[typicalrunt]

I grok capitalism and even like it. But there are times where it is difficult to like it. In this case, people rushed to buy this product for the sole purpose of reselling it for 8x. What's wrong with our society that some people can be so morally bankrupt and bereft of good sense.

In the end, I think these scalpers won't sell for 8x because anintendo will just pump out more product. Still, it is sad to see this happen.

[e40]

What's wrong with our society that some people can be so morally bankrupt and bereft of good sense.

This type of behavior is literally all around us. I recently listened to a podcast about this exact phenomenon. It featured a couple that had a special rug that drove cats crazy. They sold it on amazon for ~$35. A bunch of people bought them up and sold them on ebay for a lot more, using the drop-ship method (the reseller ordered it using their amazon account with the buyers shipping address).

When people realized they were being ripped off, they returned it to the original seller, who had to handle the claims due to requirements by amazon. They lost 10's of thousands of $$. The creator called some of the people doing this and they laughed him off, telling him they were doing nothing wrong.

It was on planet money's podcast, I think. I can try and find it if you're curious.

[toomuchtodo]

The problem isn't the arbitrage (which is a core component of capitalism and profit [1]) these people are utilizing, its Amazon's draconian policy towards sellers.

[1] Hat tip to patio11: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087930

> They're likely using one of the world's oldest business models: "Buy things for $1, sell them for $2."

[kbenson]

Episode 724: Cat Scam[1]

1: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/09/14/493810206/episo...

[zizee]

As a side note, that episode left me wondering why the original seller didn't open their own eBay store, listing the product at their desired price. I would have thought it would have effectively undercut the resellers and gain a large portion of the sales on eBay.

Another note, Planet Money is pretty much my favourite "always on"* podcast. An podcast about economics might sound dull to some, but what a lot (maybe not on HN) people don't realise is "economics" is a really a study of human behaviour at the macro level, and a large part of human behaviour at the micro level.

* serial was hugely addictive, but it only has short seasons, and each episode had what seemed like a huge wait between them.

[edsouza]

The original seller did [0]:

  This summer, Ruckel tried a new approach: He put his own product on eBay and titled it “All other eBay sellers are fake.” A few weeks later, he stumbled upon an eBay listing with a familiar title. “All other eBay sellers are fake,” it said. It wasn’t his, of course.

[0] https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/278622

[kbenson]

> As a side note, that episode left me wondering why the original seller didn't open their own eBay store, listing the product at their desired price. I would have thought it would have effectively undercut the resellers and gain a large portion of the sales on eBay.

Yeah, as long as they were aggressive in making sure there were on multiple marketplaces, and came up first in searches, that would probably be the best response. The bit gain here isn't really the extra sales on the other marketplaces, it's the reduced returns which eat into their profits.

> Another note, Planet Money is pretty much my favourite "always on"* podcast. An podcast about economics might sound dull to some, but what a lot (maybe not on HN) people don't realise is "economics" is a really a study of human behaviour at the macro level, and a large part of human behaviour at the micro level.

Also one of my favorites. I also enjoy Freakonomics. For anyone that enjoys well produced podcasts, I highly recommend just about everything Gimlet Media produces. It was founded by one of the original founders of Planet Money (Alex Blumberg), and they've gotten quite few NPR alumni at this point (mostly from This American Life, which is basically a expert podcast production training ground at this point, Planet Money spawned from that as well). My current favorites are:

- Startup - Excellent. They've gone through a few seasons now. I recommend starting at the beginning.

- Reply All - For the most part excellent. They occasionally to into weird territory, but I laugh during their episodes quite often. The interplay between the hosts is great. Like friends that are kind of assholes to each other because they've been friends for so long, and you get a front row seat.

- Science Vs - A new favorite of mine. At first I wasn't sure what to make of the delivery, which is very campy, but now I think it's perfect for what can be fairly dry subject matter.

- Heavyweight - If you know who Jonathan Goldstein is, or have listened to This American Life enough to recognize his voice (and if you've heard it before, you probably will), you'll have a good idea of what you're in for. I recommend starting with Episode #2 to see if you like it, because it's amazing in both the names involved and the audacity of the idea. That said, I did tear up at the end of #1, as I have brothers of my own.

- Mystery Show - Also excellent, but no longer continuing. Another TIL alumni, Starlee Kine.

There's others in there too, which are all fairly good, but these, along with a smattering of others[1] I listen to are more than enough for me to handle. That said, Gimlet does have a triplet of new shows for their "fall lineup"[2], and some of those sound great too. Okay, that's enough about Gimlet, I've just been really happy about the quality of podcasts lately, and they've contributed a lot to that I think. Radiotopia seems to be the other (different) group that's got some quality content.

It's kind of amazing that since I only really listen to them when in the car, I sometimes look forward to running errands just so I get a few more minutes in to listen.

1: 99% Invisible, Criminal (I believe Gimlet hired one of the founders of this for one of their new shows), Real Time with Bill Maher, Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project, The Memory Palace.

2: https://gimletmedia.com/2016/11/01/introducing-gimlets-fall-...

[Lawtonfogle]

The problem is finding which point was wrong. What behavior was done here that should be discouraged or banned by society? People don't like the outcome, but where should the government intervene?

[savanaly]

I feel like if you truly groked capitalism, you would be able to point out lots of its flaws, but also to realize that scalping is definitely not one of them.

With supply limited like this, the optimal social outcome is for the X units produced to go to the X people in the world who would value them most, in other words the people who would be willing to pay the most (only exception I can think of to this is if someone values it at V dollars and only has a net worth of W dollars where W < V, but for the sums we're talking about with the NES I think almost everyone either has or can scrounge up V).

In the final accounting with reselling on amazon, the goods end up where they are most highly valued. Sure, if we held a lottery to see who gets to buy the NESs at the sticker price rather than auctioning them, the people winning the lottery would be more happy than the people who end up winning the auction. But as a whole, society would be impoverished since it's an inefficient distribution (no room to prove it in a HN post, but it's not too hard to work out on paper when tallying up the welfare of nintendo, the scalpers and all the people who get to buy the NES under one scenario or the other).

[typicalrunt]

I do understand capitalism, the point I made was that sometimes I don't have to like it. Scalping included.

I don't need to prove my knowledge to you by pointing out lots of capitalism's flaws. Instead of reading my comment carefully, you decided to teach me about how basic supply and demand operate. Jesus, you are a self-absorbed piece of work.

[savanaly]

I'm truly sorry if my comment affected you negatively, it wasn't my intention. I used to be an econ tutor and sometimes my urge to just type my thoughts that way comes out and I regret that it sounds like lecturing.

Anyways, why do you think that, given all that, scalping is a bad thing then? Isn't getting the goods to where they're valued most a good thing? Who's getting heartbroken here? The people who can't afford one at the market price of $600? But most of them weren't going to get one anyways because of the limited supply. If there's something to not like it's the scarcity, right?

[TeMPOraL]

A problem I see is that the reseller is getting money for creating an artificial scarcity (buying off the stock of the original seller). It doesn't feel to me like an ethical behaviour. You portray it as making an unsolicited offering to the Gods of the Market on behalf of the original seller, but I don't think many people find a positive value in that. On the other hand, compare an example situations without scalping, and with 5x scalping:

  NO SCALPING
  Original seller gets: 1x price
  Customer pays: 1x price
  
  5x SCALPING
  Original seller gets: 1x price
  Reseller gets: 4x price
  Customer pays: 5x price

This is simple leeching. Customers pay 5x the price they could have, the seller gets still just the original amount of money. I think the situation is strictly worse than without scalping.

There are other arguments for and against to be made, but I think this one is enough to see why many people - myself included - find this practice distasteful and antisocial.

[savanaly]

Ok, put in that light I understand why there's a gut reaction of negativity. But when evaluating economic welfare of society, it is nearly an iron-clad rule to view all humans equally, and the scalpers are no exception. So we should try to push back against our gut reaction and look at it rationally.

Once we accept that the welfare of resellers matters just as much as customers, it's clear that the situation is not strictly worse with scalping.

As you helpfully tallied up there, the gains and losses of everyone involved is the same in terms of money changing hand in either case, but in the latter case of scalping, the world is richer, because in addition to the money you paid or lost, people in the world who have an NES celebrate it to the degree they like the NES. And that has to be higher for the people who won it via auction rather than blind luck.

I can see an objection coming, and that's that in the real world it's not blind luck, since often the people in a no scalping world camp out for days to try and be the winners of the lottery. But this is not a good outcome, because while this does mean that the people who value the NES most will tend to get it, it also leads to ruinous competition in terms of who is willing to spend the most time in line. The hours wasted to the line have to then be counted as a negative in the tally and that makes that option arguably worse than the blind lotto and certainly worse than the auction.

[matwood]

To really create the scarcity the scalper must continue to buy all of the items that come out. That is not going to happen, because they never created the scarcity in the first place. Nintendo released too few items to start, and possibly charged too low of price.

The customer is also not forced to pay anything. There is typically a short timeframe where the items are out of stock.

I personally find tons of value in scalping. I've done it myself with tickets, and bought tickets in the same manner. It lets me trade time (waiting at a website or in line) for money.

[witty_username]

If it were easy to scalp, people would do it themselves, so it is nontrivial.

Scalpers also make it easier to buy the product; without scalping one can not be sure whether one will get the product or not.

[matwood]

Your comment was fine. Too many people do not like scalping because it 'feels' unfair. Unfair is defined as buying said limited quantity item when they want at the price they want. It also touches into the very present class warfare undertone that is so prevalent right now. "Some rich person can go get one for $500 without (waiting in line|getting up at 4am|etc...), but I can't."

Personally I like scalping because I can almost always buy what I want as opposed to no option. It has always worked out well for tickets and items.

[paraiuspau]

It's a rare thing to have someone actually apologise online - have an upvote.

[jandrese]

Scalping is definitely sub-optimal. The reason being that it rewards a middleman, not the person doing the effort. It discourages labor.

A proper capitalist system for an event like a concert would have everybody enter bids for the seats, and once the venue fills up (or on the date of the event) the seats are assigned based on the bids. Of course if you're poor and the event is popular then capitalism says you're SOL. Money is everything and without money you are nothing.

One nice thing about this system is that prices are set by the people, not by the venue. People pay exactly what they think the performance is worth and no more. Artists get direct feedback as to how popular their act is.

[Chinjut]

The person willing to pay the most may not be the person who most desires it, considering the differing marginal utility of money across the vast spectrum of income/wealth inequality. Trump can buy on a lark what I would only shell out for as a matter of deepest, life-or-death desire.

(See also: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/10/do-economists-actuall..., http://www.demos.org/blog/12/23/14/when-inequality-ruins-ana..., http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/5822.html, and http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/5117.html for more on this same point)

[childifchaos]

How is this "morally bankrupt"? It's just smart. Every business on earth would do this in there sector if they had the chance.

What's wrong with a smart and clever individual buying this to resell at 8x? It's not hurting anyone, it's just a stupid retro console.

What's wrong with society? People are struggling and getting screwed over by governments and big business, they badly need income and here is a small opportunity to get a piece of that pie.

Ultimately someone that wants the product who is happy to pay the price that it is sold for, because they deem it worth that price, ends up with the product in there life. And someone else manages to profit to, to gain some much needed income so they can purchase something they want in there life.

Hardly morally bankrupt. There is no change in the outcome here. There are still the same amount of people with these consoles, enjoying them as before. Nobody is hurt.

In fact you could argue that someone doing this is a net gain, because two people gain instead of one. Someone made a profit that wouldn't otherwise and someone got the console they wanted (and obviously didn't care about the price)

[ferdbold]

We're not talking about "smart and clever individuals" here. We're talking about scalper bots gaming the system by buying all of the product literally seconds after the seller flipped the switch. This isn't fair for the consumer at all as the product has literally been taken hostage by some third-party with unfair advantage. It's the 21st century equivalent to plundering trade routes.

Also, I don't think the nature of the product has any influence on the morals of the practice, I find it despicable no matter what is being sold.

[Jommi]

There is no plundering happening here. Nobody is streaming anything, everyone has made their decision.

Nintendo for some reason sold a too low quantity, and now the price is high, as denoted by Basic Economics. Its not like this was free money for the scalpers, they took a risk and estimates the demand for the product.

Now people who want it the most, can get it. Those who dont want it that mucj, dont get it. Its absolutely logical, and in no way immoral.

[bitJericho]

Plundering? You think Nintendo doesn't get their cut. Back in the age of discovery these types of products would sell for their actual, top end value period. The distributors never got a say.

[derefr]

Market arbitrage is 'wrong' insofar as, if someone "deems [the product] worth that price", then the compensation for the created value should go to the people who created that value. To do otherwise is to deprive the market of the signalling tokens (dollars) it uses to propagate information about what things there should be more of, back to the people who make things.

The ultimate arbitrage, after all, is communism, where a central actor soaks up all the profits, and then is left with the responsibility of figuring out who should make more of what themselves, because hell if the producers know.

[mikeash]

The only people depriving the market of the signaling tokens are the sellers charging an price where they know that demand will far outstrip their ability to supply the product.

The market way to handle a small supply of a popular product is to charge a high price, so that purchases equal production. All the compensation goes to the people who created the value, and the people who value the product the most are the ones who are able to obtain it.

Of course, Nintendo doesn't want to charge $1,200 (or whatever) for this product, because it would make people upset. So they set an artificially low price and deal with shortages for a while. Or maybe the shortages are a feature, driving demand through perceived social pressure.

They're certainly allowed to do that. But that's Nintendo screwing with the market and trying to defy economics. Arbitrageurs are just putting things back the way they would naturally be.

Note how companies and industries which are not afraid to charge high prices for products in high demand rarely suffer from scalpers.

[eridius]

> It's not hurting anyone, it's just a stupid retro console.

It's hurting the people who are forced to pay $600 for a $60 item because they need one (e.g. a must-have gift for someone).

It's hurting the people who wanted to buy one for $60 but cannot afford to buy one for $600.

So yeah, it's hurting basically everybody who had any interest in buying the product.

[enneff]

> It's hurting the people who are forced to pay $600 for a $60 item because they need one (e.g. a must-have gift for someone).

LOL at the privilege of this being a real problem for someone. If we were talking about price gouging on food, medicine, or housing then I might agree with you. But luxury gifts? Come on, man.

> It's hurting the people who wanted to buy one for $60 but cannot afford to buy one for $600.

LOL at the idea that they can't just wait for them to manufacture more of them. I mean, the games have been out for nearly 30 years now, right?

[metaphor]

> LOL at the idea that they can't just wait for them to manufacture more of them. I mean, the games have been out for nearly 30 years now, right?

Assuming more are eventually manufactured, which many hope to be the case...in this instance.

On a related personal note roughly 5 years ago, HP released a limited edition of their 15c RPN scientific calculator[1], which promptly sold out and found their way on eBay listing for $100s more. Despite popular demand, HP never manufactured more. I was lucky enough to acquire two units direct from HP at original cost and actively use one--along with a 35s--on a daily basis; the second is a spare that I refuse to part with.

The moral bankruptcy manifests in a willingness to acknowledge that this behavior is unacceptable were the product "food, medicine, or housing" or any commodity that is generally classified as a necessity. In my eyes, the principle of the matter cannot discriminate.

[1] http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/pscmisc/vac/us/product_pdfs/1...

[mikeash]

Why are you blaming scalpers for people's woes with the 15c, rather than blaming HP?

I see no problem with having different standards for necessities than for luxuries. We'd consider it morally reprehensible to deny food to a poor person, but few people have a problem denying yachts to a poor person.

[metaphor]

There's a distinct difference between blaming scalpers for a general shortage of supply and holding them accountable for detestable profiteering behavior.

The point of bringing up the 15c instance was to highlight the apparent assumption that manufacturer supply always trend consumer demand. A large portion of the user community knew in advance that the 15c would be limited release...but so did scalpers as hundreds of units were immediately relisted at super-inflated prices on zero-day. In the end, it's the user community for which the product was intending to target who ultimately loses...which inflames the compromise that I've made in my mind between a legit business incentive to make a fair profit and an underlying hacker ethos.

Furthermore, scalpers have nothing invested in the creation of the end-product, nor do they ever intend to use it, nor is there any value added to their super-inflated relist price, nor do they share in the business risk of bring the product to market. Profiteering is their strict modus operandi. Although it's certainly delusional to think that these bad apples could ever be done away with completely, I think it's equally asinine to point fingers at an OEM (who has invested in and owns the IP rights) without having first excercised due diligence in holding scalpers who are demonstrably contributing to the supply problem publicly accountable for their actions, if only on a moral note. The problem becomes even more exacerbated when technology enables independent scalpers to gain critical mass on a scale that can nerf an entire production lot. It's unfortunate that the only real action the public can take is inaction against scalper relists...it's even more unfortunate that real consequences are practically nonexistent.

What isn't being acknowledged is the very real risk that any company faces with bringing a hardware product to market at scale. Saturate the market with the intent of deterring scalpers and your unsold investment sits in a storage warehouse costing you untold amounts collecting dust. Increase unit cost on the next product lot and suffer consumer outrage. Set the initial cost beyond reasonable profit and you're in price gouging territory. Assuming a sustainable business model, where's the incentive? Again, it's the user community who ultimately loses to the true vectoralist scalper.

The food vs. yacht analogy appears to dismiss reality. In a zero-sum game, the unit cost of a yacht commands a ballpark 6-8 orders of magnitude delta over food. As a society, we indirectly deny poor people yachts on the merit of economic sensibility, not because it's a social luxury; simply replace yacht with a scaleable luxury like cell phone or computer. The notion of an alternative "affordable yacht" is an oxymoron and subjectively exclusive to the wealthy.

[sah2ed]

Wow, this brings back memories.

I remember stumbling on this HP calculator many years ago and struggling to use it for simple infix arithmetic not knowing it was an RPN calculator.

[kbenson]

It seems HP deserves a bit of the blame in this situation as well. Hp could conceivably make more, and at a higher price if needed to cover increased cost, or license production to some other company willing to do so. That they don't/won't speaks to them having a reason to do so. My money would be on not cannibalizing sales from their other calculators (which, let's be honest, are pretty damn expensive). I'm less likely to blame people for taking advantage of a reality than I am HP for making that reality. Let's not forget HP controls supply in this instance.

As for the NES system, what we have are people taking advantage of what is likely a short term supply problem. The cost of these systems is really a premium on people who are not willing to wait for more to come, since I think it's likely that Nintendo will make more.

[metaphor]

I wouldn't say blame in the sense that it implies fault wherein consumers had reasonable expectations to not exist. The 15c was clearly limited production targeting a very niche market (professional scientists and engineers of a certain era). The dubiousness of its release was in the sheer number of them being immediately relisted at super-inflated prices on zero-day.

History tells us that HP made a very clear investment bringing the original 15c to market; it's their IP and their prerogative. I simply can't find reason to fault HP for their business decision, which was likely driven by overall product relevance than cannibalizing sales; 33s and 35s were the only other RPN scientific alternatives at the time, and they're both quite distinct from the 15c. In today's age of touchscreen smart phone proliferation, affordable licensed emulators[1][2] which scale to screen fill that void elegantly...unless you're a modern 20-something-ish Luddite like myself and still don't own a smartphone.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hp.hp15c15...

[2] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hewlett-packard-15c-scientif...

[bunderbunder]

If you're being "forced" to pay $600 for a $60 item because you must buy one right now, perhaps you need to stop and question the nature of your relationship with that person.

If you are so bothered by having to wait for them to come back onto the market at $60 that it hurts you (as opposed to, say, just being a minor annoyance), perhaps you need to stop and question the nature of your relationship with yourself.

[ctdonath]

A thing is worth what another is willing to pay for it.

Nobody needs it to survive. Nobody must give it to someone else. Those who find it worth $600 have the opportunity to buy one, rather than not getting one because they sold out too fast. And there's nothing stopping Nintendo from making more until everyone willing to buy it at $60 (if only to turn around and resell it for 10x) gets one.

I'm tempted to call this a "0th world problem". It's a game. You'll live without it, or at least until you can buy one for list price. Heck, wait a little longer and you can get one for $10.

[AndrewKemendo]

This argument is ridiculous. Otherwise there would be no such thing as luxury goods.

[eridius]

What does luxury goods have to do with anything? A luxury good isn't a regular good that's simply been marked up 10x.

[AndrewKemendo]

That's very nearly the definition of luxury goods, given changes to elasticity with income, with it being explicitly so for veblen goods.

[eridius]

You can't just take any product, mark it up 10x, and call it a luxury good. People would laugh at you and buy the regular one. A luxury good has to have some reason to justify its luxury status.

In this particular case, the $60 NES Classic is already a luxury good. Marking it up 10x doesn't make it more of a luxury good, it just either means people who actually want to use the damn thing can't afford to, or must pay exorbitant prices.

[derefr]

I don't agree that arbitrage hurts consumers (in most cases.) As I said in my sibling comment, arbitrage hurts producers—but it tends to help consumers. If you assume that a good is finite by definition (e.g. a concert ticket), then arbitrage helps the good reach the people who value it the most.

Imagine a world where all concert tickets, no matter where in the stadium they are, cost $60. Imagine that there is no such thing as arbitrage. Obviously, in such a world, the tickets for the best seats will sell out first, since they're the most valuable. But they won't necessarily be well-allocated; they might be sold to people who don't actually care much about where they sit.

Now, introduce arbitrage (i.e. scalpers.) Suddenly, the tickets for the good seats, that are worth more than $60, are able to have that information built into their price. Now people who value seeing the concert from the best seats at $120, won't lose out to people who only valued those same seats at $60, but happened to get there first.

The people who are willing to pay $120, of course, might just be twice as rich, and therefore have about the same utility calculus as the people willing to spend $60 (i.e. it doesn't matter which of the two get the ticket.) But assuming two people with the same income, the one who is willing to pay more should get the ticket. They're willing to trade more of their happiness for it, so it probably will make them more happy.

---

In the case of something like concert tickets, the way to fix this is for the producer themselves to price things at the prices the market will bear, such that they serve the role for the market that scalpers would do otherwise. To soak up all the arbitrage-able value themselves.

But in cases that aren't like concert tickets—and consumer electronics certainly qualifies—the "right thing to do" is to just make more of the thing. Scalpers don't exist when a company is relying on unit economics of profit margins for their total profits, and will gladly up supply to meet demand (and will also attempt to predict initial demand, and bring initial supply online so as to meet that as well.)

Companies can choose not to do this, of course. Mainly, companies avoid doing this because their profits aren't built around unit economics. Neither Prada bags nor Magic: The Gathering "legendary" cards are produced to meet demand; they're instead produced to be fought over.

But if the company does build their profits on unit economics, then that leaves you with two options for why they're 'underproducing': either they have to, because they have a tight logistics pipeline and the product wouldn't be revenue-positive if they made that pipeline "wider" for the sake of higher initial production (as happens with each new iPhone); or they're just doing it to have some of the "cachet" of the collector's items rub off on them.

In both cases arbitrage will necessarily happen. In the first case, the company themselves are mostly blameless. In the second, it's entirely the company's "fault" that people are paying $600.

Either way, this arbitrage is still helping consumers—at the expense of the company. But when it's done for cachet, it's certainly a "hoist by their own petard" sort of situation: the company are throwing away money they could have made, and letting scalpers pick it up, all for the sake of signalling (advertising) that they're a classy company (which—if people don't already believe this, they're not likely to start just because of one event like this.)

---

Mind you, Nintendo is probably in the former category, not the latter. The production run for the Classic NES is probably on a minimal pipeline, designed to not leave Nintendo with any units left over once the buying is done.

[eridius]

Arbitrage does not help consumers. Arbitrage helps the subset of consumers that can afford the higher prices, but it hurts the consumers that can't. Your example with concert tickets only makes sense if all consumers have the same amount of discretionary income, but that's not representative of the real world.

[derefr]

The thing is, in the case where arbitrage doesn't exist, people without discretionary income still lose—because people with discretionary income can trade that income for someone else's time, which they can use to reserve more slots in any sort of a non-monetarily-determined distribution system (paying them to stand in line for them to get a first-come-first-served finite good; paying them to enter a raffle for them; etc.)

Adding arbitrage just makes this process more efficient, by allowing the richer consumers to express their desires directly, rather than having to hire someone (or, more likely, pay a service to hire someone, or use someone they already retain for miscellaneous tasks) to spend their time (exchanged for money) to acquire the good. Either way, richer consumers will preferentially acquire goods in a market; that's one of the fundamental properties of markets, and can't really be divorced from them.

[nommm-nommm]

This thing is a gimmick, just download the games you want to play on Wii's virtual console.

[jimmies]

Oh no, I'm so sorry to hear that you're hurt! Where does it hurt with regard to your feelings?

In the mean time, you can remedy the hurt with an SD card, and a Raspberry Pi Zero that you could buy at the nearest MicroCenter for the price of 0.99 and half an hour of loading RetroPie on it.

[salmonet]

Nintendo deserves some of the blame. They most likely created this shortage on purpose to create press.

[crooked-v]

> bereft of good sense

Investing money in something that is nigh-guaranteed to have excellent returns is very good sense for anyone with the time and effort to spend on reselling the product.

[edgarvaldes]

And, let's be sincere here, this is not some essential item, like food or shelter.

[metaphor]

Agreed. It's quite sad that the impetus is on Nintendo to flood the market with product. As of this post, there were 3,800+ posts on eBay[1]; there's at least an entire page-full listing Buy It Now @ $1000 or more.

[1] http://www.ebay.com/sch/?_nkw=nes%20classic%20edition

[AndrewKemendo]

This is one way that markets clear prices when demand edges production. There's are many ways to do it, for example auctions. In this case the price sensitivity of the market is lower than the producer set, so the market is willing to pay more for the good than the product is selling it at.

When this pricing mismatch happens, there is the ability to close the pricing gap through repricing by a third party otherwise known as arbitrage.

This is one of the more important functional requirements for a market and the producer can take advantage of this based on how they price. Nintendo could have priced the system much higher and seen the same output but it may not have made as big if a splash, so really it's Nintendo driving this frenzy because they and all other major companies are good at this.

It's not a big it's a feature (really in this case).

[r00fus]

I really don't see why Nintendo didn't produce a bit more on launch - I mean, they're not some kickstarter newbie - don't they have some skills in demand-forecasting?

[jedberg]

When you hear about how the latest Nintendo is sold out everywhere, it makes you want one more.

They have slow production on purpose. If you could walk into any store and get one, it wouldn't be nearly as big a deal.

[bunderbunder]

Not to mention that having the production capacity to meet initial demand on a popular product would be an huge waste of money.

Best case scenario, a week or two after launch, the vast majority of that capacity would be sitting idle after the initial rush is over and the purchase rate tapers off. Worst case scenario, the product isn't as popular as you anticipated and you've got a big ol' writedown to deal with. (Atari anyone? Blackberry tablet?)

[odbol_]

Plus, you can just go to any garage sale and buy one of the original consoles with 100s of games for like $20

[maxerickson]

I don't seek out garage sales but look for old Nintendos when I end up at one and I never see them, never mind for cheap with a pile of games.

[Spooky23]

It spikes demand. Crazy parents run all over the place looking for it.

The winners are Nintendo, who gets sales in the 1Q, which is normally death for this kind of product, and the retailers, who get parents visiting daily and buying other crap.

My brother spent weeks looking for the "cream pie in the face game" last year. In the process, he picked up a half dozen other board games.

[gohrt]

I don't see how people buying knockoff (but in-stock!) consoles will hep Nintendo sell more Nintendos

[TeMPOraL]

> What's wrong with our society that some people can be so morally bankrupt and bereft of good sense.

I don't know, but I shun, punish (by refusing to do business with them) and counter-market such people whenever I can. It's one thing to take a good and resell it for a larger price to a different audience; you're in essence making it more accessible and also take on some distribution headache, and thus deserve to cash in. That's how almost every brick and mortar store works. But it's another thing to buy off someone's stock only to turn around and resell it for more to the same customer base. That's, in my opinion, just plain sliminess.

[matwood]

> What's wrong with our society that some people can be so morally bankrupt and bereft of good sense. In the end, I think these scalpers won't sell for 8x because anintendo will just pump out more product. Still, it is sad to see this happen.

Morally? It's a video game. Scalpers are fine. Blame Nintendo for not making more of them or charging a higher price so the limited supply met demand. Everyone will have their NES Classic in a month or two.

[inimino]

Why do you think this is morally bankrupt? We aren't talking about wheat, but a superfluous luxury item. Where's the moral argument?

[nilved]

It might not have seemed that way in writing, but in reading your post is contradictory. If the motivation for a person to do this is lost on you, you don't grok capitalism; and if that bothers you, you don't like capitalism.

[z3t4]

With high margins more entreprenors will enter the market. But in this case nintendo have a monopoly.

[morgante]

What exactly is "morally bankrupt" about buying a mispriced good and reselling it at a proper price?

People get very morally righteous about scalping, but I don't understand why at all. Resellers are correcting a distortion in the market and providing a value-added service.

[pluma]

The only value they add is amplifying the scarcity.

How it normally works is this:

* Some person sells something locally for $x

* There is demand outside that location for the same product

* Someone buys the product locally for $x and sells it elsewhere for $y > $x

* Customers are provided access to a product they would otherwise not be aware of or not have access to, the reseller makes money from the margin, the producer can produce and sell more product, everybody wins

How it works in this case:

* Some person sells something for price $x at a limited quantity

* Someone buys up all the product for $x and resells it for $y > $x

* Customers are prevented from accessing the product at the original price, the reseller makes money from the margin, the producer doesn't gain any advantage, only the reseller wins

Can you honestly not see how this is different? It's morally bankrupt because it offers no value to anyone and entirely profits from the charity of the producer who sells a product below market value. And in the worst case the reseller ends up with tons of unsold product and is forced to dump it later or even throw it away completely (which depending on the margins may still turn a profit overall).

[makomk]

I think it may even be possible to dump all the risk of the items not selling and storage costs onto the original seller due to quirks of how Amazon works.