Hey Greg,
Back in the 1990s I was told by a friend who runs a number of successful
software businesses some sage advice. You charge what your product is worth,
not what it costs.
One reason I like buying meteorites on ebay is because the gavel prices reflect
what the market is, not what someone thinks it should be.
If you price your material at $X per gram but some other dealer gets $X times
two at auction the fair market value is twice what you are charging.
Unfortunately this also works the other way. If a meteorite cost you $X per
gram, be it something you bought from another dealer or hunted yourself, and no
collector is going to pay 1/2X per gram, unfortunately the worth of the
material is half your cost. You can try to sell it for your cost plus a profit,
but it isn't worth that.
In this case you can only sell at what its worth, not what it cost. I've seen
plenty of material on dealer websites that are priced at cost plus profit and
they don't move, but if it was priced at what it was worth it'd fly off the
shelves. Of course they would lose money in this case, but I can't understand
how some dealers can have they money tied up in material that isn't selling,
for what it cost, not what its worth...
As for Wisconsin, if there are buyers willing to plunk down $100 per gram, when
the dealer only paid $10 per, or even $3 per, that's good for everyone. The
buyer got the material at what they thought it was worth and the seller moved
it at what it was worth. The actual cost to the dealer is irrelevant.
For me personally, this fall isn't worth $10 per gram, so I have only been an
interested bystander in seeing the sales prices. Come down to $5 per gram and
I'll discuss buying it, but not at anything above that. For me, that's what
these stones are "worth".
I assume that those paying $100 per gram felt their stones were worth %100 per
gram. They too paid what they felt it was worth, not what it cost the dealer to
obtain...
That's the demand side of the equation that I feel is often lost in these
discussions.
--
Richard Kowalski
Full Moon Photography
IMCA #1081
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