(incidentally, i'm not ticked off either)

I didn't make a distinction between cels and 
everything else-- all I said was I hadn't bought 
cels for the sole purpose of reselling.

In a perfect world, we would all be able to 
afford whatever we want. Your friend would have 
been able to get her beanie baby for $6, pin 
collectors would be able to get their HRC pins 
for $10. But it's not a perfect world, and, 
frankly, I don't want it to be. What's the fun in 
collecting if you can just have everything you 
want?

Granted, it is a little less fun when you track 
down something you have been looking for forever 
and it is beyond your price range.

An example- my wife had wanted a Touga cel 
*forever* and one finally came up on eBay. I bid 
$200 I could ill afford only to be outbid at the 
last minute (literally-- the last and winning bid 
was place 15 seconds before the auction ended). 
The cel popped up on eBay a bit later with a 
starting bid of $250. Needless to say, my wife 
was upset, but she got over it. Taro posted some 
Touga cels the next month, and she just won a 
*very* nice one on eBay for substantially less. 

So was I mad at the person who outbid me and then 
resold the cel? No, not really. They had won the 
auction fair and square, and once they had the 
cel, it was theirs to do with as they pleased. I 
wasn't going to buy it, but I couldn't very well 
condemn them for selling it.

More to the point, for a long time, dealing in 
collectibles was my *job* ... and let me tell 
you, it is *not* an ethical business (part of the 
reason I am no longer doing it). I tried to be as 
fair in my pricing and dealing as possible, but 
the competition was brutal. I saw dealers holding 
back stock of incoming "hot" comics to then mark 
up 50-500% the next week. I saw customers buy 
packs of cards, open them in the store, and then 
immediately resell individual cards to the 
dealers. To many people, collecting is a hobby, 
but to many others, it is a business.

I've said before that the speculators ruin it for 
the collectors, and this may be what we're seeing 
with the cel market now. But eventually the 
speculators leave, and then the collectors 
continue on. If something is overpriced, don't 
buy it. Cels may be one of a kind items, but 
there are a lot of them out there.

Not that it matters, but when I said I have 
bought something and resold it at a higher price 
(the comment that started this), I was referring 
to laptop computers that I buy wholesale and 
refurbish. They generally don't need any 
additional parts I don't already have, just a bit 
of an overhaul. Do I feel guilty about buying a 
386sx for $5 condition unkown and reselling it 
for $50 in working order? Nah, not really.

SP