Moral Dilemma

I have a buyer that wants to buy a ton of my games.

This is the message he sent me:

"I might also buy the super mario world.

It is late at night here and I have to go to bed.

I will have a look tomorrow. Do you have any other complete/sealed Nes/Snes games?

I will be opening them to play them but often like to buy sealed as they are usually mint.

I will send payment tomorrow. "


WHYYYY?

Heh, that's quite the issue.

It's akin to "I would be honored to adopt your puppy when you move. I'll of course be eating it, but it will be delicious".

I won't sell games to such buyer. It's a blasphemy.

why dont they just buy a regular one for 10 bucks? are people THAT OCD?

Yep. I knew one woman on ebay who bought some really expensive games. Some of them were sealed genesis games from vgsloki. Later she left some negative feedback and i asked her why. She told me she opened the games and found out they were used. LOL
I asked her why she bought sealed games to open em at all????
She told me that .. "I like to buy new games, so that i am sure they are complete with everything".

I know this woman you are talking about. typeokittie or something.

yep.

my friend called me, said she had bought some sealed games from him to play. Then wanted money when some of the inside papers were damaged or something. Total lier and psycho.

your friend is vgsloki?

hehe... a good friend you have then. Ask him does he still have sealed Phantasy Star 2?

No. Not vgsloki.

I see. As far as i remember he was the only one who got negged by her.

She threatens negative if you dont please her with money

THat's a women way.

Dark Sol wrote:THat's a women way.

No. A bitch way

She did the same thing to me. All sellers should put her on their blocked bidder list.

If they are SNES games, then why not just play emulator's, and keep the actual game in sealed condition? Are people really that desperate to play the actual game on the actual console? In which case, why not just buy a used cart? Even if they bought the sealed copy to keep themselves and a cart to play it would make some sense

I don't see any kind of moral dilemma here. If someone buys something from me, what they do with it is up to them. It's not up to me to dictate what another person does with their property. If you made a deal with him already, it would be immoral NOT to sell to him.

he bought my starfox and I shipped it to him. The game is worth about $40 in the condition its in. I would probably not ship if it were a rarer game

Captain_of_Industry wrote:I don't see any kind of moral dilemma here. If someone buys something from me, what they do with it is up to them. It's not up to me to dictate what another person does with their property. If you made a deal with him already, it would be immoral NOT to sell to him.

Your absolutly correct. But the issue of this person bartering money back after opening the games is the problom, not her unsealing the games.

yobo wrote:

Captain_of_Industry wrote:I don't see any kind of moral dilemma here. If someone buys something from me, what they do with it is up to them. It's not up to me to dictate what another person does with their property. If you made a deal with him already, it would be immoral NOT to sell to him.

Your absolutly correct. But the issue of this person bartering money back after opening the games is the problom, not her unsealing the games.

The woman you're talking about is not the subject of the OP.

OH NO NOT THIS WOMAN!!!!

Well, you must ask yourself: do I care more about getting more money, or helping fellow collectors?

If you care mostly about money, then sell it to whoever will pay a price you are happy with, and let them use it to start a campfire if they want to. That's their business, once it's their property. To suppose that you should control someone else's property is one of the greatest immoral heights one can reach. If you want to control it, keep it as your own property.

At the other extreme, you might want to only sell it to people that you know want to collect it.

Now keep in mind, there is no reason to think that you should not be entitled to sell it for what you can get for it. Some people call that greed; most people recognize it simply as business. You paid money to get it; why not get money when you sell it? And since no-one will compensate you if you sell it for less than you paid, why should anyone criticize the extra if you sell it for more?

On the reverse though, in a way, it is healthy to think of reserving your sealed games only for sale/trade to sealed collectors as being a kind of business, too. After all, most people here will agree that some of their rarest purchases/trades could only happen because a fellow collector offered to sell or trade something that they were looking for. This is in some ways a risky business, because you never know who will be interested in what and when. On the other hand, deals between honest, well-known collectors can be far less risky that an eBay purchase, especially for high-value items.

The middle ground is to try to sell it with conditions, such as keeping it sealed. This is silly for this kind of transaction, for far too many reasons, most of which should be obvious.

Personally, I am happy to sell my games for whoever will pay what I want to charge, whatever they want to do with it. I figure that so much priceless history is lost every day, that a factory-sealed video game hardly compares, and doubly not when I am not responsible for using my money to prevent it. If it were somehow the last Factory Sealed copy in existence, the question might be different; but then again, if that were the case, I'm sure that in that case true collectors would easily outbid anyone who wanted to buy it and open it. So don't worry about that. Having said that, I often try to take the long view, and typically prefer to reserve my best items for fellow collectors. As I said above, it's a business strategy. It reduces the risk of fraud, and it helps encourage fellow collectors to consider me when they deal with me in the future - and I do expect to deal with most of them again in the future.

If you want to keep sealed games in the circulation, that's noble, but I think you're just having a knee-jerk-reaction to the though if a game being unsealed, without considering that this game in question is probably nowhere near rare enough that another collector will be bothered by missing this opportunity to collect it sealed. Consider who loses by you wanting your particular game to remain sealed; chances are, at this point in time, it'll only be you.