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Originally Posted by Thiokol
In the rules it asks that the prices be left after the sale has been completed to assist the members trying to research secondary market selling prices. I don't know why some of the members feel compelled to delete them.
As to a policy prohibiting price gouging, you're asking that the admins & moderators do the impossible. Who's to say what is a fair price and what isn't. I venture to say that if you were to ask 10 people what a fair price for a widget would be, you would get 10 different answers. The members here are pretty astute and anyone selling something for an outrageously inflated price will soon realize the error of his ways when the item lingers in the classifieds with no interest as recently occurred with an over priced Model 19. Allow Caveat Emptor to guide the buying decision and let the prospective buyer decide what is fair or not.
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Thiokol makes some excellent points and knows the board, since he served as a mod for a decade. I want to clarify the rules terminology for the benefit of others. There's obviously some misunderstanding, since we occasionally receive reports when a seller edits out the price after a sale.
This is what they say:
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We request that you leave your ad, including sale prices, intact when items are sold.
Leaving your sale price will allow folks to search/research what similar items are selling for.
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The key word there is request. Lee put a lot of thought into the rules and his wording is very concise and specific. We ask that sellers leave the price intact, but we do not mandate it. Other rules use terms like "we require..." and "you must..." and those are mandates.
We require that sale items be priced to prevent de facto auctions where sellers take bids and work bidders against each other. We require that buyers be identified when an item sells in the first 24 hours, because of our 24 hour moritioium on those purchasing for resale. Some buyers and sellers wish to keep the details of their transactions private and we respect their privacy within the confines of the rules.
IMO, historic posted selling prices have very limited value. It's quite common for people to haggle by PM, so a posted "I'll take it" does not necessarily mean that an item went for the asking price. Market values can also fluctuate wildly based on popular trends, availability and potential legislation. Look at items like "black guns", "Colt "snake guns", .22 ammunition and high capacity magazines and you'll see wild swings (up and down) over the past few years. It's also difficult to find specific items in our classifieds, because of inconsistent terminology used by sellers and the limitations of our search engine.
In the 6 years I've been a moderator here, I did intervine once because of an asking price. A member got dinged for posting an unpriced "make offer" ad. He then re-posted with a price of $1,000,000 OBO!
