Vic said he wanted me to comment, while I did not get a chance to do so when to thread was locked a few minutes later. I therefore asked him to delete the thread. Instead he gave me a chance to comment, which I will try to do now:
My initial post was posted 10-20 minutes after signing up on the forum. Sure I admit, I could have examined the rules more thorough before posting. Regardless, I cross-posted: The same message was posted to both the "trade/sell/buy" forum, and to "PJ Discography". In my initial post I clearly stated my intentions: I wanted feedback on the value, before it was going to be auctioned on eBay. The "PJ Discography" forum has the following description: "Talk about Pearl Jam CD's, LP's, Cassettes, Minidiscs, Bootlegs...". No big deal, but maybe it should have been removed in the "trade/sell/buy" forum - instead of removing it from the wrong forum, then later telling me I'm breaking the rules ?
Having that said, there's another thing I'd just like everyone to keep in mind:
I have spent EXTREME amounts of money on PJ-collectibles, like most of you guys. Why? Because NO collectibles are sold at the price they were originally obtained. There has been criticism because of the "Buy It Now" price. Getting criticism due to the pricing seems a bit weird to me: I.e. if collectibles were to be sold for the original price promos should be given away FOR FREE, like they once were. In auctions the seller charge whatever the market is willing to give, with very few exceptions. So honestly, I'm having a hard time seeing the difference with this one - except Reeenk Roink is very hard to obtain. Why are nobody making a big fuzz out of the '96 poster currently being listed with a Buy It Now price on $1900 ? He probably payed $10 for it back in '96. Looking at the % of interest the seller is ending up with more than me, regardless of the final price on my Reeenk Roink. So what's the difference? The poster is nowhere near as rare. As one last example: The band has been offering their "travelpacks" on the last couple of tours charging around $2000. If their intention was purely to offer tickets + a place to sleep they would have charged no more than $500. However, they are offering the $2000 travelpacks to the market, to whoever considers their concertexperience to be worth it.
So in my opinion it all comes down to the principle: If you are to object about the pricing then ALL AUCTIONS are WRONG. The more rare the object is, the higher the price will be. It's the way it works, and it's the way it always has worked. And if we are to object about the way auctions work (the principle), we might also take into consideration that ALL OF US are contributing to this "system" by buying overpriced collectibles in general.
I care a lot about Pearl Jam, and while travelling on tour I've enjoyed fellow fans company so much. That's probably the only reason why I'm trying to explain things, although I truely don't feel I have to. I'm just a guy who's trying to collect a small amount of the money I've spent on PJ-collectibles, because I HAVE TO. Hey, nobody charged me a "fair price" when obtaining all my collectibles because it was the MORAL thing to do.
Unless there's something I NEED to comment (related to the auction) this will be my last public post on this matter. I wish you all the best, and good luck with your collections.
And as one last thing I wanna say the same thing I've said to several of you guys on PMs: In an ideal world I would have had FREE Reeenk Roinks to give ALL OF YOU..Because I'm sure you deserve it.
-P
