eBay and Beer Sales

you missed a letter in his acronym. its the people holding on to the coffee stout that are the silly ones (as he was implying). Im still on the boat with the bcbs improves with some age crowd, though i havent had the most recent batch.

 

didn't miss that he was talking about coffee and it fading; didn't care. note point of my post.

 

not saying that your point is off, just that maybe your reply missed the point of his original post a bit. I will say though that having black tuesday and bourbon county on shelves regularly would be quite awesome (though it is definitely a few years away).

 

they took down my choco rain listing within an hour!!!! now i am going to have to drink the goddamned thing!!!

 

Good the attention Heady Topper and Black Note received got them bottled and distributed. The world is a better place with those beers in bottles and not just on tap in one tiny area. I suppose I have a hard time sympathizing with business owners who have an enormous, unmet demand for their product. That's not a terribly awful problem to have. I feel worse for the aficionados and enthusiasts that miss out on something truly wonderful that would enrich their lives and their perspective on craft beer.

 

i don't feel bad for either. brewing and selling at capacity is an awesome state of affairs, and there's tons and tons of craft beer to find in this world. lucky for you if you get that amazing small batch beer, and lucky for you if you get that other amazing small batch beer, or you get some world class widely distributed beer, or [you get the point].

 

to put it another way, BCBCS is like BCBS and BT. i suspect the long term plan is to make those as available as, say, great divide yeti, but way more desirable. i'm pretty sure about it with BT (i think patrick has been saying all along that the point of the bruery is to get big enough that your once-in-a-lifetime specialties are his widely released regulars), and goose island's upping BCBS production seems to point to them getting on board with the idea (and they have the capacity/capital + barrel know-how to do it).

i could be way off, but i'm continuing to put all my beer nostradamus chips on "breweries around the USA are going to be struggling to keep up with the bruery (and now GI), as well as having more difficulty than ever getting $15+ 22oz bottles of untested barrel aged beer to move off shelves."

 

You really don't get it? The craziness is BECAUSE of ebay. If there is no gouging on ebay, there will be nothing on which to base exorbitant trade value. There will be no comparative standard on which to base the gouging of traders. This puts bargaining power and a larger beer supply available into the trade market .

I'll put it another way. Before: I don't want to trade you my Rare for less than 5 bottles of CBS. No one's interested? Guess I will sell it on ebay.

If no ebay: I don't want to trade my rare for less than 5 bottles of CBS. No one's interested? Guess I'll..., well, I guess I'll drink it? Or try to trade it for a more reasonable and fair offer?

Add to this many, IMHO, of those selling beer on ebay probably don't even like fine beer enough to care to trade for it. IMHO, many of the ebayers were lovers of cash who aren't, weren't, and won't be in the trade game. I believe they will move on to something they can still make cash profit on.

Even just the idea of having only the choice of drinking your beer or trading it for a beer you prefer to drink, or haven't tried, will help put sanity back into trading.

 

Wonderful argument. Perhaps you could comment on exactly where and how this future of even worse price gougers will be operating.

My take. There will be no future price gougers because they will have no venue from which to gouge.

If your point is that it will make the trade forum even worse, IMO it will not. Those who presently "trade up" to be able to get attractive beer to sell, will now be in the situation of "trading up" to be able to get some attractive beer to drink. This isn't a problem, it is a solution. When trading up is about getting a beer you desire to drink in trade for one someone else desires to drink, that is called the entirety of the idea of trading beer. You are certainly right that the motive to profit in cash is strong and widespread.

IMO, with no ebay, those in the "game" for cash profit will leave, those who stay will be here to enjoy the fine beer they can obtain. That is how it should be, isn't it?

 

I think a few folks answering these mails in the following way could do a lot of good:

Thanks for your offer, but since I no longer have protection of ebay for my purchases, and you no longer have the costs, nor benefits, of doing business on ebay, I am willing only to offer you 10% over the retail price of this bottle, which I believe is more than fair. This is not an auction, so this is final.

I understand if you don't accept. I hope you understand, though, that I am going to report you to the appropriate authorities for selling beer without a license if you don't accept this offer. Thanks.

I urge you to discontinue doing this illegal action, and leave the beer on the shelf for those who buy it to enjoy. Cheers!

 

That's wonderful. Glad to see you are a fan of the free market. Personally, if I thought the facts you present about the GT500 resales made it harder and more expensive for me to buy cars I desired to buy, I would be happy if Ford successfully took action to stop it.

I am happy I will have an easier and cheaper time trading for beer now, without ebay gougers in the picture, and I am confident our free market system will survive despite beer selling no longer being allowed on ebay. Call me selfish, but at the end of the day selfishness is the definition of laissez faire.

 

You sound like the life of the party. Do you call highway patrol every time you see someone speeding too? What a nudge.

 

I don't believe that you actually believed this. You can count the number of listings and the number of ISOs on BA, but there's also RB, reddit, and countless trades between partners. On Black Friday for PtY, there were probably well over 1,000 growlers sold and only a handful of listings. How many DLs show up each year: a few hundred (if that, I never regularly checked eBay) out of 20,000?

I'm not trying to be negative about trading, it's something I really enjoy, albeit at a much slower rate than I used to, just trying to be realistic about how big this eBay "problem" was. No one's ever going to be able to convince me that there were ever anywhere near as many eBay sellers as traders at a pre-eBay-ban release.

 

I will say this again in response to the issue of selling beer: I believe personally in being honorable and respectful to the brewery in which I bought the beer, and to me this means not selling it for any monetary gain. I feel this way because I have for the longest time reject the greedy notion of making a profit. Instead I work hard and earn my keep and beer, when I dutifully do so.

Call this old fashion, silly, and what have you. I stand by my convictions strongly.

 

If there is demand for something, anything, there will always be people who try to fill that demand. I presume you are not naive enough to believe eBay is the only way people are selling beer. There are plenty of other sites and avenues for people to get what they want.

I still cannot get my head around the difference between these two scenarios:

I really want to try Founders CBS. Retail value of $18, but those bottles are all long gone. What can I do?

1) I can offer to pay someone fair value of that CBS. Let's say it's $80.

2) I can try to trade for a bottle. No reasonable person is going to trade away a CBS for $18 worth of beer, so I've got to go collect $80 of beer and try to offer the trade that way.

In the end, cash/beer, it's all just a way for people to exchange what they have for what they want. People would not be able to hoard and sell beer for such enormous profits if there weren't people willing to pay that amount.

 

I like your idealism and your convictions. But... we're a free market society and with that comes a few warts, as long as there is a willing buyer their will be profiteers, that's reality. My choice if I don't choose to participate, but as Hanzo posted he'd like the option of being able to buy a whale he'd never get a shot at otherwise when the only the obstacle is money. I'd love a bottle of BCBS Rare, I'll never see one in my lifetime unless I buy from an online store which is what I consider EBAY with super inflated prices. I don't get anything close to line up a trade for it, but I'd like the option of deciding for myself if I want to spend 100- 150 bucks. The legal issue about shipping is a completely different issue, bottom line is it's illegal, but when we trade we brake that same law.

 

Yeah, I've been trying to drink down what I have. Being in the Reserve Society (and a Bruery fan) is not helping.

 

I assume you aren't disingenuous enough to be thinking that craigslist and emails from black marketeers are the same thing as as the worldwide clout, reach, and exposure of ebay. Perhaps there are others you are referring to which I am, as it turns out, naive enough to think don't exist. Here is your chance to name them, and to cure my naivete'.

I also assume you realize that your $80 valued CBS was valued that way due to its current auctionability on ebay. Without that the only factor determining a trade value is what beers some one is willing to trade, and what beers someone desires to drink. If this is wrong, please explain how it is wrong.

 

I do report drunk drivers, and I do take action to make my life better where I can. You expect me to adopt a live and let live attitude towards those who are actively ruining one of my enjoyments. I don't. Sorry to hear you do, but to each their own. BTW, I was probably partying hearty while you were in diapers, and still am, would gladly enjoy a beer with you anytime.