Yes, Virginia, There Are Seller Trolls

Lest I be accused of favoring the seller’s perspective, the things I encounter when I am on buying runs are proof positive that the seller troll is alive, well and you will come across several at any show. So, let’s join Mutual of Omaha’s Marlin and Jim this time as they take a walk down the wild seller troll road.

My favorite subspecies of seller troll is the Negotiator Troll, the dealer who negotiates against herself. If I run into one of them on a buying trip, I am as giddy as a tween girl at a Taylor Swift show. I was at a flea market and found a complete set of vintage oddball baseball cards. At the time, it was readily sold at $150 a set. The dealer had it ticketed at $70. Right away, I know I am buying it. As I showed it to the dealer to ask permission to look through it (always look for the keys in a supposed set but also ask before doing so; being polite to people goes a hell of a long way and costs nothing), she said “I can do better on the price.” Hello, Negotiator Troll, so lovely to make your acquaintance again. You don’t undercut your own price before the potential customer even makes an offer: dumbest negotiating tactic ever. Of course, I asked how much better, she said $50, and as I pretended to ponder it, she added that she wanted to get rid of it because it had been sitting around in her garage for a while. Oh, this is the gift that keeps on giving. Announcing that the item has little worth to you and you are a motivated seller before I’ve made an opening offer or even responded to yours is not a smart move at all. I offered $40 and got the set. If I’d been in a dickish mood, I would have gone $30 instead, but my greed sometimes clashes with my conscience: Negotiator Trolls aren’t bad people, they’re just bad at what they do. At times like those I wish I was the sociopath many people have accused me of being. I will have to work on that…

The eBay version of the Negotiator Troll is the one who uses a fixed price listing with a Best Offer feature. After using this feature for a while myself, I rethought my strategy because I realized that it was a Negotiator Troll maneuver: all it did was tell the buyer that my ask was not the price. Now, I only use the Best Offer feature on auctions. I also learned that whenever someone watches my Buy It Now lot, eBay pings me to solicit me to make an offer, which I usually do. A good percentage sell.

Then there is the Discount Troll, a seller whose prices are as fuzzy as his logic. A Discount Troll will offer cards at $5 each or 3 for $10. Dumb way to do it. Volume discount pricing is an argument against your own interest unless it is very carefully structured to truly reward multiple purchases. $5 each or 3 for $10 is the seller signaling to you that the real price is $3.33 each and you know if you offer $7 for two or $12 for 4, you will get it. If everything is five bucks, why not just go with buy 2 and get one free? The math is the same as $3 for $10 but without the suggestion of price negotiability for an odd number. On eBay, I personally use a stepped discount when I have a multiple: buy 3 get 10% off, buy 4 get 12% off, etc. I reward each incremental purchase.

One form of seller troll I just cannot understand is the Blue Meanie Troll. This grouchy buffoon sets up at a show and then acts like the customers are there only to annoy him. Irv Lerner was the archetype of a show Blue Meanie Troll. Lerner used to set up at the National and I think it was only so he could humiliate the customers who were unfortunate enough to stumble across his booth. All of the customers. All day long. No matter what was happening. Lerner was about 1,000 years old, had a gloriously rotten toupee (like a squirrel stroked out and fell out of a tree and onto his head), and he and his wife screamed at each other continually. Lerner’s favorite expression was a dismissive “I’m too busy to look that up”, which he said every time there was more than one person at the table and a customer dared to ask for a price on a card (he always put his stock out without prices). Yeah, like sitting on your ass is eating up your cognitive bandwidth to such a degree that you can’t even be bothered to tell someone the prices on your merch. With an attitude like that, just stay home.

I recently ran across two Blue Meanie Trolls at a flea market. The first one set up with a picking table and a scowl, then yelled at the customers whenever they looked through the items he had in the picker boxes: “Don’t mess those up” or “You better keep those in order”. This guy was such a jerk that his wife actually went around in his wake apologizing and explaining that her husband “doesn’t like people.” Then WTF is he doing in a customer-facing retail business? I steer clear of his table whenever I see him.

The second one was even better. Big guy in a wife-beater and wearing a cowboy hat unironically in Los Angeles, the kind who calls everyone “boss”. He had a stack of Kiss cards in his showcase of miscellaneous crap. I asked for a price. He said $50 “boss” and started a rap about how rare they are. Usual BS from a know-nothing who thinks card = money. I took a look, and they were in ex condition at best. I said no thanks; they weren’t in good enough condition for me. He turned his back and said to his boothmate: “This asshole is one of those guys who expects 40-year-old cards to look like they just came out of a pack.” I said “yeah, I do and that’s how I collect them.” He said “I’ll sell them anyway”, I said, “good luck with that” and left. Wow, from “boss” to “asshole” in an instant. Way to speak to and about customers, jerk.

An archetypical example of a Blue Meanie Troll in the brick and mortar division was Goodwin Goldfadden. For those who don't know his legend, Goldfadden was one of the pioneer mail order sports publication dealers who also ran a store in L.A. that was basically the only card store in town for years. He hated kids, novice collectors, women, or, it seemed at times, just people in general, and thought courtesy and customer service were dirty Commie plots. I went there once when I was about 12, around 1977 or 1978, and purchased some Aaron cards for my run of Topps Aaron cards. The ironically named Goody was in a particularly vile mood because I was a kid (strike one) with my mother (woman in the store: strike 2), and didn't want to pay him $20 (a near mint price) for an Aaron RC with back damage. Strike 3 and out. I never went back there; life’s too short to voluntarily dish up a second serving of pissy troll. Plus, my mom refused to drive me.

Another seller troll I see at shows is the Good Ol’ Boy Troll. This troll beats around the bush, uses euphemisms instead of straightforward terms, and generally tries to be everyone’s friendly neighbor who is almost embarrassed to do a little business on the side. Yeah, well, maybe I am too crass, but I don’t want to negotiate with Gomer Pyle. When I ask for a price on a card (because his stuff is never priced), the GOB troll hems and haws and has to look it up before telling me the price, usually with that tweenage girl’s rising intonation at the end of the sentence that paradoxically signals that he is asking me a question. Every time I hear that rising lilt on the price answer, I have to stop myself from asking whether he is sure about it. This troll is benign, he means well enough, but he excels in the art of time suckage at shows, which makes him frustrating to deal with. I got a lot of tables to cover, pal, how about you go home, price your merch, and come back when you are ready to put on the big boy pants and be a professional instead of imitating a country bumpkin townie on The Andy Griffith Show?

I recently had an encounter with a Bigger, Better Deal Troll. This troll is like the girl in high school who would never accept a date with you because she was always waiting for something better to come along. I found a boxing photo I wanted at a paper fair and was bargaining with the seller. His main response to my offers was that he might be making a trade with someone else. “Yeah,” I said, “but I’m offering you cash money right now.” I purchased the photo and hours later saw that he was still screwing around with the trade. I doubt it ever happened.

A troll I am sometimes guilty of being is the Smartass Troll (I know, me as a smartass, betcha never saw that one coming). Sometimes, especially when I am bored at a show, I have a nearly irresistible urge to come back with a sarcastic or snarky reply when someone asks an ambiguous question or beats around the bush. One fun feature of Aspergers is hearing and answering questions literally. Robert A. Heinlein wrote a book called “Stranger In A Strange Land” and had a character called a “Fair Witness” who had been authorized to observe events and testify in court as a neutral deliverer of facts because they would observe everything and respond to questions literally and factually without the assumptions or conclusions that most people naturally interject even when testifying to facts (“What color is the house?” “The part I can see is white”). Describes my mental process perfectly. I like to think that it’s a feature, not a bug because it makes me more observant and careful, but most people just get pissed at me when I do it. Like, if someone asks me “can you tell me where the bathroom is?” I have to work really hard to fill in the implied ask and actually tell them how to get to the shitter instead of saying “Yes” or “I could” and waiting for a direct follow up (and heaven help the person who then asks “well, will you?”). I once had my deposition taken and I absolutely drove the deposing attorney crazy by letting my inner Aspy loose and forcing him to phrase every question precisely or he’d get a responsive but nonsensical answer. You want to wear out a neurotypical, answer every question literally: “Did you see where the car was parked?” “Yes.” “Can you tell me where it was parked?” “I could.” “Where was the car parked?” “In the parking structure.” “Where in the structure?” “In a space.” And so on.

But I digress.

My favorite card show example of how my Smartass Troll mind works as a dealer is when someone asks me: “can you do better on this?” (Shout out to my friend Marty Pritchard for articulating what I’d been thinking about this kind of question) That question always opens a dilemma for me because it is ambiguous; literally taken, “can I do better” could mean can I get more money for the card, which would be better for me, but the implied meaning, as I now understand it, is: “can I do better for the buyer asking the question.” Even understanding that the buyer is asking me to lower my price and knowing that “I could do better if I sold it for more” is the wrong answer and might even get my ass kicked, I still have to resist asking him: “I could but why would I do that? It would be illogical to bargain against myself.” Since I hate that sort of question when I sell, I try not to do it when I buy. Instead, I ask: “what is the absolute lowest price you will accept for this card?” Surprisingly, that direct, precise approach drives some neurotypicals crazy because they have to think about it. I’ve gotten very funny looks from quite a few dealers.

We at Mutual of Omaha hope you enjoyed our Troll safaris. Join Marlin and Jim next time when they look for the elusive green vegetable at the Rosemont food court.