Don't be this dealer

[scottagibson]

Originally Posted by Bowman1951

I had an excellent time at the National and met up with some really great people from all over the country, every single experience was awesome over two days EXCEPT one. I think it terms of prices, at least on the lower end stuff, in general they weren't too far off from what you could get online and just like making offers on eBay for items if the seller allows it, this is exactly what I did when making purchases with every single dealer I spoke to.

I was respectful, I don't think I ever asked for more than 15% off of something that was listed and everything I wanted was already somewhat fairly priced. I also always bought in bulk because I didn't purchase one high end card to negotiate for, every time I riffled through items for a lot. It's not like any table for the stuff I was looking at was asking $100 for a card you could get on eBay for $40. But man, this one guy who was in his 50's and wearing a really ugly fedora warrants his own thread...

On Saturday, I noticed a case of 1952 and 1953 Topps commons, mostly graded PSA 2 - 4 and these can be what I tend to collect, commons in the $15 - $25 range from those sets so I can built up my collection. There was a row marked "all cards $15" and there are probably close to 200 of them available in a locked case. I asked a young kid if I can start to shuffle through them so he comes over and opens it up for me and I ended up picking out five cards that I'm ready to purchase, cash in hand. I mention it's a young kid who didn't look a day over 18 because when I asked him if he could do $70 on the $75 of cards I was holding, he wasn't authorized to make the decision. It took a few minutes but the owner of the table who I mentioned previously finally comes over to me...

"All of these are already competitively priced from eBay, no I can't give you those for $70", he snaps back after seeming annoyed I would even dare ask him for 6.6% off of his asking price. Frankly, I just didn't want to deal with change when I found three $20's and a $10 in my wallet but no smaller bills. With a befuddled look on my face I told him, "ok thanks, I'll be back later" and never even wandered down his aisle again because I didn't want to see him or that hat ever again. I was kind of mortified at the time tbh.

I simply don't understand this mentality, instead of "losing" $5 on one sale, you lost the full $70. If he even did take credit cards, he would have lost a few bucks on a full priced sale due to the card fees but I was offering greenbacks. I can't imagine every single card there was sold to someone else unless he got bought out or that he actually sat down to make sure all of those cards were listed at exactly the lowest priced card to ever sell on eBay and everyone else was a sucker who paid more. This is simply bad business practice, it makes zero sense and if that $70 didn't mean a lot to him that's cool with me, I ended up taking my business elsewhere and dealt with someone for some 1952 Topps that was willing to negotiate. I also stuck around and chatted with this guy for 10 minutes afterwards and it all but made up for my one weird experience on the day.

tl:dr If you don't like my money, why are you dealing cards in the first place?

Bad business??? Maybe. But you mean to tell me your time is not worth $5? Pride is a funny thing to me. You spent time sifting through hundreds of cards only to walk away over a bad attitude and $5??? %^^+ that guy sure... but you were the loser here imo. Those were cards you wanted. Cards you collected. The very reason why you were there.