No it’s not only slabs. To get back to the recent example of IRs, just take a look of how basically every raw IR card completely skyrocket in value between December and February. However this not only applies to IRs but to plenty of other cards as well (mainly from Sun & Moon to Scarlet & Violet but also some older cards).
The seller is clearly primarily a collectibles seller… what else would you call it when someone buys out vintage cards to resell/relist at a premium? There’s plenty of people doing this.
The point of my post is that it’s silly to reward this as a business model. It’s like giving someone 800 bucks for buying a card for you 2 months ago, even though you didn’t want it then.
No need to get out your sweaty insults.
I noticed something similar, on the opposite end.
Record low sale prices for high end slabs on ebay the day or night before Collectacon starts- Vendors point to them when comping buyouts, but conveniently won’t budge on their same slabs priced in the case at the normal price from before those sales.
Check back a few days later and those ebay sales were all gone from listing history.
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If we were able to call the top of bubbles, I’d of sold all of my PSA 9 Base Set Charizards for $6,000 each back in 2020 lol
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Welcome to the forum!
Scalping typically pertains to retail products and has an element of price gouging. eg exploiting unusually high demand by purchasing a retail product at or below MSRP to immediately resell it for a profit. Once demand decreases and/or supply increases, the market price will return to MSRP (or thereabout).
Non-retail items, such as graded cards, don’t have an MSRP so market price is based purely on what buyers are willing to pay and what sellers are willing to accept.
Reward is an odd way to frame it. The price could’ve just as easily fallen $800 in 2 months. In that case would you expect the buyer to pay $800 over current market value because that’s what the seller paid 2 months ago?
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Well put. Don’t hate on traders.
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Call it speculating if you like, but it’s not scalping.
When someone buys shares of stock and in the following months that stock rises by 50% have they scalped the stock? No, they’ve speculated on future price and been rewarded.
As @Mr.Garrison correctly pointed out, you can’t really scalp used/open items because they do not have a MSRP. Scalping requires a “usual price,” and that doesn’t exist for second hand goods.
You’re the one interpreting my post as referring to you - what does that say?
I stand by my comment, “scalping” is currently being used incorrectly by a large group of uninformed collectors.
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“Scalping” is the new word the cool kids use
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am i da scalper or just da reseller its hard to tell sometimes 
maybe its something like
pokescalper 
taytay scalper 
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The ingredients for scalping are:
-
overwhelming demand and/or limited supply for an item
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a way to source the item under the secondary market value
Under these conditions you can buy the item and immediately turn a profit by selling it.
If you buy an item at secondary market value and sell it at secondary market value that’s not scalping. If the secondary market value is higher today than when you bought the item that’s just asset appreciation.
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Generally scalping involves buying an item at the “usual price” aka market value or MSRP and exploiting limited supply / unusually high demand to turn around and immediately sell for a profit because there are buyers willing to pay over market value or MSRP for the item.
You can always turn an immediate profit if you source something under market value. That’s not scalping either
I think this is me being pedantic though. You may well have meant that secondary market value was over the “usual price” / MSRP
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This is arbitrage, I think.
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Yes in many cases reselling, including scalping, can be considered a form of arbitrage.
I’m not sure if I’d consider traditional card reselling (e.g. when a collector sells their items in bulk to a LCS or other reseller) to be arbitrage.
In that scenario the reseller is offers liquidity, convenience, and time savings as a service. The difference between market price and the reseller’s offer is the fee being charged for that service.
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ahhh man_farmer. Thanks!
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Yeah, I agree that traditional reselling isn’t quite what you think of when you think of arbitrage. I was thinking of more “scalping” like scenarios that aren’t really scalping, but just taking advantage of different markets or underpriced items for an immediate profit (while writing this out, I guess I was more considering “flipping”).
Sure, we can be more specific and say that we are specifically talking about buying something at a “retail price” and being able to sell it immediately at a much higher price.