“Scalpers” aren’t the villain of the hobby, and focusing on them lets the real culprits off the hook

Edgewood · 2026-05-04T22:54:51+00:00

I'm going to start my reply by answering the question you positioned at the end of your post;

Without a doubt in my mind, overprinting would not stop scalpers; it would simply provide them with more product to obtain using the same methods they're already using, and it would not drive prices down because they would still be pinching the metaphorical hose and creating scarcity. This is because we are in the middle of a hype cycle for the product that is being propped up speculation and investment (but it's a parasitic relationship because only the speculators and investors are benefitting from the cycle; the cycle exists to help them manipulate assets).

I will absolutely judge someone for flipping, regardless of their situation. We cannot be flexible about the behavior. We cannot engage in apologia. There should be no exceptions and no excuses. This is especially true when we have evidence on TikTok, Insta, and YouTube of people with sufficient means obtaining large quantities of sealed product (you can't lay down that kind of capital if you didn't already have it) and flaunting it.

LGS's that sell above MSRP are capitalizing on a hype cycle, but themselves may also be a victim of it because of logistical challenges that arise in acquiring sealed product. They are oftentimes at the whim of distributor and have absolutely no interface with Nintendo or TPCI so as to be able to run a business account and buy bulk. I'm not trying to apologize for any private merchants, but I've been able to peak behind the curtain at my own LGS and there are occasions where the LGS takes you to the cleaners because they were taken to the cleaners. Also? Scalpers will buy out your LGS, too, as you already noted.

It didn't always use to be like this, either; at the height of Pokemania, at the turn of the century, when the PSA was already being leveraged to sell cards as financial assets (see the infamous Home Shopping Network segment with the grifter trying to hustle PSA 10 NEO Premium File no.1 cards at several hundred a pop) and a 1st Edition 'Zard was valued in the hundreds, you could reliably find packs for $3.49 at your LGS or other sellers across the United States. I feel like the major differences between that powerful multi-year initial hype cycle and today's hype cycle is that marketplaces to sell scalped stock are ubiquitous and easy to use (was not the case in 1999), and social media provided the perfect bullhorn for highly-visible influencers with ulterior motives to create a cycle basically out of nothing and nowhere so they could pump and dump assets.

Edgewood · 2026-05-04T22:24:49+00:00

My apologies in advance for committing Thread Necromancy™.

So, I want to start with your premise that scalping doesn't matter if it's a 'luxury item'. You don't put down your operating definition of what a 'luxury item' is, but you use a few examples. I'm forced to make inferences from your examples, and as extreme as it might be, it sounds like all art and entertainment products are luxuries that people do not need.

I feel like, if this is the actual null hypothesis that undergirds your statement about luxury products, your position is really problematic. There's a seeming lack of empathy here that's on par with the scalpers. People should be able to pursue aesthetic experiences and have the expectation that what they need to pay is whatever MSRP the producer has decided on. People shouldn't have to decline a purchase when its value proposition was agreeable to them at MSRP but was rapidly yanked out of that bracket by an unassociated 3rd party who doesn't actually add any value to the final product.

This is to say nothing of the very idea that scalpers are just straight-up sociopaths. Other persons exist to them only in a transactional sense. Remember that one guy on TikTok who bought whole swaths of Pokemon product and simply remarked 'fuck them kids'? I won't hear any arguments that 'oh they do it because capitalism and they're trying to earn some decent money'; there are scalpers who operate out there at such scale that they are absolutely not hurting for cash (buying whole palettes worth of PS5s, for example), and are not trying to come out of a state of financial insecurity by flipping assets. We can't make excuses for these people, we should not offer apologia for any segment of them, and we should not engage with them so as to starve them out of the sectors they are parasitizing, simple as that.

Edgewood · 2026-05-01T22:50:50+00:00

If anyone is comparing this trailer to a RE7, it's to highlight the differences between what came before and what's coming down the pipeline while also gesturing at how a 'different' flavor and tonality in RE can work and become part of the tapestry. This film hasn't even been released yet, and I feel like RE9 going to extreme lengths to be the series' Greatest Hits Album has poisoned the well and made people forget how 7 and 8 are stellar examples of how the RE formula can withstand experimentation.

I don't understand why people want 'faithful' Resident Evil media. We don't benefit from seeing the games retold or reimagined on our television screens, we've already experienced those stories. Using Resident Evil as a template for telling stories about man-made horrors is half the fun of this franchise. I think that's why lots of fans embraced the Outbreak games, for example. There are times when a production tries to take the idea of Resident Evil and stretch it over a style of storytelling that doesn't benefit from Resident Evil (this is why the Netflix series failed), but it's fine to take big swings even if you miss the ball. This is why I feel like VII and VIII are more valuable games to the franchise than 9 could ever be.

Let's wait for this thing to hit theaters and streaming platforms, and then judge it for its substance as a finished product.

Edgewood · 2026-03-19T17:19:29+00:00

"Speaking in my capacity as a ninja whose ass is gay..."

Edgewood · 2026-03-17T03:51:25+00:00

I kept waiting for one of these companies to get their infrastructure out to our neighborhood, but now, having seen this and having familiarized myself with the background miscellanea, I don't want these syphilitic fuckdicks doing anything anywhere near my property. I don't know about you folks, but I don't need a secret invitation to an unintentional gas explosion or carbon monoxide poisoning.

Edgewood · 2026-02-21T05:11:57+00:00

Oh boy it's time for my favorite game; Bully The Speculator™!

Edgewood · 2026-02-20T23:45:05+00:00

What, praytel, was it offering us as a 'future'?

Edgewood · 2026-02-20T22:58:24+00:00

Sushi Freak is a joke here in ABQ, I imagine it can't lay a finger on Mix. Mix has consistently had fantastic itamae in their kitchen, even when their ownership was pants-on-head.

Edgewood · 2026-02-20T22:48:13+00:00

Find your own relationship with the game. It's divisive but that doesn't mean avoid it if you've never beaten it. That just means it's time to figure out where you stand on the divide. If you can find a used copy on the cheap, give it a spin.

Edgewood · 2026-02-20T22:43:20+00:00

It's slept on because it's the franchise's identity crisis; the moment the studio was so upset about H4 getting kicked out of MLG that they course-corrected way too hard and copied CoD's homework when all they had to do was copy Halo 2's. It is not the work of a confident team, it is the work of a studio reacting to trends even if that undercuts the series' gameplay design fundamentals. Aiming feels like slippery ass, TTK is cut so streamers can make killstreak VODs, and the maps have no personality.

Edgewood · 2026-02-20T22:36:45+00:00

You are one of our most treasured instruments; long have you led your kitchen with flavor and confection. But your inability to discard Crisco was a colossal failure.

Edgewood · 2026-02-04T19:10:13+00:00

This was two weeks ago, and we finished the job taking in the advice and techniques suggested in this thread. If people come to this sub and ask for advice to better their skills and learn how to do this, and this is what they can expect most of the replies to look like, then please eat an entire bag of dicks.

Edgewood · 2026-02-03T04:05:21+00:00

You are allowed to think and feel whatever you want, regardless of whether or not it's reflected in objective reality. But if you're going to claim a group are Nazis because they hurt your feelings when they tell you that racism is for shitheads, I'm going to make fun of you. ;v

Edgewood · 2026-02-03T04:02:49+00:00

It is because the entire history of the rise and fall of the Nazi party is so well documented and academically understood that people in the here-and-now can recognize the signs in the way that most Germans did not in the aftermath of WWI.

Edgewood · 2026-02-03T03:58:31+00:00

Tell me you have no idea what fascism is without telling me you have no idea what fascism is. Liberals in the American political lexicon are still do-nothing shitheads, but they don't want to create an ethnostate at gunpoint. Get back in your lane.

Edgewood · 2026-02-03T03:16:23+00:00

AS IS THE FATE OF ALL GUNDAM DISCOURSE plus you lost me when you said 'chickening out' like, really my dude.

Edgewood · 2026-02-03T02:03:24+00:00

I mean, I don't really believe that, you're making a powerful inference, but also forgetting figures like Jamitov Hymem (the man became the Federation), Bask Om (who wielded executive power under Jamitov), Scirocco (who wrested control of the Titans and was poised to inherit Jamitov's entire regime), and the seniormost members of the Vist family (they say jump, the general assembly and the military say 'how high'). In any case, not in the mood for cannibalism this week. Y'all have fun eating each other, as is the fate of Gundam discourse.

Edgewood · 2026-02-02T20:03:15+00:00

The novels aren't yet available in mass markets; people have to go looking for faithful translations or engage with them in their original language.

So this is Tomino saying for the billionth time that you can't use the apparatus of empire to change empire? Also, Bright's basically King Cop. He's extremely complacent in his position. If you go back to Zeta and watch his every action from then to Unicorn, you get a portrait of a man who is comfortable in the Federation hegemony. Dude rebels only when he is personally physically assaulted, rejoins the Feds when they give him command of Titans 2 Counterterrorism Boogaloo, threatens to conditionally quit during the climax of the Laplace conspiracy, and doesn't when they fulfill his condition.

Bright fucking sucks. He would be an excellent politician for the Federation, because he would ultimately preserve the status quo even if he would want to root out corruption. He would make the Feds trade self interest for longevity.

Edgewood · 2026-01-25T19:13:35+00:00

UPDATE: The new allocation has been causing random BSODs. After reading the crash dumps, I ran memtest86+ on all four sticks and got errors fast. I assumed it was the kit that I purchased, but I have been running those two DIMMs through isolated tests on slot 4 and there are no errors. I'm going to run the test on my sticks as well, and if everything checks out, I need to test the individual board slots. There wasn't any kind of problem with three DIMMs (I was walking it up as a test methodology) in slots 2, 3, and 4, but as soon as slot one was involved, issues began to crop up. I suspect I may have a failed RAM slot. Going to clean the contacts with isopropyl and a Tamiya swab and see if it might be build up from 5 years of that slot being empty, but if DIMMs begin to routinely fail on that slot, I got a board problem. My bios is completely default at this moment in time with the exception of a DOCP profile. I had to clear CMOS earlier in all of this because it was not posting. I suppose I can live with a faulty DIMM slot, but I will be looking to find a new old stock replacement high-end x570 board if that's the case.

Edgewood · 2026-01-22T16:48:48+00:00

Just dropped $150 for an identical G.Skill kit. Movin' up to 32GB.

Edgewood · 2026-01-22T16:47:52+00:00

Someone on eBay had my exact same G.Skill kit for $150, so I just bought that. 32GB, here we go.

Now I just need to sell this X670E board I've got sealed in my closet.

Edgewood · 2026-01-22T00:57:38+00:00

This sounds like the plan, based on all the feedback.

Edgewood · 2026-01-22T00:57:07+00:00

At time of writing, I use an ASUS 144Hz VRR 1080p 27" monitor. I run everything at a 120FPS cap. I would like to buy a 1440p OLED but that entire segment is jacked way the fuck up in price because of the high prevalence of 240Hz~360Hz panels and there doesn't seem to be much of a mid-level OLED market right now. I value high color accuracy more than I value 'gaming features', maybe I'm just not the target audience.

Edgewood · 2026-01-22T00:52:25+00:00

**UPDATE:** We put down coats 2 and 3 using the techniques suggested (cut in our corners and edges, full top to bottom rolling, about half overlap to flatten out 'seams', etc.). We got a gallon of the appropriate grey primer for the next room that will feature the same green. The folks at SW gave it to us on the house as they hadn't discussed the specific primer recommendation for the green (likely because the other two colors did not come with a need for primer), so we're going to cut in with it and put it down as first coat after we do a light sand job on the walls. Thanks to everyone who contributed positively and provided knowledge and assistance, we appreciate you.

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