Second Hand Shops?

Aimee nothing is directed towards you. But lets put everything in perspective.

Content creator Joe makes a car. It took him some long hours yes. He sets displays model out in his shop, and marks it "Sell Copy"

Hundreds of that 1 item he created are sold over time. Say he is selling them for $1000. So we will say thats $L100,000 on that one object that they made(assuming they sold 100). They did not create each and every one of those 100 cars. They create 1 (ONE) and kept reselling that same thing. In real life each one was made serperately and its just fine to resell, in our case it would make even more sense that resale is OK. Lets face it, the only thing stopping a creator, from allowing this to happen, is the thought that 1 potential sale might not go to them. My number, Im sure you would agree are even too low.

I personally buy stuff in here with the intent of keeping it, and thus, not reselling it. I've done a few giveaways of clothes and whatnot I didn't need that would suit someone else better (a loving home, awww!).

I usually opt for COPY/MOD/NOTRANSFER from merchants (what a crude term sometimes!), or COPY/NOMOD/NOTRANSFER. I like being able to make personal copies for my own watermelony purposes and backups.

I suppose if FOR SALE flea markets and whatnot were set up, they might be done in a format a la Stillman Free Bazaar. Open air, four-corners type approach so it's easy to get around. As has been said, packaging some items like clothes, tho, is gonna be a problem unless you have original box art to show the buyer what they're getting.

Like Donald Trump, I am in favor of a good deal! And no I don't mean hugging Grimace, although I could do that too.

(And someday, maybe we'll be able to rez our clothes in a laundry heap in a pile. Oh Kexy, remember we talked about this!)

As a Content Creator I would be the first one to jump on the bandwagon about Permissions Issues.

However, as per what Heather is asking.
I see no problem with it.
Only if the Creator has set the initial product to transfer and here is why.


I make a Bike, I make it Transfer with a Note card that says. If you plan on keeping this Item and do not want to loose this from inventory due to LL associated bugs you have the option to Trade this Item in on a Copy No transfer version for your personal Use. This alone gives that person the ability to if they want give it away as a gift or resell it.

Now the clincher. The Transfer version as long as the other permissions remain in tact is eligible from any person to be traded to me for a Copy/ No Transfer version.

What does this mean for me? I got the original sale for one thing. Secondly by passing one that is Copy/No Transfer I have the ability to track update eligibility.

Now Suppose Wittle Monkey decides hey these are Kewl bikes and thinks, “I can make some money off of them”
Then he buys 15 of my bikes and sets them out for double the price.
First off that’s going to throw a flag up for me to look into it sometimes its as innocent as one person buying a bunch of gifts.
But If I find these Items for sale higher than my price here is what I would do.
People buy them and come back for more Wittle Monkey has to come back to buy 15 more.
Thus easily, I notice a Trend of Wittle Monkey buying bulk.
I simply research what he is selling it for and mark up my price to say 75% of what Wittle Monkey is selling them for.
Now apparently the Public sees this as an Item they like.
Yet they are unaware that they could get it from me for price “X”.
So if Wittle Monkey wants to continue this practice and be a Reseller of my Items I allow him to do so by monitoring what he is selling them for.
If Wittle Monkey is being underhanded and doubles the price again and people continue to buy I will continue to Mark mine up to 75% of what he is selling them for.
Eventually Free Market will dictate the price, as he will no longer be able to sell that Item for that price.
Or if he is legitimate he will work out a deal with me on being a reseller primarily because his sales are plummeting due to my actions. For me they are still up cause he is buying them from me.
So, I offer him an automatic vendor that pays him a percentage for his efforts.
If he is underhanded he will stop buying from me as soon as I up the price and move on to a new target.

So in essence by maintaining my vigilance of my product I have done one of two things.
1 improved my profitability by letting the market bear the cost through the reseller’s creative upgrade of the price.
2 I have stalled the efforts of an incorrigible by thwarting him out of the business by not making it profitable for him to rip me off.

Either way the product sold. With it being transferable I am able to receive the Item back in on trade. The only draw back to a customer trading is once they do that’s it its theirs for the duration as once no transfer is set the only option they have is to delete. But by accepting this vehicle back in on trade for one that is more conducive to an individuals use I have just made a new customer though my customer service.

Were this a perfect world and SL had no bug issues they could set up the permissions to be called for by a vendor.
For instance 1 box with a menu that asks the customer initially
“Do you want Copy No transfer?”
Or “Do you want No Copy Transfer”.
This would eliminate the “Gift” problem.
It would also allow us to pinpoint resellers quickly that buy in volume.
So no it’s not a bad thing it’s called a free market. Those willing to pay the price for something through a reseller obviously do not have the time to look up the original creator or they are willing to pay to get it now versus looking for it later.

But, in reference to Items that have been “Stolen” through either permissions bugs or simply errors created by SL I say those Items should be removed Immediately.

I once mentioned that if a Texture is found “misappropriated” why can that “Key” be vanquished at the Creators request. But that’s a whole new subject already debated from time to time.

But in honor of Heather’s Post I say as long as the Creator has set the permissions up and if they are a reseller through like a Yard sell. Only thing is if its got the creators name on it simply IM the Creator and get permission for your own state of morality.
If the creators say yeah go for it.
I am sure they will turn around and back up the individual to anyone that accuses the individual of wrongdoing.
But that’s just a perception I have of most of the creators I know as I know many of them will stand behind their own words.

I have rambled enough and shall let you get back to it.

Sincerely, Shadow

Your logic is contradicting.

If they were UNDERCUTTING the original creator, and selling a NO COPY item. That means everytime they sold one, they would be taking a loss. In order to get more inventory to sell, they would have to go to the original creator and restock. The creator would never be losing money, the reseller would take a loss with every sale.

I invte anyone PLEASE PLEASE. If you feel you can resell my Gestures for more money. Go buy them from me cheap, and anytime you sellout, come buy more and resell again. I set them at the price I feel the time put into them warants. If you can get more money though, all the power to you.

I just rented to a tenant in Furness who has a second-hand Yard Sale in Furness, and God bless them.

I will take time to read through these lenghty posts later, but once again, you'll forgive me for being a huge, crashing bore, but what we see if we dig underneath this discussion is both the age-old battle of socialism versus capitalism and we also see the cultural battles among America, Europe, and Asia.

It's just a near-religious belief system, very ardently held, when it comes to these basic beliefs about ownership, property, and economic activity. Either you believe that something like content is a finite value and scarce and it must be equitably distributed (or price-gouged) or you believe that content is freer and more flexible and new people can add value and value doesn't have to be hoarded. That's all there is too it. These beliefs come out of centuries of experience of wars, famine, and pestilence and it is very hard to get people to examine them, let alone change them.

Being an American whose ancestors fled all those wars and famines and stuff they had in Old Europe, I'll have to say that I don't buy the idea that you can't resell any goddamn object any way you goddamn please, I don't care if you bought the Queen's Tea Set on the goddamn Mayflower. I'm with Alexis and other posters on this one.

It's mine, I paid for it, and if I want to hawk it on ebay for more or less money, I've added value to it either by making it easier for someone to acquire, if it was scarce, or making it cheaper for someone to acquire, if it was originally too high priced than the market valued it. End of story. I'm free, the economy is free, and I get to do this.

When Aimee and other older players defending the content barons begin to howl, I have to say, sorry, but it's not a closed society anymore, it's free, and people come in and behave freely. Sure, you can click off "no transfer" on your objects but then you are also ensuring that someone who wishes to make a birthday present to a loved one can't do so, or someone who wants to close one avatar, say, if they hate the name or had a bad experience, can't send their item to a new avatar. It's controlling, and it's essentially ill-willed. It says that content creation trumps all, that content is uber alles, and guess what, it is not, because there are CUSTOMERS. You don't have them if you can't serve them by things like making the good modifiable and transferrable.

On the one hand, you have the oldbie content kings who distribute things like useful scripts freely, so that when oldbies howl about exploiting content creators, they need to first go to their own ranks and ask them why they continue this free tekkie wiki crap when it is now a different kind of game with a different economy.

On the other hand you have the content prima donnas all convulsive about somebody doing so much as tinting their precious creation a different colour than their design school taught them is "the new blue this season". Jesus. Get a life. Get a Second Life. Let it go. You will have more customers if you do so. If you don't want them, ok, make your Private Stock Elite Store By IM Appointment Only and put on your "feted" hat, I dunno, have fun. The rest of us will by mod transfer.

I'm glad Beau Perkins "gets it". People who resell as a way to make money, other than just dumping excess inventory on a Saturday afternoon, will have to go back to their suppliers! Thank you! Then the suppliers can either cut them a deal, or not, hopefully, they will do what RL suppliers do and simply give discounts for bulk purchases that creates a margin for the retailer. Wholesale/retail trade is a norm of RL. I don't understand why SL comes so painfully to these RL lessons but I have to conclude it is the clash of civilizations once again at work.

I just rented to a tenant in Furness who has a second-hand Yard Sale in Furness, and God bless them. I'd love more of them. Hell, take up all the yards in Furness and everywhere else with your yard sales, I love 'em.

I will take time to read through these lenghty posts later, but once again, you'll forgive me for being a huge, crashing bore, but what we see if we dig underneath this discussion is both the age-old battle of socialism versus capitalism and we also see the cultural battles among America, Europe, and Asia.

It's just a near-religious belief system, very ardently held, when it comes to these basic beliefs about ownership, property, and economic activity. Either you believe that something like content is a finite value and scarce and it must be equitably distributed (or price-gouged) or you believe that content is freer and more flexible and new people can add value and value doesn't have to be hoarded. That's all there is too it. These beliefs come out of centuries of experience of wars, famine, and pestilence and it is very hard to get people to examine them, let alone change them.

Being an American whose ancestors fled all those wars and famines and stuff they had in Old Europe, I'll have to say that I don't buy the idea that you can't resell any goddamn object any way you goddamn please, I don't care if you bought the Queen's Tea Set on the goddamn Mayflower. I'm with Alexis and other posters on this one.

It's mine, I paid for it, and if I want to hawk it on ebay for more or less money, I've added value to it either by making it easier for someone to acquire, if it was scarce, or making it cheaper for someone to acquire, if it was originally too high priced than the market valued it. End of story. I'm free, the economy is free, and I get to do this.

When Aimee and other older players defending the content barons begin to howl, I have to say, sorry, but it's not a closed society anymore, it's free, and people come in and behave freely. Sure, you can click off "no transfer" on your objects but then you are also ensuring that someone who wishes to make a birthday present to a loved one can't do so, or someone who wants to close one avatar, say, if they hate the name or had a bad experience, can't send their item to a new avatar. It's controlling, and it's essentially ill-willed. It says that content creation trumps all, that content is uber alles, and guess what, it is not, because there are CUSTOMERS. You don't have them if you can't serve them by things like making the good modifiable and transferrable.

On the one hand, you have the oldbie content kings who distribute things like useful scripts freely, so that when oldbies howl about exploiting content creators, they need to first go to their own ranks and ask them why they continue this free tekkie wiki crap when it is now a different kind of game with a different economy.

On the other hand you have the content prima donnas all convulsive about somebody doing so much as tinting their precious creation a different colour than their design school taught them is "the new blue this season". Jesus. Get a life. Get a Second Life. Let it go. You will have more customers if you do so. If you don't want them, ok, make your Private Stock Elite Store By IM Appointment Only and put on your "feted" hat, I dunno, have fun. The rest of us will by mod transfer.

I think if an item is no copy but transfer there isn't any harm in reselling it for a lesser price than what you bought it for originally. You've paid the creator, the item is yours. Second hand stores are full of gently used (but still good!) designer clothing in my city. I think the same idea could be applied in SL.

Reselling it for a higher price is unethical, you're ripping off the person who buys it.

thank you Shadow for saying the point I was trying to make in a nonconfrontational way.

Sorry if I came across as hostile, that was not my intentions.

What if there were a way to sell a gift item in a box. Whoever opens the box (i.e. the recipient) gets a non-transferrable item. I think this would be possible to script in some fashion.

That way, the only reason anyone has for selling a transferrable item is if they actually want people to be able to, you know, transfer it. Would that solve everyone's problem?

Hmmm I was thinking about clearing out my inventory this weekend and haveing a yard sale of some of the things I no longer use. They would be the no copy/transfer things and I would sell them at a substantial loss.

If someone were to open up a second hand shop and buy out peoples unused inventory and make 10% on the deal I don't see the harm...kinda like a dollar store you never know what you'll find there because the merchandise will be constantly changing.

That gets me thinking:

Hmmm... say I buy a "Pixel*PREEN*" outfit at a 2nd-hand outlet for 50% of the original price, which would be $L500 (half of L$1000).

Now, maybe this "costs" the original creators something from this perspective: if I had bought the article from them directly, they would have bagged the L$1000 -- which they now have L$0 of because I got the wear from another party.

But also, extensibly, consider this: I like this outfit so much, and say, I've never actually heard of Pixel*PREEN* before (I know, isn't it a funny name and such a dig on my friends? ). Now, not only do I know of their brand name or know of the Creator from Properties, I'm also inclined to seek out their shop after looking up Picks for a location -- and buy more!

Word-of-mouth in a passive-yet-effective sort of way?

There's a special context here. I'd like to keep this under consideration.

I can agree with that statement for the most part, except in the case of limited items. What I mean by limited items is say a designer puts up for sale a limited item and you buy that item. Someone comes along and REALLY wants that item but it is no longer available from the designer because it was a limited edition.

Assuming that limited item had transfer rights, I can see where someone who owned that item could mark it up above the price they bought it for as that item is now considered 'rare' because it is no longer publicly available.

Beau, if creators are going to make more money allowing transfer for resale, then that is what they are going to do. If you go to *preen* you will see about half my inventory allows copy and no transfer (the older stuff) and half does not permit copy but DOES allow transfer. According to my records the sales are just about the same for both. So greed doesn't enter into it for me. If what you were saying matched with my results from a year of selling in SL, I would be all over that greed wagon.

Instead, it's the requests from my customers that determine the priv settings for my items, and those are split down the middle. Since my new stuff allows transfer but no copy, I get periodic complaints from my customers that they cannot have multiple copies of my clothes for different outfits. On the upside they ARE able to transfer items as gifts, and if they actually thought they could sell *PREEN* outfits at a higher price than my *PREEN* store to make a profit, they are welcome to do so.

I invite you to go read more carefully my posts and the previous ones in the thread.
If someone buys from me and then manages to sell what i make for more, then his and mine good. I doubt it, but his good.
But i am talking about people that for instance regularly buys used items for maybe 50% of the original price and resells them at 75%, thus undercutting the original merchant and stealing sales from him.
For instance, i make a set or clothing and sell it for 300. Then someone that bought it decides to sell it for 150. Until here all good. Then our friendly neightborhood reseller buys it for 150 and puts it for sale in his second hand shop for 225. He is undercutting me and another buyer that normally would buy a mint set for me will sure buy it from him. The reseller just stole a sale from me. If this becomes a regular business the stolen sales will become many and the original merchants will have a substantial loss.

I used to sell my hair as no copy/transfer. But to compensate for the no copy, I'd provide more than one colour of that style inside.

I then reopened shop with new permissions. It seemed more practical and in line with other hair designers to make the style copy/notransfer. So they can make 5 to 6 copies instead of the few I'd provide for the same price. Plus, I was gettign requests to make them copyable.

I do have my clothes set to transfer. They are complete outfits, so mixing them up with other items might not mesh well, unless matching hot pink pants with a orange overshirt is one's style. Anyways, I wouldn't mind if someone sold them at a lower price.

It'd be nice to have another field in the description popup (or properties) that no one but the creator can edit indicating how much the item originally costed. That way, three owners later, they'd see how much of a bargain they are getting or not. This would be cool for limited editions too. See how much they have increased in value or what not.

There's good reason for selling stuff no transfer.

1. I make stuff, I sell it at reasonable prices that everyone can afford. I don't want to see the things I make being sold for double by someone who has bought mass quantities of it. I want my things to be accessible to everyone so I keep prices lowish.

2. Selling things with modify permissions is a nice idea.. but the reality is, if its a prim object, it can be unlinked, pieces go missing, it gets messed up and then the customer has nothing. As you know, I'm pretty forgiving in most cases and I will give people new houses. But I could be completely taken advantage of by someone else who just wants more free houses and is telling me that it fell apart, they need a new one. It has nothing to do with being feted.

Shiryu, if there was a surplus of your items out on the market, and noone wanted to use them and felt like cutting their losses. MAYBE it would be time for you to re-evaluate your products. If you sold 100 pairs of shoes, and all 100 ended up on the secondary market because noone wanted to use them they probably wouldnt be worth what you were charging to begin with.

If you sold 100 items and only 10-15 end up on the secondary market, then I highly doubt that would hurt you much at all. We are talking just no copy items here after all.

Actually I just thought of one reason why I would be against resale (someone alluded to this earlier) and that is support.

If you buy something from my store, you get everything you expect...and if you don't Aimee is glad to fix it. But if some reseller shmoe buys *Preen* stuff and starts mixing and matching parts of outfits in different boxes, maybe throwing in default linden pants to spread inventory around...MY name is on it. I don't want to get IMs from those customers asking why an item doesn't look like the box photo when I haven't a clue what they are talking about.

^ Yes, that's a good point and gets me thinking too.

This is like those warranties that only apply to the original owner, eh?

Support is a BIG thing for me because it emphasizes the human connections on here.

Aimee, I would find this a perfect opportunity to tell them where to find the original and best products straight from the creator.

If people go to the second hand store, each copy of the item that they buy was previously purchased from the original creator. The creator doesn't lose any sales because they sold each one that is being bought in the second hand store. Please refer to my original example of me reselling your widgets. In the case of reselling items as "used", you have still made your money off the sale of that item; assuming that it is no copy, one person gets their use out of it, then sells it (presumably for less money) to a second person. The item is now probably worth less, not because it has wear on it, but because it's bought as-is. The secondhand buyer has no guarantees of any kind from the original creator that it will be fixed, should it stop functioning in a future point release of SL, or of upgrades to it, should they become available. If the customer's name isn't on the sales lists of the original creator, they're out of the loop for future support, which many many creators give to their products. If you want the items sold directly from you to the customer, and don't like your transfer-enabled objects being sold for less secondhand, perhaps I could start a service whereby I would determine a secondhand value for your items, then direct the customer to you, and they would pay full price from you, and you will refund the difference to me between the secondhand value and the original price.... (????)

To state again: An item bought second hand was still bought. The original creator profited from it in the original sale; as long as there is still only one copy of the item floating around they have not been taken advantage of.

If I buy 10 of your items and am able to sell them onward at double the price, you have still sold 10 items. You may not like it, but you have certainly not sold LESS than you would have otherwise, and those 10 might be more than you would have sold otherwise. Your sales are never hurt, and sometimes helped by this activity. If people come to buy from me instead of you, you have still been paid.


A permission's purpose is self-defining. Your intent doesn't matter, even though you are the creator. Sucks, I know, but that's part of commerce. Exploit means "to take advantage of", doesn't it? If you gave me permission to do something on an object you sold me, like Transfer, how can I be blamed for exploiting it? If I do exploit a permission, it's my prerogative to do so; it's what you and I fairly agreed on when you set the permission on the item and set it for sale, and I bought it. Again, my self-interests as a reseller and yours as a creator may match up, and may not. That's the beauty of it. If my business model is dependant on regularly buying your items and reselling them for higher prices, you can CUT MY KNEES OUT FROM UNDER ME, just by ceasing to sell the items, or by changing their permissions to no-transfer. It's all a matter of which you consider most important in your own vista of self-interests; the money you are making in each sale as I buy items from you, the rudeness of me reselling them without first asking you, or perhaps even a personal belief of yours, like you might believe that only creators should sell their own items.




Ahh, I wasn't aware of this. But, still it's hardly a set-and go business model. Unlike using vendors when you have unlimited copies of an item (because you're the creator), if you are a secondhand store owner you have to pay for or rent storespace, tier, prim allocation, and you have to have the actual instance of the item out and rezzed. It's speculation, and requires judgement calls as to whether you ought to buy an item used from someone in order to sell it onward. Will it sell? How much is it worth? How much did the original sell for?



If they have no influence on the market then so be it. If the original seller does not wish their items to be resold, they must set the permissions as no-transfer. Transfer means what it means; the item may be given away or resold.

What a wonderful example of self-interest in action. If resale of your items is a concern of yours, perhaps you should do the same?

Actually, from reading the notecards of Cubey's items, I was under the impression that his items are set to their permissions not so much to prevent resale, but to give his customers a way of not losing their vehicles when Secondlife crashes, or when they get messed up going over sim borders. He can speak for himself on this one, but I got the feeling that if lost vehicles were not so much a problem because of grid issues, he would probably by default sell his vehicles as no-copy/no-mod/transfer. It'd be interesting to hear his thoughts on this.

However, I wasn't illustrating Cubey as an example of permissions settings, but rather how enlightened self-interest gathers such a noticeable customer base for him. His fixes and upgrades are numerous and usually free, which, added to the already reasonable prices that his things are set, makes people very happy to not only buy from him, but buy regularly.




Again, this is entirely your prerogative. It's your right, and your responsibility in this virtual world of commerce to define your self-interests (what's most important to you) and act accordingly. You have a great many things on your side in SL as a creator; among these are zero....ZERO....manufacturing costs, once you have created a single complete instance of an item. Another is your avatar's complete lack of need for basics, like food shelter or sleep. You don't have to price your objects at a level to support your avatar. Still another is that the world of secondlife itself enforces your permission settings. You don't need to hire a lawer or call the police to make sure that people aren't violating the licenses that you set; the virtual world, the grid enforces them for you. You are also able to sell things with permission sets in SL that wouldn't be legally enforceable in the real world. Try building a bicycle and selling it to someone with no-transfer permissions in real life. Compared to commerce in the Real World, you really do have a number of advantages in SL.
Working with the system as-is, however, I'm not sure that it's appropriate to complain when people exploit the advantages of permissions that you yourself have set.

Well Aimee, you're right, for yourself perhaps. Most vendors do not offer any support. I don't know how many times I have asked a vendor to help me, one way or another, and I've never heard a reply back. One time I did get a reply back; something to the effect of "your just causing me problems so please leave me alone".

^ one thing leads to another, and it's funny how this can result in some great stories of how so-and-so became a loyal customer or even a good friend down the road!

"Remember how we met? You sent me some crazy IM one day asking me why the clothes didn't look the same way they did on the store box..."

You'll unfortunately get the people who act rudely about support despite their detached purchase, but alas, that says more about them than it does the creator.

The warrantee idea is good but nothing like that exists. People don't necessarily know when they bought items or from where, and when I tell them "I don't have you on record as having bought that item from me" the average noob may not sympathize since it's MY name she sees on it.

I am not saying this is a deal breaker. I am just trying to get rid of this stupid notion that designers who oppose resale do so out of greed. Hitting the monetary sweet spot is just one of many things we need to think about when setting up shop.

DAMN! Well anybody that has asked me for help on my clothes can tell you I am not like that. On the other hand...if that person decides that "zero customer service" is part of their business model...so be it as long as they are ready to eat the losses from a poor reputation.