GMforPowergamers
Legend
by buying up part of the limited (and as you said high priced) books you drive up the demand, and as such the price. As you drive up the price you make it more likely for someone to buy the PDF and or POD from wotc.How is buying from the second hand market supporting WotC?
Lets say I make self sealing stem bolts. Out in the wild there are 200 self sealing stem bolts, you can buy one of those on 2ndary market or form me. It makes common sense that buying 1 or more of that 200 is not supporting or helping me, BUT what you just did was drive down the number of self sealing stem bolts.
With a game like D&D it gets worse. If tomorrow I go to my crawl space and grab my 2e books, I am not buying anything. HOWEVER if I walk into a con or gaming store and start a 2e game I am introducing new players and they if they like my game may then go buy from WotC books.
The only way to not support the IP holder of D&D is to leave D&D behinde. Now I don't advocate leaving. IF I was going to I would have in 2014.