sat guru
Two Pair
not a GB? And what are GB rules (if any)?
Aren't those chips you're selling actually radioactive?
someone who wanted to order a 300 piece cash set of Iron Bank chips when @stocky gets the art from J5. Why that's different and how to make the rules reflect it is an interesting question.
Sounds reasonable. What about the $35 art fee for the pinup buttons that I charged to the members? Who should be able to use that art for new buttons, or ceramic show em chips?
GOCC charged it for color correction, and I split it per button (roughly, by rounding up and estimating the order total and not updating for the actual total). It's a tiny amount overall, but it would have grown with each order.Who charged the art fee? And was it split per button?
I personally would charge anyone wanting a new button the same the others were charged abs send it to the artist. If you were the artist I see no issue in receiving some compensation. In this case we are talking cents not dollars really.
It was about a dollar per button, but it coincided with the GOCC summer sale to keep the price about the same as usual. I'd lean toward releasing the art as a donation from part of the community to the entire community, especially for a new embodiment like chips or plaques. Maybe a 6 month moratorium on exact duplicates, to avoid people intentionally free riding and keep some resale value for the original buyers?Something like that could be handled a few different ways depending on how much it was more per button.
If we are talking cents and I was involved in the GB I would personally not mind if others got it a little cheaper.
If it was a significant amount there's a couple of options.
1. Make it a one off group buy. Sucks that no one else will be able to get one but you snooze you lose.
2. Charge x amount per new button and reimburse the original GB participants.
3. New participants get it at the new cost price. Sometimes a GB is a gamble. Getting in early doesn't always mean getting it cheaper.
3. New participants get it at the new cost price. Sometimes a GB is a gamble. Getting in early doesn't always mean getting it cheaper.
Not that I am privileged to the information, but i'd be curious what the overall net gain is in dollar amount.
I agree we don't want to derail what could be an important thread, but manamongkids touches on a valid subject. I think that the possibility of a profit here spurred the 2nd GB, and the 20s GB that manamongkids referenced. If these policies were already in place, this may not have happened, but Tommy has pretty much run this site like a friendly gathering place and friends rarely need rules to regulate behavior. Since this particular GB turned from GB to for-profit, it rubbed some people the wrong way.
So it is important to emphasize the importance of this thread. Let's set some ground rules to prevent disgruntled PCFers.
While zero-profit is honorable, I have no issue with a GB organizer snapping off a little something. The artist can profit, cant they? What if an artist ran a GB (not that P5 has time to do anything but draw art for all of us, but what if)? a 3% (or more easily calculable 5%) profit cap feels fair, as time, energy, packing materials, and headache factor should amount to something. I'd even like to see hijacking possible (you'll make a US currency for $3 profit per? I'll offer to do the same for $2!), provided it doesn't upset the apple cart.
@Poker Zombie - great points and very worthy of discussion.
I have no interest in this devolving into something unconstructive. Not that anyone has gone there, but if someone starts to, I'd like to thwart it early.
Past GB - Over on Blue, there was a GB that wasn't a GB. The CPS chips. It started as a GB, fell apart, and was revived (almost immediately) by Palm. They ran it from the start as a (barely) for-profit venture. The only one to make out like a bandit was the artist, who demanded more money when Buttons felts and more were discussed, which ticked off the vendor that was working for far less and doing far, far more (That GB for anyone new, ran close to 400,000 chips (see @BGinGA for accurate numbers).
I would hate to see other massive opportunities lost because a master negotiator was no longer willing to work so hard and watch someone who worked far less make all the profit.
Note: I am not against artists making money either. I've worked a few designs for others and find the artist's task difficult, as revision after revision takes a ton of time - especially if you cannot get them to just sit down at the table with you. 20 different voices all wanting 40 different things in a GB deserves something, but again, I feel it shouldn't be a ton. GB flat fee or something. Perhaps a GB flat fee for the organizer as well?
The only one to make out like a bandit was the artist, who demanded more money when Buttons felts and more were discussed, which ticked off the vendor that was working for far less and doing far, far more (That GB for anyone new, ran close to 400,000 chips (see @BGinGA for accurate numbers).
I would hate to see other massive opportunities lost because a master negotiator was no longer willing to work so hard and watch someone who worked far less make all the profit.
Still not ready to reply, but ^this^ was too good to pass up. Didn't realize you were so funny, Dennis.
I've actually had a post like the "radioactive question" elsewhere.
I really wish we didn't need any rules. A group buy is meant to be really simple -- people pool their orders to buy in quantity. They all save money or get something they couldn't do alone. The organizer and members watch out for one another.
Simple, right?
I think you could "boil down" the rules to just two:
1. Organizers must be open about the costs and can't make a profit by running the group buy.
2. Members who commit to buy should pay on time and can't back out after a commitment date.
If everyone followed these two rules, most of the other issues go away.
I just wanted to interject here before a bunch of unwarranted tubby-bashing began..... Zombie's comments above are not accurate.
The artist didn't demand more money, he merely wanted to uphold the original deal that was struck with the vendor (and I'd hardly call it 'making out like a bandit', especially knowing how many hours of work went into all of those designs). And I'll argue hard and long that both the artist and the group buy organizer (me) worked far harder than PGI during the course of that group buy (well over a year), and for a much smaller payout (zero, in my case). In addition, the artist planned on returning some of his earned fees to the other four original group organizers as compensation for their hard work that set the stage for the eventual group buy...... and he was under absolutely no obligation to do so.
No offense, zombie, but you don't know as much about that group buy as you think. PGI did very well financially, and attempted to put the screws on to increase profits even further. Put the blame where it belongs.
First Round Participant Risk:
- Should subsequent GB participants be required to pay a premium?
- If yes, how is that premium allocated? (If there's not too many to people it's really easy to do this in this day and age.)