Would you consider this SCALPING?

I think that it depends, definitely.
If someone who normally does faceups that are $70 buys a sleeping head, and sells it all for $100... Then no. You'd pay more for if you bought the head seperately and sent it to that person.

HOWEVER. I recently was browsing the marketplace and found someone with five or so MNF heads they were selling. The person was selling them for $70 or so, and had one sleeping head that they'd admitted they had modded BADLY. The eyes were two completely different shapes, and fixing it would require filling in parts and a lot of work, or else you would end up with an owl-eyed doll if you just tried to even out the eyes without filling in.

The price they were asking? $50. THAT was scalping, or just stupid. Instead of even offering it as the price that they got the head for, they were trying to charge a large amount for a self-admitted awful mod job. I just hope that person doesn't find a buyer who feels sorry for the head.

So I guess to explain my opinion: If it's a well-known faceup artist doing that, it's pretty much selling their wares. If it's just someone who slaps paint on a head and expects a huge increase in price, then it's scalping. If you do nothing to it and want to get more than you paid for the simple fact that you think you deserve it, it's scalping. If you actually put work into it and it looks decent or better, then it's simply reselling with additions.

 

I still don't see this as scalping as I do so much... uhh... pipe dreams on the part of the seller. It's up to buyers to do their homework, too. There are tons of resources out there for people to look things up. A seller can slap any price they want on a head, it doesn't mean they'll get it, and it doesn't mean they're a scalper.

This is just my opinion, but there are a lot of people out there who think their work warrants xyz dollars, and customers may not agree. So it will sit unsold, until the seller figures out they're asking too much, and lowers the price.

I would never feel comfortable calling somebody a scalper who sets their price the same as the going rate in the marketplace but their particular head has issues - that's just a seller not doing their research, or suffering from wishful thinking; and buyers are hopefully doing their research.

 

Lol, I personally wouldn't consider selling a bad mod job for an overly high price as scalping, thats just stupidity. Its just like any other overpriced item in the marketplace, theyre going to be bumping up their thread for many months to come.

 

Paying extra for mods and/or nice faceup isn't scalping--well done faceups and mods can add to to the desirability--especially if the buyer isn't comfortable doing those things her/himself. However, like other people have pointed out, the market will sort things out in large part. Collectables are worth what people are willing to pay for them. So someone who priced a little on the high side may well be forced to drop the price if the doll doesn't sell. Actual scalpers take very desirable dolls, turn around and slap HUGE price tags on them. Not everyone who priced a little higher than they should is an actual scalper.

 

The price fluctuation on the MNF heads from 85-90 dollars at Luts to 27-30 dollars at Fairyland was unusual and created a lot of price confusion. When you get something from one company that's marked at 80 dollars there and you initially plan to sell it at or around the 80 dollar price, and then another company suddenly drastically cuts the price, it's hard to know what to do, so I don't think I'd be so quick to yell "scalper!" If the item is really priced too high, given that MNF heads aren't exactly rare limited items, it just won't sell at all because the person will find a better priced one somewhere else.

Speaking as one who had a sleeping head from the Luts set that I wanted to get rid of, right at the time Luts was discontinuing and Fairyland was picking it up, I had no idea where to set the price. I think I first had it closer to 85 because for a few weeks the head was technically discontinued as Fairyland wasn't offering them yet. Then when they did put the heads back on the market, I knew I needed to drop my price because the heads were no longer discontinued, but I would have had to drop my price 40 or 50 dollars to match the Fairyland price, which wasn't what I'd originally planned. I wanted the head to go to someone who actually wanted it and I didn't want to be "scalping" the head or setting a pipe-dream-high price, but at the same time, I wanted to get what I considered a reasonable value back on a head I hadn't wanted and was basically forced by Luts to buy because they were only offering the doll I wanted with the extra head, she was about to go off the market at least for a while, and I had no guarantee that Fairyland would sell her again later at the time I bought her.

In the end I traded the extra head to someone for a nice doll chair that she'd received as a gift. So we both got something we wanted, but each of us had to pay shipping to the other so technically it did cost us both a little money as it was overseas.

 

Scalping something limited, especially a one-off, isn't fair...but in this case, it's just kinda of like buying in bulk...you get the extra item at a discount because you bought it with everything else included. True, they don't offer them by themselves at this point in time, but that doesn't mean someone can't take advantage of someone else willing to do a split, or...(if one has that kind of money to throw around up front) just buy the whole package and sell the unwanted/un-needed parts after the fact to get back the extra spent. It doesn't mean the head is flat out worth $27 plus shipping, it's just the discount for getting it all at once. and scalping or not...in ANY case...it only works because people out there are willing to pay what is being asked. If there's something I want that I can't easily get another way, and someone is selling it for a higher price than they paid for the specific item, but it's within reason/my budget, REGARDLESS of whether it just "didn't work out" or whether they just bought it to resell (some do this to offset the price of the doll they were going to pay for anyway...again, if someone will buy, i see nothing amoral there...)...yes, I would pay it. And it works because I will pay that. or anyone else would. They get their money, I get what I want, and niether of us has a problem with it. If someone doesn't like that kind of arrangement, (s)he is under no obligation whatsoever to partake...as it should be.

 

Personally, I'm inclined to think the same way myself.

It isn't that the sleeping heads are necessarily $27 versus the normal $80, but more that they are offered by Fairyland at a discounted price if the buyer purchases a whole doll. I mean, you can't normally buy a sleeping head for only $27 from Fairyland, right?

And yes, people are selling sleeping heads for over $27.00 and there are also some people selling the same sleeping heads for only $27.00.

Here's a question: When people are doing head and body splits on Fairyland dolls or on the Delfs at Luts, how much are people paying for the sleeping heads and normal heads? Is it the $27 or is it the add two prices together and divide by two or is it the price of the normal head?

I personally have no interest in sleeping heads and so I will always be looking for the normal heads and the normal heads are always, for the most part, sold at the normal price.

 

i don't think it's scalping to turn a profit.
if the person wanted a good deal, they could do a split themselves. no one is forcing them to buy the marked up one.

i got critisized a while back on a pullip forum for quickly snapping up one of the rarer dolls for $30 (she was handless) when she could have easily been sold for $100. When I got her, I gave her a new body and did some minor repairs and put up for sale for $70. One of the girls I beat out in the original sale threw a fit that I was selling her for more. I understand her annoyance, but seriously. If there was some rule that you couldn't sell a doll for more than you paid...limited dolls would never go up in price.

It's capitalism. Get used to it.

 

Yeah, that's there the issue is. I believe at the moment people buy the extra sleeping head, just because it's offered so cheap at Fairyland. Then they realize they have no use for it and it's really confusing which price it's supposed to be sold for. I personally think that it IS worth $50-60, but if people continue buying them just because it's there and it's cheap, then they'll be forced to sell for less, because they'll be just too many on the market.

 

No, I don't think it's scalping.

If the head has been modded and repainted, it's now OOAK and a duplicated may not be easily found. If a person just wants the sleeping head without the faceup and modification, then they can pay less elsewhere. But the person who bought it had to PAY to get it modified, therefore changing the original price of the head.

So no, I don't think it's scalping.

 

I don't think it's scalping at all, especially if the head has been modified or given a faceup. The heads have an established retail price when sold on their own, as people have mentioned. Now they are available for less but only with a specific, much larger, purchase. For people who want just that head but missed it at $80, buying it at $60 (from a seller who paid $30 additional to get it with a package) is still a better deal, unless they were planning to buy the whole doll anyway.

I think this is more a case of "should gift items be sold?" if anything, and perhaps a bit of wishful thinking in terms of faceup prices (which you can see in probably at least half of the faceup critique threads- "Can I sell this faceup for $30?" "No, not yet"). In the end, the buyer who wants the head can decide if the price is too much for them to pay, and if the heads are selling then it's obviously not too much. It's like saying a DVD that's usually $30 is only worth $10 because some company has a mail in offer to get the DVD for $10 with x number of UPC codes. It was $30 in the store, and the $10 price requires additional purchases. The DVD is still worth $30 whether you got it for $25 on sale at Best Buy or $10 from the back of a cereal box or the full $30 at Suncoast.

 

The DVD comparison was a good one to make, I think.

Just because it's being offered for less doesn't mean it's actually worth less.

It was mentioned earlier that buying a sleeping head from CP costs the same amount as a normal head. In the case of Fairyland, the $27 price tag on the Fairyland sleeping heads is a result of an 'if-then' situation. If the original buyer purchases the whole doll, s/he has the option of buying the sleeping head for an additional $27.

Being that there are plenty of MNF heads floating about in the Marketplace for a myriad of prices ranging from $27 to $87 and maybe even more, if buyers are patient enough, I think they can catch a MNF head at the price that's right for them.

I actually just bought a MNF head - open-eyed complete with faceup - at what I considered to be a very fair price considering everything involved. The seller was also selling a Sleeping MNF head with its eyes opened and also painted and where the price tag was higher than the $27 but lower than what I paid for my open eyed head, to me it reflected the faceup and good modding and the fact that it was the Sleeping head and not the open eyed head.

Given what I mentioned about my own shopping experience, I don't think people selling their Sleeping MNF head for above $50 to be necessarily scalping or a crime though how to call it is a bit difficult to say. The worth, I think, is higher than $27, though perhaps not the full $80 and when a faceup and/or a mod job is involved, the price will probably reflect it.

I think if Fairyland sold the Sleeping heads on their own for X price, then we as consumers have a (better) right to debate on whether or not selling the heads for blah blah price is considered scalping, but because Fairyland doesn't and because you DO have to pay for the head (just not the same amount as for an open eyed head) and because you DO have to buy the whole doll first...

I'm really not too sure how to think on the matter.

I think what skwerlie said was right on - maybe this issue is more like the issue with reselling gift heads and at what price.

In the end, it boils down to this for me:

When I see the same people over and over selling new blank Sleeping heads at $80 or more, it makes me raise my eyebrows a bit, but there are plenty of sellers who don't sell the new blank Sleeping head at that price and those are the sellers I would most likely go to to buy. To me, such actions say that, "To me, these heads are worth more than what I paid for , but because they were sold much cheaper to me, I am willing to sell them at a lower price to reflect both what I paid and what it's worth."

There ARE people out there who sell the heads for 'reasonable' prices. If people don't want to pay the 'full' price for a Sleeping head, then... don't?

The easiest way to send the message that you don't believe in a seller's price point is to simply not buy from them.

Sellers aren't stupid; they will see whose heads/dolls are selling and whose aren't and will wonder about the whys and wherefores and will conclude a thing or two about what people consider to be 'reasonable' prices.

 

Scalping- charging double what a doll is worth. Plain and simple. Right or wrong it is that sellers right to sell that doll for a price they see fit, however sometimes there is such a thing as too much. However selling things that were given to you, I do not personally agree with, and i would never personally buy something like that. Persay a Sei tenshi or a rei tenshi, or any gift head. But I would trade something for that item if I found myself in dire need of that item.

 

I would say it isn't scalping if it has a nice paint job. Then the extra money is for the face up. If it is simply painted or not at all, than I would think it was definitely scalping.

 

The way that I look at this is as follows: if you have something that I want and I am willing to pay what you are asking then I see no "loss" on either side. I do not see where the price that was originally paid for the item is any of my business. If I feel that I am getting a good deal then it doesn't really matter to me how much the seller makes on the deal...

Not to mention that I have the option of looking elsewhere or asking the seller for a lower price.

 

Technically, as scalping is defined, it is.. But, no matter what the mark up I wouldn't consider it scalping in a negative way. It's a product for which there must be some form of demand otherwise nobody would buy them. People are able to set their own pricing for any item they happen to wish to sell, whether that means a considerable profit for them or not.

Would asking a far larger price for a rare, discontinued and hard to find doll be considered to be acceptable? It's the same principle. Supply v. Demand. If I want to buy something *coughsleepingDamifaceplatecough* I would probably pay what I think it's worth to me, possibly more then was paid for it by the original owner at time of purchase. I love that people on here mostly charge close to/less then what they may have paid for something. That makes things more attainable, but I'll sure pay more then they may have paid if I think the item has more value to me then original MSRP.

 

they modded the heads, put work into it then they have every right to price as they want. Really you can't stop people from pricing as they want, if you don't like it just don't buy Not buying and ignoring their over price posts is the only way to make them stop pricing so high after awhile of having no one buy they're either leave or lower the price.

 

I'm beginning to get annoyed with people even noting something as "Scalping".

Frankly, what someone sell's their personal property for is none of their business. If they think its too high, then they won't buy it. If someone is willing to pay it, great.

Eventually the items will possibly lower in value or the sale will be pulled.

If someone wanted to buy the $10 DVD and then offer $45 for it, thats their right. Probably wouldn't sell... But who the hell cares, its THEIR property until payed for and no one else has the right to ridicule them for their asking price.

 

However when someone buys a limited (or unavailable separately) item with the solid purpose of selling it afterwards with a large profit, that IS scalping. So I don't think the term can be dismissed completely on the basis that people are free to do whatever they want with their property.

 

its as simple as people will pay what they are willing to pay.
Ive not bought a set and then sold a sleeping head, so I cant comment personally, but Ive bought the sleeping head from a set a few times. Yes Ive paid more then what the head is worth, but Ive paid what its worth to me. I recently aquired a head that I REALLY wanted. I know I paid a touch more than what its worth as its dropped in price since (or the following sales have been less that what I paid), but I really dont care.
I love the head I bought and am happy with it. Im also paying more to get it modded and painted.
I think it each to their own. If you are ok paying said price for said head, go for it.
not happy? dont buy it.