BL Dark Star November?

This guy is 100% trolling and we are all doing a great job of feeding the troll.

 

There is nothing new about what you are doing. It has been a part of the beer trading world for a very long time. You can't really think this is new can you?

The reason people don't like it, is pretty straightforward, and has been explained already, but you don't seem to understand. Even if you yourself are simply trading these beers you are acquiring via mules in $4$ trades, the general practice you are advocating feeds the gray/black market, and helps to encourage a secondary sales market with inflated prices. This is a problem, because selling on the secondary market is illegal and breweries do not benefit from the inflated prices on the secondary market. Your specific practices may not be in line with this, but the practice of gaming the system to acquire more than the share determined by the brewery tends to do this in an overall sense. The secondary market, and anything that tends to feed it, is bad for breweries and bad for traders.

Breweries set per person limits on certain releases because they want to ensure that as wide a possible collection of their clientele get a chance to buy the beer. They really don't care if some guy halfway across the county gets to try the beer. He isn't part of their regular, or even potential customer base. Trading beer all over the country has literally no positive effect for a brewery. The trade by mail beer community is so infinitesimally small that there is absolutely nothing to be gained by the brewery with a couple hundred people around the country getting bottles in trades from locals. In fact, it actually can hurt a brewery if their product becomes more in demand secondarily due to the trading and secondary markets, and more people use mules to take advantage of the interest. This takes more beer away from the local customer base that is the lifeblood of the brewery. Have a look at some of the steps breweries have taken to combat 'muling.' Cantillon's changing practices are a great example. All this aside, breweries do not want you to do what you are doing. This should be enough for most people to refrain from gaming the system to exceed intended limits.

Personally, I don't care one way or another about your approach. I don't do it myself, because I have found that my best trades have been with partners I have developed relationships with over time. Most of the great beers I have had a chance to try were either extras or part of blind trades with regular partners. It is a much easier and enjoyable way of getting to try great beers. You'll probably get to this point at some time in the future as I think most seasoned traders would echo what I am saying here, even those that started out trying to game the system.

I mentioned in an earlier post, the imprudence of bellowing your approach from the rooftops on a public forum. Breweries do not like this practice and people have been banned from taking part in lotteries and special releases in the past for using mules. The brewery's assumption is that you are trying to profit from your gambit. They don't like this. They may try to stop you. It is not hard to figure out who someone is on the internet, especially on beer trading forums where addresses are a passed around. Many brewers use these forums too. Also, Beer Advocate is probably the worst place to advocate the approach you take. There are other trading platforms where people don't give a crap about how you acquire your beer. You'll probably have more luck there moving forward, as I have a feeling you've had yourself added to a whole host of no-trade lists.

Cheers.

 

I imagine this is what a one legged man in an ass kicking contest looks like...

 

“Win or loose,” at least he still has his education... and his “mulling.”

 

This exactly! It’s like Jesus now we want to ban someone because you May think someone is greedy? You all need to stop wasting your time on him and feeding him more ammo if you want him to stop. He stated his opinion and he has not insulted anyone. He’s only defended himself for being criticized just because what he does may be frowned upon by most of you. Get over yourself and do your own thing. If you guys want him to stop then ignore him and don’t trade with him. Like what do you guys want from him? An apology? Just move on and live your life and let him trade the way he wants to trade. He’s not breaking any rules and if you think he is, then go report him to whatever brewery that is then.

 

How is he trolling though? He asked a basic question about value of a beer as well as stating that he’s new to trading. He wasn’t asking to be criticized regardless of what anyone thought of his question. He wasn’t asking if anyone agreed with how he trades or looking for approval. He got criticized and he’s been politely defending himself and sure he’s had some smart ass answers just as anyone would if they felt they were being verbally attacked. I just don’t understand what people want the solution to be? That’s why I’m saying, if you guys stop talking, he’ll stop talking. If he continues to talk and be annoying then you’ll know he’s trolling.

 

Without putting words in others' mouths, I think other people would want "the solution to be" merely letting someone new to trading know that these tactics are -reasonably- frowned upon by the community. A new trader not be aware of this, nor might readers of the thread wanting to know about trading.

 

I absolutely get that but he believes he’s right and everyone else is wrong and he’s not going to change. So what’s the solution now?

 

The solution is to stop giving he or she attention, because they've made it clear they aren't particularly amenable to changing their mind based on reasonable input that they asked for.

I think the best solution is to kindly ask OP to re-read the thread, take into account support for opposing viewpoints versus the lack of support for theirs, and to stop feeding into it or pursuing the "troll" issue (I have zero problem believing that this person is entirely sincere, unfortunately).

I'll do my part to stop feeding into this, but just thought your post seemed sincerely curious about the purpose of this discussion and deserved an answer!