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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Oryan77" data-source="post: 4387141" data-attributes="member: 18701">Yep, I credit him to driving the secondary market prices down also. But I'm coming from it from a negative perspective. I became an online minis seller/trader several years ago as a part time gig to help me afford my wedding while I was also putting myself through college. I still have a full time job & sell minis on the side for extra income. But now that I'm about to finish my last night school class & look for another job, I might get out of the online minis business....Auggies has just not made it worth it for small online sellers like me.Auggies is no different than Walmart; get bulk items at low cost, undercut the competition, & drive the little guys out of business.I've heard his "brick-n-mortor" store is a flea market booth. So he saves on rent and still gets to buy minis direct from a distributor. He was also able to offer flat rate shipping because his postman let him get away with shipping via Media Mail, which minis do not qualify for Media Mail (believe me, I've tried doing it myself by asking 6 different postman at 4 different post offices in my area). His post office recently got a new postman who won't allow him to ship Media Mail so he has changed his rates.Online sellers without a B&M store can't buy minis from a distributor, so we have to pay much more for cases. With the price increase of boosters, that hit our pockets hard because the value of minis didn't also increase. Then Auggies keeps tabs on people like me (he's admitted it to me) & undercuts our prices by a lot. People used to think $0.40 for commons & $0.80 for Uncommons was a great deal. Thanks to Auggies, $0.30 for commons & $0.60 for Uncommons is too expensive to a lot of people. I won't even bother comparing the price difference in rare minis.As someone said, word of mouth is a powerful tool. Auggies gets 99% of the word of mouth advertisement on the gaming forums. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about his fortunate position at all. I'd be grateful myself if I had those privileges, and I understand the name of the business game. He seems like a nice guy & deserves success.I also understand that I'm not a LGS & by selling online, I'm competing with them. I never tried to undercut their prices & take their business, I simply based my prices on whatever the averages were on Ebay & other online stores & tried to offer good service. If I made extra money for my time, great!  But I haven't bothered restocking my minis inventory in months because I don't feel it's profitable anymore. Just like the mom-n-pop stores that compete with the Walmarts of the world, there's only so much a seller can do before it's no longer profitable.</blockquote>

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