Post #8634 by aquarj on Wed, Sep 18, 2002 2:17 PM

Well, one thing in fatuhiva's defense is that he didn't necessarily set the price on the TG cds. As far as he knew when he listed it, there could've ended up being only 4 bidders with a cheap ending price. So he wasn't necessarily gonna get some massive profit - the numbers turned out to be pretty high without his control. You can't really call a seller greedy when they have a low starting price auction that ends up going through the roof.

But I agree that it seemed like a bait-and-switch to tell everyone about making digital copies of the LP so that interested people can hear it, and to then just put copies on ebay. He also posted later, seemingly to talk up the price. I think this was the beef that people had when they said "tiki spirit" and stuff like that - I think they were partially referring to the tiki spirit that seemed to even be in fatuhiva's original posts about this. Even fatuhiva's most recent neener-neener post ("I tried to get this LP out there and fill people's homes ...") still pretends to have some of the kind of "tiki spirit" that he ridiculed in the same thread. Personally I totally disagree with fatuhiva's claim that in the old days tiki collecting was all about dog-eat-dog price competition and privately hoarding things and not sharing. In fact, to me, this is the kind of price-guide-wielding, over-serious, pro collector talk that ruins EVERY kind of fun collecting genre.

I also agree that technically it's illegal, even though I don't think that was anyone's main beef. The law doesn't say that something automatically becomes public domain once it changes hands a certain number of times or once the original rights owner dies. And complaining about being finked on with ebay is like trying to argue out of a speeding ticket - it's kind of silly because the fact is that the rules were broken. It also doesn't mean that the underground is overcrowded or that tiki has run it's course or any of that sour grapes stuff.

It also sounds really silly to try to justify prices by any litany of expenses that supposedly went into the cds. How about I photograph a shag print and sell copies on ebay, and justify the price by saying it is offset by $150 for the original print, $200 for the frame, $350 for the digital camera, $1000 for the computer that I use to transfer the photo to a floppy, $17,000 for the car I use to drive to kinko's to print copies of the photo, and $2 for each photo print. That's all silly because I get to keep the original, the frame, the camera, the computer, and the car.

-Randy