You’re not “cheating” anyone out of anything.
And the chance that the next person will give them the full value is ludicrous. More likely to be a kid who will take them and play with them.
Do you think “taking advantage of” is a fair term to use, at least in an extreme example?
I don’t think anyone is arguing that it is LIKELY that the next person will give them full value. Instead, clairobscur is mocking the argument that was made earlier in the thread which is something like “well, if you don’t rip off/take advantage of this person, then someone else will, so you might as well”. Which seems pretty morally bankrupt to me. If anything, I think that gives you an incentive to speak up. If you see that someone in need is about to sell something valuable for a song, even if you yourself don’t have the time and energy to help them out I think you should at least inform them of what you know.
There’s certainly the possibility that upon being informed of the value of their product, the seller could remove the item from market and sell it somewhere else for full value. Then what? Because of the buyer’s generosity they get nothing? Telling the seller about the value of their stuff assumes a level of good faith that can generally not be determined at a simple yard sale.
If I actually encountered the extreme example (clearly desperate and ignorant person selling something that I was familiar with for WAY WAY WAY below its market value) I would do what was suggested earlier in the thread… I would buy the item, then resell it, then give a significant chunk of the profits back to them. At least, I’d like to think that’s what I would do. What precisely “a significant chunk” means is hard to say.
Oh stop it. It was a throw away comment about how stupid it is not to do your research. I don’t care WHO you are (and just being an “immigrant” doesn’t mean you won’t know about sports.), if you encounter a T206 and sell it for peanuts, I don’t feel sorry for you. It’s the rarest baseball card in the whole damn world – you can throw that thing down in the mud, run your car over it, and still probably get about five figures for it! I live here in Pittsburgh, where Wagner played, and our local history museum doesn’t even have one! (In fact, that’s probably what I would do, tell them they might want to contact the museum, and see if they might be interested in it.)
Seriously, dude. I don’t know what the hell kind of yard sales you people visit, because most of them I find are just junk.
To those who they it is unethical, or immoral…to pay less then what you know something is worth?
If they were selling something for 25 dollars, that you knew to be worth 40… would you feel guilty about giving them only 25?
Where is your cutoff? ( ball park obviously ) It’s kinda like the old joke… asking a woman if she will go to bed with you for a million bucks, when she says yes, you ask her if she will for 10.
Well if it was a Homus Wagner… I would know it was a poorly done forgery. :rolleyes:
To me, the determining factor is the seller’s plight, not the item value.
If a struggling family of seven is selling an extremely valuable baseball card for $5, I’d pay them a much higher price than just $5.
If a wealthy businessman is selling an extremely valuable baseball card for $5, I’d pay him the $5. He should have researched the baseball card.
What if their daughter is dying of cancer, and the guy’s leg is rotting off and he can’t afford a replacement, and the wife’s car just blew up, and their house is located on an ancient Indian burial ground?
:dubious:
The only reason I buy anything is if I think it’s worth more to me than the price they’re asking. Far from considering it unethical, it’s the only way I’ll do business.
I mean this is obviously a silly discussion at this point… but I think that you’re confusing someone saying “I would never buy anything for cheap, because what if it is the case that they are really destitute and I would be screwing them out of their last possible chance to keep their children from starving” with someone saying “I would normally buy that thing for cheap, but I can imagine a hypothetical situation in which, given some additional information, I would not feel comfortable doing so”.