealers" have and because of the "pay the rent" situation they're in they will make more posts, and be more likely to try to maximize profits through both long term (loss leader) and short term (fishing) techniques.

 

If that happens, is the flavor of this board diluted from a community feel to just another place to hawk books? Or will the volume of fishing posts be irrelevant and the benefit of the loss-leader dealers sales be worth it?

 

If dealers continue to be disallowed, will there be a higher percentage of "community feel transactions" to "fishing posts", or is that a fallacy?

[drbanner]

The thing is, though... this same kind of practice is going to happen with collectors too. The principal question here is this:

 

If dealers are allowed, will they make many more "fishing" posts than collectors. You could argue that because of the volume of books that "dealers" have and because of the "pay the rent" situation they're in they will make more posts, and be more likely to try to maximize profits through both long term (loss leader) and short term (fishing) techniques.

 

If that happens, is the flavor of this board diluted from a community feel to just another place to hawk books? Or will the volume of fishing posts be irrelevant and the benefit of the loss-leader dealers sales be worth it?

 

If dealers continue to be disallowed, will there be a higher percentage of "community feel transactions" to "fishing posts", or is that a fallacy?

 

A few comments:

 

1) There are very few "dealer" posts in the "dealer" forum that would be appropriate in the "forum only" forum under the proposed restrictions - 1) books must be listed with prices (no pointers to websites), and 2) books must not be offered anywhere else. In fact, given the proposed restriction #2 (which I personally disagree with), I don't know that there are currently ANY posts that would qualify. To me, this indicates there will not be a flood of fishing posts.

 

2) Conversely, there are many posts by "dealers" in the "forum only" forum that are very well-received by the community that may be disallowed under the proposed tightening of the rules.

 

3) The quality of the offerings from the "dealers" that do post, with regards to selection, customer service, and overall reliability (grading, packaging, chance of getting scammed) is at least on par with, if not superior, to offerings from "forum members". Prices might be higher, but you get what you pay for. Also, there have been plenty of problems with "forum member" transactions that have already diluted the "community feel" of the board, not to mention the sheer growth in the number of forum members, meaning there are lots more transactions these days between "strangers".

 

4) Most of the "dealers" that do list books here are also "forum members" anyway, and I suspect the likelihood of an influx of listings from Metropolis, Mile High Comics, Neatstuff, etc.,. is minimal.

 

In a nutshell, IMHO allowing "dealers" to post under the proposed guidelines will most likely result in minimal change from what is happening now, and any change will be for the better. OTOH, tightening the restrictions to disallow "dealers" like Brent from posting "here" would reduce the quality and quantity of offerings on the "forum only" board.

 

There's my "$0.02"!!

[qualitycomix]

Good points Arch.

 

My sense is that there are yahoo dealers just as there are yahoo collectors.

 

My understanding of what the intent should be of this forum is avoid spamming and cut to the cream. If the books being offered by dealers, collectors or part-time dealers are truly exclusive offerings, then even if some of these collectors or dealers are asking premiums on their books, at least the forum members are getting so-called "first shot" at these books as drbanner has alluded to.

 

An example is as follows. FlyingDonut acquires a sweet late silver early bronze high grade collection. Most are in the $50 - $200 price range and aren't worth slabbing. If he puts them on ebay, he probably won't achieve the return on his investment that he's looking for because of ebay fees etc. If he can offer them on the Forum Only selling board and at nice prices hopefully then it's a win-win for both Donut and forumites. If he has to post the books in the Ebay/Dealer forum, he may decide instead to wait to bring the books to market at a convention, on his own site, or on another consignment site where he can get closer to retail. In that case, forum members don't get the benefit of seeing and buying these books at least not on the forum. I think that's doing them a disservice.

 

There's something to be said for providing a place for collectors to acquire books they need for their collections at nice prices. It's even better when the dealer posting the books also provides great customer service thereby enhancing the CGC forum experience. It also helps the forums become an active marketplace for books as a viable alternative to ebay and other consignment sites as well.

 

The riffraff - ie the overgraders, overpricers, fishers, and poor customer service oriented sellers will quickly be culled from forum selling thru forumite response. This community is far more active and proactive than ebay ever could hope to be and thus most of the problems seen there will generally be avoided here.

 

The other point is to give it a 3 or 6 month trial period. If it turns out that the junk posts are overwhelming the forumites trying to sell their books, then roll it back. It's not like new rules are set in stone. Arch seems pretty flexible to revisit this issue later on down the road.

[Foolkiller]

Trial period seems like a good idea no matter what solution is reached.

[Sal]

The riffraff - ie the overgraders, overpricers, fishers, and poor customer service oriented sellers will quickly be culled from forum selling thru forumite response. This community is far more active and proactive than ebay ever could hope to be and thus most of the problems seen there will generally be avoided here.

 

if only this were true. there's a real dearth of negative feedback on these forums, as i believe most buyers would prefer to keep less than 100% ideal deals secret, rather than tell the world about them.

 

cheaters and scammers of course will generally get sniffed out from the jump-off, but this is a pretty rare occurance

[joe_collector]

1) There are very few "dealer" posts in the "dealer" forum that would be appropriate in the "forum only" forum under the proposed restrictions - 1) books must be listed with prices (no pointers to websites), and 2) books must not be offered anywhere else.

 

If we allow dealers, then these Rules and Regulations must be spelled out, and I'd like to add:

 

3) Transactions must take place 100% on the forum, via PM, and not consist of "external transactions" using email, phone or ordering systems.

 

I remember Metro and a few other dealers doing this - spewing a huge list of books, then asking to "email or call to purchase the books".

[qualitycomix]

1) There are very few "dealer" posts in the "dealer" forum that would be appropriate in the "forum only" forum under the proposed restrictions - 1) books must be listed with prices (no pointers to websites), and 2) books must not be offered anywhere else.

 

If we allow dealers, then these Rules and Regulations must be spelled out, and I'd like to add:

 

3) Transactions must take place 100% on the forum, via PM, and not consist of "external transactions" using email, phone or ordering systems.

 

I remember Metro and a few other dealers doing this - spewing a huge list of books, then asking to "email or call to purchase the books".

 

I concur

[joe_collector]

And just because some stupid mother- just did this:

 

4) If you start a Forum-Only Selling thread and later move the item(s) to EBay, DO NOT post auction links, as this is in violation of the forum rules.

[qualitycomix]

And just because some stupid mother- just did this:

 

4) If you start a Forum-Only Selling thread and later move the item(s) to EBay, DO NOT post auction links, as this is in violation of the forum rules.

 

The rules are going to be 5 pages long to account for *spoon*.

[joe_collector]

The rules are going to be 5 pages long to account for *spoon*.

 

Nope, and I really think that 5-6 basic rules should have been posted when the split was made.

 

Plus, it's all common sense, even for retardos.