How do you guys feel about Whatnot?

I 100% understand and respect this sentiment, and think it’s a meaningful one. I do not dispute it nor do I deny the value of this perspective in this conversation. I think it’s incredibly poignant to underline that the transaction is not the collection, and our collections are more than a sum of transactions.

However, if you asked me what I thought about eBay I would rapidly begin declaring a bulleted list of grievances. They would seem extremely familiar, like I’ve rehearsed them for years. eBay is the best resale marketplace on the entire internet and I think it fucking sucks so bad. I use eBay every day. I have used eBay for more than 10 years. But if eBay was a jack o’lantern I’d smash it with a golf club. If eBay was an ice cube I’d munch it to bits. I wish eBay was a cardboard box so I could break it down flat and throw it in my recycling bin. I hate eBay, the worst best website the English-speaking internet has ever produced. I hate it but I need it and everything else is so much worse.

This is just me though so please do not let this distract from your larger salient point.

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I think it is just an embodiment of all the least appealing aspects of the hobby. It’s the commodification and promotion of your self-brand above everything else.

Everything you do becomes extrinsically driven by the need to produce content rather than intrinsically driven by interest or passion.

Attention is the most valuable and scarcest resource. Viewers equal money. This necessarily means that anyone doing the same thing as you is competiton [ie. an enemy] and should be treated with skepticism by default unless they are “bigger” than you in which case you are desperate to create a relationship with them to peel off as much audience attention as possible.

And finally the incentives are aligned so that anti-social behaviours are rewarded financially. You don’t have to be a snakeoil salesman to use whatnot but if you were, its a fantastic tool to sell your products.

All this being said, I have met whatnot employees and streamers and they are just people who enjoy and thrive in that culture. I have nothing against them as individuals. There is clearly an audience for it and it’s a platform that adds value to this hobby overall which is why it persists even though a ton of 2020 startups have silently gone away.

None of what I said is exclusive to whatnot specifically. This is all probably boomer talk but I’m so uninterested in the toxic cultural aspects of social media as a whole. I limit my exposure to a lot of this stuff but I really think it is cannibalizing a lot of the things that keep me in this hobby. When the default greeting of meeting someone new at an event is “what is your instagram handle?” I think it’s a bit sad that instagram is the only window that people view this hobby through

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@pkmnflyingmaster

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I feel this in my soul.

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Seems like this was timely. Prepare for trouble and make it double indeed! :wink:

Cheers!

I’ve never paid attention to it or know much about it other than its a new idea for a live auction app and has been controversial. I go to every Collect A Con and I see them but it doesn’t bother me cause I just don’t pay attention to them.

Theres some good and some bad. Overall I think its targeted for the super surface level collector and thats not my type of entertainment. The few streams I have checked out have been full of a lot of misinformation. Whether innocent or malicious I just cant listen to that stuff.

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the multi level marketing grift of collectibles. I don’t personally use it (and don’t have any negative feeling towards those that do) but it gives me that distinct feeling of social media sales people that equate numbers with success.

LETS GO CHAT! BID IT UP! THIS IS WORTH $1,000! COME ON, DROP THE HAMMER!

In all seriousness though, there are the good and bad. Some sellers somehow manage to always sell at way above market price consistently. I think it’s a mixture of buyers showing their support for the seller and also just being ill-informed of prices. Some sellers are honestly great and are streaming to make connections and have a good time.

Whatnot is just another platform for buying and selling collectables. I like to think of it as the new age of the home shopping network. If you do use the app, just know that sellers are opinionated and can be wrong. Make informed purchases and don’t fall into fomo

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@smpratte said it best:

“WhatNot is QVC for boomers”.

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*QVC for zoomers! :smiling_face:

It really feels like home shopping network for a younger generation. We need a 25th anniversary of ken goldin iconic neo file video!

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Personally, I don’t enjoy watching it. I am also not their target audience. I silently support them as I respect anyone “Going for it” with an entrepreneurial spirit. Don’t get me wrong, I know there are bad apples, but for the most part, they have their niche.

I watch every Rudy and Scott video, including Patreon, as I feel it brings me value. I am 31, so I care more about the long game with the investing side and primarily love old cards. New sets don’t bring me the nostalgia, which is where I get my dopamine hits, haha. Those watching Whatnot & other pack-ripping channels get their dopamine from those videos. Not for me to judge.

I will continue to state that I think there are a lot of self-righteous thoughts in this hobby. IMO, too many think that making money with a hobby = not a true collector. Like everything in life, it’s going to be evolving regardless if you like it or not. Better to see the good than zone in on the bad.

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…remember the guy in Azalea/Mahogany Town selling slowpoke tails?

I open whatnot, and it appears that everything on the landing page is promotional, box breaks, and hype. :frowning:

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Oh man I butchered the iconic quote, my bad!

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Take the phrase “presentation is everything” and add that to the cost of the card

I wonder if this trend of Streamers Sellers will evolve over time with the hobby. Over the last few years there has been quite a lot of new steaming auction platforms popping up; Whatnot, Popshop Live, Talkshop Live, Dripshop to name a few. I know eBay one’s is in beta and that quite a few people that does this over IG live.

Seeing some of the comments some people really hate it and I can understand why. But I am more interested to see if this will stay with the hobby, how things will look like in the next few years. We are 2 years from the Pokémon 2020-2021 craze and these apps are growing in terms of users.

Just quite fascinating to see how this hobby evolves over time.

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I’m curious if there will be burnout for openings. Maybe it’s just a me thing but I’ve been exhausted since 2020.

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100%
I used to watch Rusty’s and Lootbox’s openings religiously, but honestly, Sorry, Rusty, it’s been years since I was really interested, and THAT was vintage and legacy.

Do modern collectors have that much interest in watching openings? Maybe there’s some high that I’m missing when I see them. Or is it going to burn out soon? Cuz it’s been going for a LONG time, I feel…

Its all about personality. If people can sit through you opening up packs, it doesn’t really matter whats being opened in the first place. The larger channels will stay afloat because they are larger. Smaller channels with dedicated audiences will be fine too. January is typically one of the worst months for ad revenue across YouTube, so if channels can survive that, they should be more than fine for the rest of the year. Modern is always interesting in the moment and Scarlet Violet isn’t even here yet for English collectors.

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Ah! Good points. And since I hate people, that makes total sense. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I’m kidding. haha. Generally, I can see that, but I think the novelty of it has a lot of bearing on whether you find it valuable. OR maybe I just prefer to experience things myself, and now that I’ve seen enough openings, I want to do other things.

But there are specific moments. Leonhart opening that Gold Star Rayquaza… Rusty’s early Rocket box… I wonder, does anyone else watch old openings of their own, for the nostalgia? I did have one really cool pack that I’ll re-watch from when I did openings on youtube…