Forum - View topicDoes Robert's Anime Corner Store ever have sales like RightStuf?
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9972 Location: Virginia |
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@Blood-
I understand where you are coming from, but I don't see the point in expending so much emotion on the issue. As I see it, the best thing to do is to go with whoever gives you the best deal at the time of purchase. You are a bargain hunter, you look for deep sales and try to find OOP stuff cheap. TRSI is almost always going to be your best bet, especially considering shipping considerations. I tend to buy as new stuff comes out, because of that I have to do a lot of price comparison. If prices are about equal, I go with the place that gives the best service. A couple of weeks ago I ordered from both RACS and TRSI on the same day. Each had a program I wanted substantially cheaper than the other. On both orders I chose free shipping. RACS shipped the same day, TRSI shipped a full week later. The size that allows TRSI to give you bargains makes it difficult for them to handle orders that quickly. I don't think simply charging more is "price gouging". That is a term usually used for people who take advantage of a temporary crisis to overcharge for necessities. Gasoline or water in a hurricane is a classic example. I suppose you could include companies that take advantage of a monopoly on a popular item (Aniplex). However even that is a shaky proposition as that is more a business model as repugnant as it may be. Actually Ebay, the Amazon Market Place and other online sellers are as pure a case of supply and demand as you will find. Over charge and someone else will offer it cheaper. Charge high for something in limited supply and others having the item will jump into the market. You are competing at least nation wide and usually world wide. If demand exceeds supply, the price goes up. If not it goes down. It is up to the buyer to decide if an item is worth that much to them. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 24092 |
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I don't disagree with anything you've said, Alan45, and my comments in this thread have been restricted solely to RACS practice of charging OOP prices for OOP items as opposed to capping prices at the MRSP the way TRSI does.
I draw a distinction between a private seller who is trying to get the best possible price for his or her OOP item and a business (no matter how small) that is doing the same thing. Imagine it's Christmas time and the hot toy that year is Tickle Me Barbie. Supplies are getting low and parents are desperate. You go into a toy store and they say, "yeah, we have a few of those items left, but given the demand for them we are going to jack the price beyond MSRP to what private sellers are getting on Amazon and ebay." How would feel about that business? To me, that's exactly what RACS is doing. They are taking advantage of a title's OOP status to charge what private sellers are asking. In this context, when a supposedly legitimate business hikes its prices (well beyond) MSRP due to a factor like OOP, that fits my personal definition of price gouging. |
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 9972 Location: Virginia |
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@Blood-
The difference is that this is not the hot toy at Christmas. It is usually the hot toy from five years ago that was available to everyone for less than MSRP the whole time. It has been sitting taking up warehouse space and hurting the cash flow the whole time or is something they got off the secondary market. RACS is like a lot of businesses that deal with collectibles, they do both primary and secondary markets at the same time. I'm not suggesting you have to buy from them, but I don't see any need for outrage either. I really doubt that anyone in the anime business is getting rich off of it. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 24092 |
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@ Alan45 - I wouldn't say it is something I'm outraged about. I note it and I note the difference between RACS and TRSI and I know which policy I prefer.
And the differences between a hotly desirable Christmas toy and something that has gone OOP are really irrelevant to my point. Both are circumstances where demand exceeds supply and therefore higher than normal prices can be asked. I judge the quality of a business on how it reacts to those kinds of situations. It's nothing big or earth-shattering, it's just the way I roll. |
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 9972 Location: Virginia |
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@Blood-
I expect a lot depends on point of view. I'm seldom in the market for older stuff. I don't see RACS policy as a problem. I do think that RACS is stronger on figures and I find their website easier to deal with. Your mileage may vary. I would hate to lose either company. We need the competition at that level. Both companies can be trusted to provide what you buy (no bootlegs), both have excellent customer service and both offer competitive prices on current stuff. Amazon is the big blue whale of online stores. When things go well they are great. It can be hard to get their attention and I would hate to have them the only game in town. At a lower level, we have a mix of small stores and individuals that may or may not be trusted and may or may not respond if you have a problem. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 24092 |
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Yeah, I agree. I have used RACS only a few times in my collecting career (and only for figures, I believe) but I prefer it continues to exist than otherwise.
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victor viper
 Posts: 630 Location: The deep south |
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Well, there's a cost-benefit analysis lurking in there somewhere. I think we'd all agree there can be no moral objection to big box store X selling Tickle Me Barbie at $20 over MSRP, but there is a high probability of generating some very angry and visible customers, thus costing X much more than the extra profit they'd get by marking up the item. Of course, this conveniently ignores the fact that there might be plenty of consumers who are more than happy to pay that extra $20 for Tickle Me Barbie in exchange for the utility of actually being able to buy the Tickle Me Barbie, but that's another debate. Taken to an extreme, should a comic collector be apologetic for reselling their 12 cent copy of issue #1 of The Amazing Spider Man for $100,000 (or whatever that's going for these days)? Obviously not, since it's simply a function of supply and demand. And, charging prices over MSRP is not without risk; for example if someone license rescues Angel Links, to use my earlier example, and releases a remastered box set of the show for $19, then any copies of the old sets become for all practical purposes worthless. Even worse, not only are they worthless assets, but there has been significant malinvestment as the cost of procuring and storing all that inventory could have been put to an economically productive use. Like I said, I don't know if selling items over MSRP is an optimal business strategy, but that's the one they've gone with. Also, it should be noted that RACS and Rightstuf almost certainly have vastly different business models; I'd guess Rightstuf relies on volume and slimmer margins, while RACS needs higher margins to stay profitable. So comparing the two seems like apples and oranges. I guess debates like this get my inner libertarian/Austrian Economist really going! 
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 9972 Location: Virginia |
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@victor viper
Not just procuring and storing. I understand that companies are required to pay taxes on their existing stock. That is why they have to take inventory every year. This explains a lot of end of the year sales. |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Eh, that sounds like BS to me. It's really not hard to find most OOP items if you're willing to drop the insanely exaggerated prices like he charges. Maybe not on a regular store which has long since sold out at regular price. But there are relatively few items that aren't available at some price on eBay or Amazon marketplace. It's just that, obviously, hardly anybody is going to pay that much money. So he's really helping nobody by matching those prices. Rather, all he's really doing is keeping another copy of a hard to find item out of circulation. And that's what really annoys me about these price gouging tactics: When people try to charge that much for an item that it never seems to actually get sold. I mean, if you're going to charge more than MSRP, that's one thing, but at least pick a vaguely reasonable price with a mind toward actually moving the item and not just letting it sit there for years on end, hoping someone finally decides to splurge. That's where I like eBay auctions. If you've got an OOP item, fine. Throw it up on eBay. Let the demand dictate how much it goes for. But at least at the end of the day, somebody walks away with it. It just bugs me to see items, that people want and would pay a healthy price for, sitting in a warehouse because the seller is holding out for some crazy amount. |
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Akaname
 Posts: 141 Location: MA |
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This might be rather ironic, but RACS everyday price on Nozomi/Lucky Penny titles are usually better than rightstuf's.
Random examples: Junjo Romantica s1 TRSI: $37.49 RACS: $29.98 Hyakko TRSI: $29.99 RACS: $23.98 Ristorante Paradiso TRSI: $29.99 RACS: $23.98 |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 24092 |
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Are you sure about that tax thing? That sounds crazy. Also, I assume in most cases these days isn't taking inventory automated? Do stores still physically count items any more? And I thought year end sales had to do with getting rid of old inventory that clearly wasn't selling to physically make space for new inventory that might move better. |
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 9972 Location: Virginia |
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I'll have to get back to you on the tax thing. I have someone I can ask but I have to wait.
On the subject of inventory, it will depend on the business. I assume that on the level of TRSI and RACS that it is mostly done by computer. Your local brick and mortar store will depend on how computer savvy they are and what they are selling. I've only seen one comic shop try to log out all sales and it wasn't working well for them. However you can only automate it so much. After awhile errors accumulate and stuff goes missing (especially in retail where not all merchandise goes past the register). Periodically you have to go out and verify that what the computer says is accurate. This may be where TRSI "found" some boxes of Tokyo Pop titles. Of course, that may have been found in someone else's warehouse, that is old store stock. |
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Polycell
 Posts: 4623 |
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Even in warehouses things can go missing surprisingly easily(eg, an item gets removed from storage to get packed, the order gets cancelled last minute and then it gets put somewhere else, like at a grocery store when somebody switches out items in their cart) and the computer records might not match reality for other reasons(damage, wrong entry, etc, etc); hand counting is the only way you're ever going to rectify that. The company I work for runs a rolling inventory(it's 24-hour warehouse that never shuts down) specifically for that reason.
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 9972 Location: Virginia |
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Follow-up:
I talked to the proprietor of my local comic shop. She says that she has to inventory her entire stock every year and has to pay taxes to the Federal Government on the wholesale value. She didn't know the exact rate, as it is part of the whole complicated income tax mess. She did say that if something sits in stock for ten years, she has had to pay tax on it every year. Interestingly, she said that this is based on a business model that expects you to turn around your entire stock every six months. This makes sense for an ordinary store but of course doesn't work very well on the collectibles market. It does explain why Hallmark discounts their ornaments every year instead of putting them back in storage until the holiday comes up again. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 24092 |
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Thank you, Alan45, for the info. That is the craziest effing thing I've ever heard. I have no idea if we have something similar in Canada or not, but I suspect we don't.
So basically, your federal government taxes retail businesses for not selling stuff. Wow. Just ... wow. I thought there was some sort of legal principle that things couldn't be taxed twice. But apparently not. |
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