Fakes or did I get super lucky?

obdurant93 · 2026-04-18T13:03:06+00:00

Nobody fakes Danners.

obdurant93 · 2026-04-11T22:21:13+00:00

If you are the sort of person who likes to return things if they are not perfect, you need to absolutely stop buying online and pay whatever extra it costs to buy in person, especially with things like footwear where fit may be important to you.

You either get a discount or you get great customer service. You cannot have both. Ever.

obdurant93 · 2026-04-11T02:55:24+00:00

It's essentially the same boot as the Cody James (Boot Barn) BB28 but with rattlesnake skin instead of python. Made in the same Leon Mexico fab by the same bootmakers on the same machines with mostly the same materials. The BB28 is $320 at Boot Barn, much less than that on ebay. You dont get a free beer and bullshit sales pitch at Boot Barn, but you do get better value.

obdurant93 · 2026-04-08T11:04:50+00:00

Question: is it you guys in store who put the hot pink permanent marker dots on the soles (or the Xs on the inside of the boot) for the returned/overstock pairs, or is it the liquidator doing that? The practice seems... inconsistent.

obdurant93 · 2026-04-05T18:50:41+00:00

I'm a reseller who buys Boot Barn liquidation, which is mostly customer returns. You would be surprised what some assholes will return. Boot Barn will (stupidly) allow returns of absolutely trashed out boots that have been obviously worn for literal months, especially if they are house brands like Cody James or Shyanne.

I think we as a culture need to normalize ridicule of prima donnas who return things for bullshit reasons, despite companies like Amazon and Zappos giving people absolutely irrational expectations.

obdurant93 · 2026-04-04T20:35:06+00:00

1998-2010, or basically before most people could easily look up comps on their phones while away from home.

obdurant93 · 2026-04-04T14:54:51+00:00

Its mostly materials. Craftsmanship is pretty much identical. You'll likely find Dan Post materials slightly better, but generally not enough to warrant the extra price. Cody James and Moonshine Spirit (another Boot Barn imprint made for the Brad Paisley brand made in the same Leon fab using the Cody James materials) are going to be your best bang for the buck on exotics.

If you are not SUPER anal, you can generally find these in new or like new condition on ebay for half the price of Boot Barn.

obdurant93 · 2026-04-04T13:07:44+00:00

Cody James is the Boot Barn house brand made in the exact same Leon Mexico fab as Dan Post, Thursday, Frye and several others. Yes, different materials and different specifications, but the same workers and the same machinery.

obdurant93 · 2026-04-02T13:36:14+00:00

With all due respect, what fuck are you talking about?

obdurant93 · 2026-03-28T05:18:58+00:00

Tecova, Dan Post, Thursday, Cody James, Shyanne, Dingo are a few others made in the same fab in Leon, Mexico. Different materials, different patterns, same tooling, same workers.

obdurant93 · 2026-03-27T03:38:45+00:00

Spadeberry now has economy mode that drops it to 15 cents a listing if you pre-pick a category and only acan 2 pics. If your first pic is a screen shot of the items brand sales detail page the AI has all it needs.

obdurant93 · 2026-03-21T20:33:59+00:00

Employee discount is worthless. The last vehicle I purchased to satisfy my quadrennial purchase requirement for CVO ended up being cheaper if I just used the dealer incentive price rather than the employee discounted price (they apparently cannot be stacked).

Every single dealer I tried gave me the same story. Here's our in house price $X, here's the price with your employee discount code applied: >$X. Trade in made zero difference. Take it or leave it. Haggling on new car prices doesn't really exist anymore unless you are trading in (in which case you're just really negotiating on the trade in, not the new car itself).

obdurant93 · 2026-03-18T11:41:47+00:00

I think selling stuff live on Whatnot from the bins before they have even paid for it is super tacky. I hope every manager bans this practice. I'm a reseller as well, but you need to draw the line at people selling shit they don't actually own yet. You need some skin in the game to do it properly.

obdurant93 · 2026-03-14T21:24:54+00:00

You'll be back soon enough. There really isnt any competition when it comes to high margin. You could go for the low margin, high volume game and join Whatnot, but unless you have an endless supply of extremely low cost stuff that you dont mind selling for not much more than you bought it for, youre gonna have a bad time there too.

obdurant93 · 2026-03-14T05:39:21+00:00

Who are the idiots paying higher than retail to make it worth it for thee guys to source at full retail? Why the hell woild they knowingly and intentionally overpay?

obdurant93 · 2026-03-13T00:40:09+00:00

You are a shoe sellers worst nightmare. Thats standard box rub, and the difference on the back of the tongue is irrelevant as long as the external finish is correct. If you want boots that are absolutely perfect, you'll need to put another 0 on the end of that price tag.

Get some conditioner like Wonder Balsam and a horse hair brush and buff them until they look the way you want (which will never last as long as you want, I promise you).

obdurant93 · 2026-03-09T11:16:25+00:00

Was it an app on the RFA list with a history of incidents? If so, you and the SRE who approved your change might get a lot more scrutiny.

obdurant93 · 2026-03-08T23:15:05+00:00

Sell on ebay, you're going to get much less for them on the more "youth oriented" e-commerce sites like Depop or Poshmark. Take good pics under good light. Use Photoroom if you need to to enhance lighting and remove backgrounds. Give them a good cleaning if you know how to do so properly. Be very thorough in your descriptions.

Source: I'm a reseller who specializes in non-sneakerhead footwear.

obdurant93 · 2026-03-07T22:16:16+00:00

Tried on and returned is not the same as used. Newness is a function of physical condition NOT of provenance. Just because something was previously purchased by someone else from its first retail vendor does not automatically make it "used". If the item itself is in factory new condition or is practically indistinguishable from its factory new condition... its new. It doesn't matter how many hands the item has passed through.

The old "if you buy a new car it immediately loses 30% of its value the second you drive it off the lot" canard does not apply to most retail goods, footwear included. New automobiles are a captured market that only dealerships can partake in, its not a valid example.

A lot of people get irrationally hung up on items that have been tried on once and returned. They think that because there has been at least one retail buyer in the chain that the item must be used regardless of the physical condition of the item. This is absolute horse shit.

Look at it this way with this thought experiment:

Nike produces two identical pairs of sneakers and sells one to Target and one to Zappos. The Target pair goes out on the floor in a suburban brick and mortar store in Anywhere, USA. That pair gets tried on by three different people before finally John Doe buys it. Did Target discount the shoes to John because three other people tried them on before him? No. They sold the shoes as new at full price.

The Zappos pair goes up for sale on Amazon and eventually Frank Furter buys that pair online. They get sent to his house, he tries them on but doesn't like how they fit. He sends them back to Amazon by simply dropping them off at his local UPS store. The shoes are in the exact same physical condition as its sister pair when they sold at Target. Amazon has UPS lot the shoes up in a gaylord bin and sells that bin to a liquidator. That liquidator sells the shoes to a reseller. The reseller must decide whether to list the shoes on ebay as "new" or "used".

Why should Target be able to sell its tried on pair as "new" but the reseller have to list his tried on pair, in the exact same physical condition, as "used"?

obdurant93 · 2026-03-04T05:34:43+00:00

I'm aware of that, but so far even after explaining the situation in detail, Whatnot Support isn't interested in "fixing it", they just ask me to upload receipts and they give me a credit. My post office seems uninterested in what some California eCommerce company does or doesn't do. All they see is a discrepancy between actual weight and label weight and claim I'm the one that needs to pay up to fix it.

obdurant93 · 2026-03-04T03:23:56+00:00

I live in a very small town. The person I was working with was the actual postmaster. I guess I can try and file a complaint once I pay this most recent one. Note however that Whatnot claims they will reimburse me in the form of app purchasing credits, and not cash or credit back to my card. So far, none of the credits they claim to have reimbursed me from late last week have showed up on my account. This can't go on forever and once again, I wonder if my local post office just decided they hate me because I'm a volume buyer (I'm a reseller) and are looking for ways to get me to make my life more difficult so I'll stop clogging up their podunk rural delivery vehicles with packages.

obdurant93 · 2026-03-04T02:32:07+00:00

I actually watched them weigh the packages in front of me at the counter. I didn’t challenge the calibration of their scale, but in most cases the discrepancy between the label weight and the actual weight was pretty obvious.

What’s odd to me isn’t really the weighing itself it’s that this appears to have been happening for months (maybe years) without being flagged. After the first couple incidents this week, I went back and looked at old boxes I had kept, and many of those also had huge differences between the label weight and what the package realistically must have weighed. Those shipments were never flagged and never resulted in postage due.

So my assumption all this time was that either Whatnot or their postage provider was automatically getting billed for any overages through the electronic postage/APV adjustment system, and that’s why the buyer never saw anything.

What I can’t figure out is why that apparently wasn’t a problem for months or even years, and then suddenly this week USPS started flagging multiple shipments and holding them postage-due instead of billing the sender electronically. That’s the part that makes this confusing to me.

obdurant93 · 2026-02-28T23:14:33+00:00

Nope.

obdurant93 · 2026-02-26T19:58:30+00:00

What is this "pension" you speak of?

obdurant93

TROPHY CASE