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Auctions: Revealing The Dark Side Of Collecting
Thoughts and Confessions of an eBay-er
by Boaz Kirschenbaum
4/19/99
If Obi-Wan were here now, he would undoubtedly compare eBay to the frontier town of Mos Eisley: "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious."
I’ve noticed lately that scalping collectibles has become popular and indeed acceptable to many fans. The most glaring example of this can be found at online auction sites such as eBay and Yahoo Auctions. I look at bid histories and notice that many fans don’t blink as they bid $600 for alleged TPM crew jackets, $80 for teaser posters, or $300 for a pre-sell of action figures. I’m not exaggerating — those are real numbers. In the very act of bidding, collectors and "auction virgins" alike encourage price-fixing and greed. It’s a vicious cycle. I saw one auction with 32 bids for one case of TPM figures! I have even seen such ridiculous items as a photocopied 2-page memo (sent out by Fox to theatres regarding trailer and poster usage) sell for $25. The idea here is that most of these things have a perceived value much greater than their intrinsic value, a basic lesson of supply and demand capitalism. It’s always been that way…but at what cost?
It is one thing to charge over list price in a retail setting, even in the brave new world of e-commerce. In a small comic store with high overhead—i.e., advertising costs, payroll, insurance—it makes good business sense to make enough profit to stay liquid. It is quite another thing to sell collectibles at exorbitant prices, 300 to 400 percent over cost, as a private collector out to make a quick buck. Prequel fever has clouded the bidders’ judgement. I don’t think it has clouded the seller’s judgement — they are busy waiting for easy marks to show them the money.
I read a while ago that there are three types of collectors: 1) those who do it for pure fun; 2) those who see it as a an investment (speculators); and 3) scalpers. When I was a kid, you didn’t buy two or three of the same figure, saving two for the future and carefully cutting open the card with a razorblade to gingerly fondle that latest cool figure as if it were a totem or fetish. You tore open that card as soon as you left the local five-and-dime, and started playing with him!
I enjoy the thrill of finding a new figure who will augment my Cantina diorama. I don’t care if my Bantha and Tusken Raider are worth less because I took them out of the box. The fur is really soft and fun to play with…and that is the point of all this Star Wars stuff, isn’t it? Even if we analyze the story and characters, or even the sculpt on the new Qui-Gon figure as though it were a Michaelangelo sculpture from the High Renaissance…don’ t we all obsess about it because it is just plain FUN?
Don’t get me wrong, I am an advocate of a free market economy. I myself buy and sell items on eBay, and I have made a small profit. I put that profit back into my collecting budget, my own little Moebius strip of action figure obsession. Yet the interesting thing is I never started out to make money.
I recently won several successful bids on full sets of Episode 1 Wave 1 figures, one of the most popular items on eBay. I was an auction neophyte, and had all my eggs in too many baskets. I forgot the cardinal rule of bidding: NEVER bid on something you can’t really afford. In my exuberance I ended up with four sets, not the two I originally planned on. Rather than wait for the value to go up later, I figured I’d sell Episode 1 "futures", much like day-traders do in the Wall Street world. I would pre-sell my pre-sells. I had gotten some good deals — the sets cost retail price, about $10 per figure. I put them up for bids and set the minimum bid at $10 (I didn’t want to lose money). In my mind that was the honorable thing to do.
I had no idea that eBay is such a wild and wooly place. Before too long, my $10 Darth Maul figure sold for $50…and others followed suit. My story isn’t unique—I have seen other Darth Maul figures sell for up to $80. Market forces beyond my control did the selling for me. There are bound to be plenty of figures available after May 3rd (the toy release date), and it is probably unnecessary to pre-buy your figures. But what did I know two months ago? I am too lazy to fight tooth and nail in some crowded Wal-Mart. I love finding stuff on eBay or on the Web, and acting as a broker of sorts can be fun. The thrill of bidding is close to the thrill of meeting other collectors who buy my figures…and I confess it was thrilling to see that $10 climb during the so-called bidding war that ensued for my Darth Maul. We all like to feel some kind of power sometimes.
In Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, Michael Douglas’ character Gordon Gekko said the infamous words, "Greed is good. Greed works." True, he was speaking to his stockholders. But aren’t all fans of Star Wars stockholders, in a way? Don’t we have faith that are lives are just a little better, a little due to Star Wars? Most of us hold stock in the belief that Star Wars transcends our petty little world and speaks to each of us about human nature, good and evil, and the choices we make in life. When asked what the defining moment in the trilogy was, many people say it is Luke staring wistfully out into the desert as Tatooine’s twin suns set on the horizon. He was yearning for something bigger — much as we all do. He wasn’t yearning for a new action figure for his T16 Skyhopper. I think most collectors find a tangible connection with the films through the toys, posters, etc. Many in the film industry call this "synergy". We collect so that we feel that we are a part of something beyond our daily lives.
In a way I almost feel guilty for accepting $50 for a figure for which I paid $10, a figure that technically doesn’t exist yet…we all know when the figures will be out on the shelves, but we haven’t felt them in our hands. When other scalpers and buyers drive up the prices so that fun and interesting items like Darth Maul are beyond the reach of all but monied collectors, it can’t be good for Star Wars collecting as a whole. Disenchanted and jaded, some collectors might drop out completely, to say nothing of the children for whom these toys were originally conceived twenty-odd years ago. This kind of cold, calculating, predatory practice reeks of the Dark Side. It’s beyond market awareness now — Lucas unknowingly created a whole subculture of toy collecting that has snowballed, and in doing so, the whole toy craze subverted our childlike "sense of wonder" into a foaming, rabid mob bent on grabbing that latest figure of the shelf, even if it is a "virtual" shelf. Do I still feel guilty? Nah. That extra $40 will help pay for my meager collection, and with a little luck, I will have my own Naboo diorama for next to nothing.
We are heading for critical mass in the collecting world. How long until fans say, "enough"? But remember that old saying, "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is"…unless of course, you are a seller on eBay.
(Boaz Kirschenbaum is a freelance writer and lifetime Star Wars fan, currently working on a series of articles relating Star Wars with psychology and storytelling techniques using mythology, visual effects, and musicology. His small collection only takes up two cabinets...right now, that is.)
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