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How to Heartlessly Arbitrage Used Books With a PDA
Pickens writes "Michael Savitz writes at Salon how he makes a living armed with a laser bar-code scanner fitted to a Dell PDA. Savitz haunts thrift stores and library book sales to scan hundreds of used books a day and instantly identify those that will get a good price on Amazon Marketplace. 'My PDA shows the range of prices that other Amazon sellers are asking for the book in question,' writes Savitz. 'Those listings offer me guidance on what price to set when I post the book myself and how much I'm likely to earn when the sale goes through.' Savitz writes that on average, only one book in 30 will have a resale value that makes it a "BUY" but that he goes through enough books to average about 30 books sold per day. 'If I can tell from a book's Amazon sales rank that I'll be able to sell it in one day, I might accept a projected profit of as little as a dollar. The more difficult a book will be to sell, the more money the sale needs to promise.' Savitz writes that people scanning books sometimes get kicked out of thrift stores and retail shops and that libraries are beginning to advertise that no electronic devices are allowed at their sales. 'If it's possible to make a decent living selling books online, then why does it feel so shameful to do this work?' concludes Savitz."
Supply and demand. Now if he was scanning them and making torrents, that would be shameless.
Sure, you can go through all those second-hand bookstores and strip them of anything will make a profit. It makes the store less interesting for the rest of us, who actually want to read the books we find. I like the search, which may turn up a treasure I recognise, or may turn up something obscure that I, but virtually nobody else, want to read. To put it another way, it's why Firefly was canned. Lots of us thought it was good, but not enough to turn a quick profit. There's a lot of instant-hit cheap crap on TV. Please don't do this to bookstores as well.
Because he's not really adding value, only a markup for selling in a different place. Whether that's of use to anyone (by making it available where it will be appreciated more) is debateable, and it may be of some worth, but I would say he is indeed more profiteering than adding value.
Savitz writes that people scanning books sometimes get kicked out of thrift stores and retail shops and that libraries are beginning to advertise that no electronic devices are allowed at their sales. 'If it's possible to make a decent living selling books online, then why does it feel so shameful to do this work?' concludes Savitz."
Perhaps the people running these sales want them to have more of a community feel, and either anticipate or know from past experience that allowing professional sellers to come in and take on-the-spot digital assessments of books will disrupt the existing selling environment.
Here are some potential motivations for the ban that I can think up off the top of my head:
coding is life
People buy books at thrift stores and library sales because they love books. People donate books to libraries because they want to share their love of books. If this becomes any popular, it will drive the price up for one thing; it will take the books from people who might pick one up because it's cheap, and love it, and put it in the hands of people who are trying to make a profit from it. Because as with everything, it takes something that people do for love of knowledge, art, or craft, and pollute it with people who don't care for it at all, just for the money it represents. That is why you feel shame doing it. Not to mention that if this becomes really profitable, how long until publishers, editors and authors see the "lost profits" and crack down on it like they are doing with music and movies? Once again, thank you for ruining it for the rest of us for the sake of your short term greed.
" 'If it's possible to make a decent living selling books online, then why does it feel so shameful to do this work?' concludes Savitz."
Because it makes you a bottom-feeder. And no one likes bottom-feeders. You're taking the generosity and good will of others who are trying to help the less fortunate and turning it into your own personal profit machine. What, has the "stealing candy from babies and reselling it online" market dried up so quickly? This is right up there with people that go around to thrift stores buying up all the decent items and reselling them for 10-100x more in their "antique" stores, leaving nothing but crap for those that are in need. Sorry dude, but you're a scum-sucking lowlife.
Indeed, by doing this you are probably saving untold energy by preventing people from having to search for books.
All the buggy-whip manufacturers bitching about how this will change the used book landscape have missed the point entirely. There will time when books will go away completely, and this is only an interim step. In a hundred years of technological progress don't you think that hardcopy books are going to be a specialty, boutique item?
Let the buggy-whip manufacturers die. Accept that buying used books via Amazon is easier and indeed better for everyone than driving from store to store. Sure, book browsing will be deprecated. But then, ALL retail outlets will eventually go away except for boutiques and big box stores. There's really no need for anything in-between and such a business will always be less efficient than one which has no physical presence. The only thing that depends on physical presence is impulse buying, where you get someone in your store and sell them crap they don't need.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I can't see anything at all wrong with this. This is a classic business connecting a group of buyers and sellers who wouldn't have otherwise been connected. The sellers get their book sale and the buyers get their book at a reasonable price. Everyone wins. No different from any other shop that buys at factory price and sells at retail price.
Apart from anything else, they are in the ideal position to do this - since they could scan the books at their leisure before pitting them on sale. if I gave books to a charity shop, I'd like to feel that they were getting the most benefit from my gifts - and if that entails checking their value before slapping a generic $2 price tag on each one, so be it.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Why does this guy even bother. If 1 in 30 he can make a markup on, how much can this guy be making? $20-50 per day, if he's lucky. He probably spends all day doing it and probably makes $5k per year if he's lucky.
As someone for whom the web is the only place I can find such "treasures" in their original language (I'm not from an English speaking country), stopping him from doing what he's doing deprives me from actually reading the books.
Dilbert RSS feed
Does anybody not see irony in this? Amazon originally started off as an online retailer/clearinghouse helping people purchase hard to find books through affiliated second hand book sellers.
Playing devil's advocate, is it really so bad though? initial "bottom feeder" reaction aside, the thrift store/used book seller makes a sale and presumably makes a little profit, scanner guy posts a listing, makes a sale and some profit, book buyer gets a book they're after. Scanner guy just becomes a middle man, the same way Amazon started off.
That said, I'll stick with my initial bottom feeder reaction and agree with what backwardmechanic said.
"For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Long Words Bother Me"
Why aren't the books doing this themselves?
The reason's simple. These retailers make a profit by offering the opportunity to find a precious gem in amongst a ton of crap books. If someone takes all the gems, the viability of the stores diminish. If the stores did this themselves, no one would come to the physical store, and they'd make a pittance selling the few worthwhile books.
So the underlying problem is that the stores are unsustainable, and the guy with the scanner exacerbates the problem.
I'm afraid the second hand book trade is dying for all the wrong reasons. You simply can't build a long term bookselling system on greed and hoarding. By now all books should be freely available online in a searchable format and unencumbered by DRM (but not necessarily free to access). But again there are problems with that because too many people would just take the books (in fact that's already happening).
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
How is this "heartless" - as previously stated, people are purchasing books at a price that the seller has deemed fair and are moving them to another market where they have identified the potential to make a profit. Since when did it become taboo to make a fair profit? If they're willing to search out the books and put forth the effort then they're certainly entitled to reaping benefit for their efforts. It's called work. I find the concept inspiring; here's someone who identified an opportunity and is using it to earn money without taking advantage of anyone.
If I donate to the library for their sale it is for several reasons. 1) Recycling the books 2) Providing the library a source of revenue 3) Hoping that someone else will derive enjoyment from something that I have previously possessed. If there's a 2a) inserted by a third party it has not diminished any of the reasons I had and actually adds an additional benefit. All of the statements about the outlets using technology to maximize their profits are well taken, but there are explicit and implicit costs to the application of this technology and the cost/benefit may not merit the effort as compared to pricing them by an algorithm.
Former Inmate, VA Linux Sanitarium
Then there are books like Experimental Methods in RF Design that are selling for a huge amount of money used because, I think, Amazon has the new one listed misspelled.
The used book market can be really weird.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Had to switch from Chrome to Firefox because for some crazy reason the Cut&Paste won't work.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
A completely free market works best when there is no information asymmetry between the parties involved in a transaction. If the buyer knows exactly what the seller knows and vice versa. Scanning books like this creates information asymmetry by giving information to the buyer that is unavailable* to the seller. The seller corrects this by placing limits on the marketplace in order to maintain as good an information balance as possible.
This is exactly how textbook capitalism is supposed to work. Of course, it's ideal if the party placing limits on the marketplace is not a party involved in the transaction in order to avoid bias towards one side or another. That's how governments become involved in regulating the market. Of course, in practice, there are a lot more variables that have an effect on information symmetry and party bias. But something as simple as this is easily explained by basic free market principles.
* Of course, the information is available to the seller, but it's just that the seller is unwilling to procure that information for one reason or another. The seller finds that correcting the information balance by limiting information access to the buyer is easier than correcting it by having to access that information themselves.
I don't understand the objection to this. If a library puts a book out to be sold, why would it be happier to sell the book to one person than to another? Just because someone doesn't use a scanner to determine whether or not to buy a book, doesn't mean that he wants the book for the "right" reasons. So what if the purchaser may make money reselling the book later? If the original seller wanted, he could offer the book at that higher price himself. The fact is, he's satisified receiving the lower amount, except in cases where the buyer scans the book. This is envy, pure and simple. You get the feeling that the objecting sellers would be happier if the buyer was planning on burning the book, or using it to plan or commit a crime, than simply reselling it at a profit. Geesh.
Greg Raven
As long as there's any left, I'll take mine first.
Some people have fun doing it. One article said he was making $1,000 per week doing it on average, which for $52,000/year is not too shabby. Though he did work 80 hours per week.
If there's one thing a lot of you should learn about economics, it's that an economy is meant to be practiced, not analyzed. Everywhere were there's profit, there will be an explanation thinkable that will blame someone for unethical behavior. If you want to be succesful in a market economy, it's best to just go ahead and exploit opportunities. All this blame (out of jealousy?) will get you nowhere.
It's Slate, btw, not Salon. And what seems shameful, at least to me, is that it completely debases one of the main purposes of thrift stores, library sales and yard sales, and that is community need. Yeah, there's some money-making, but most libraries aren't actually expecting to make much real money on a booksale -- they're there to build goodwill and community. They still depend on donors, grants and tax money for operations. In fact, Libraries are much more social than commercial institutions. Same with yard sales -- it's a community event, and a way to clear out your basement and/or garage a little, but when it becomes a way to make money, it starts to feel creepy. Thrift stores too hardly ever try to make full profit on what they sell -- they're raising money, often for the poor, and trying to help out the poor by underselling donated goods.
By coming along and skimming that community-building profit margin off, what Savitz is doing is saying that the community means less to him than the profit he can glean from it. It's a fundamentally ruthless position and, while not at all illegal, it's certainly shameful.
If it's possible to make a decent living selling books online, then why does it feel so shameful to do this work?
If it's possible to make a decent living giving unjustified loans/selling alcohol or drugs/etc. to people who're already down, then why does it feel so shameful to do this work?
Seriously, you're being a leech, a bottom feeder, and you're right in feeling ashamed. Actually, that feeling speaks for you - there's hope for you yet, maybe.
Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
This may come as a shock, but the summary isn't *gasp* fully accurate. Scanners are allowed at the library sale they say forbids it. It's actually rather interesting-- the early "member's only" hour forbids scanners, then they let scanners in during the open sale hours. So it's a nice compromise between "let people browse" and "let the book sellers make a profit", they're just giving first crack to readers, then a fair shake to sellers afterwards. Neat compromise, that.
A.
Although employment generally is very similar to prostitution, one way or another, we like to hide that sad fact from ourselves. Finding a book to resell is probably dredging up feelings rather like a wino going through trash to collect aluminum cans. It should not dredge up those feelings but the fact that you are doing your scavenging in view of others is bothering you. Actually you provide a great service to people but then again so do buzzards.
If they don't want people to buy under-priced books for resale at a profit, then why don't they price them right to begin with?
And if it's a matter of "what if none of them show up and these books won't sell to anyone else locally at that price?" then just lower the price after a certain time period like noon. If people want the good books early to read and not to resell, they can pay more, but still less than the open market price.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
That's probably because willingness to pay is restricted by ability to pay, which is not correlated with need.
He feels bad for precisely the same reason that a man who pulls up to a soup kitchen in a Mercedes and casually takes a seat should feel bad. Thrift shops are understood to be charitable organisations, facilitating the spread of unwanted items to the needy for prices consistently lower than the normal free market. They are often run by volunteers who wouldn't know a thing about setting up an online presence. Buying an item or two won't hurt their stocks much, but to comb through their merchandise every day removing the most valuable items is stealing directly from the pockets of those who donated the items in the first place.
Wait, wait, wait. I've been to these places, and there's usually at least one worker doing almost nothing.
Besides, every single book that comes into a store has to be stocked. This doesn't seem like a difficult or expensive endeavor to check a book for value. It could probably be done by the bookseller very easily.
Or....perhaps it isn't because the bookseller has deemed that the time spent checking all the books isn't actually profitable.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Throughout history, every library sale and used bookstore has had its opportunistic patrons, only difference here is that knowledge of the medium is no longer required. What before could only be accomplished by a select few bibliophiles, every patron can now perform. The constant "Oh look dear, see if that nice gentleman over there with the scanner can help you find what you need." factor can't help morale much either.
Two things:
Someone will make up a better way and sell it to the bigger book stores and thrift stores. The will relegate this to a smaller and smaller pool, as competition (thanks to articles like this) heats up for the dwindling supply of non-internet-enabled stores.
Second: the pay sucks. This guy, who admits that you can make up to $1000 a week (more if you employ your family/other people) spends 80 hours doing all the work, including listing, selling, and mailing.
Okay...so he's grossing $12.50 hr, on average. Great. When the economy picks up and he can get a "real" job paying him twice that, this option will probably go away. Presuming he's not ADHD or otherwise impaired, anyone with this kind of organizational skill is probably going to be gold for somebody who can pay him $45-60k/yr plus benefits. For 40-50 hours a week of work. He'll get his life back (presuming he ever had one), and get better pay and benefits.
This is the depression era trashpicker. They will always exist, but it's mostly a fad that rears its head in bad times. The only twist to it is that the internet has made the trashpickers job "clean".
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"However, a person who raises prices for truly needed goods during a crisis also ensures that the goods go to the people who have the most critical need (as measured by willingness to pay), yet are still widely despised."
That's because for some bizarre reason, it appears to be the warlords who have the most critical need for every single provision during a crisis. Bizarre, I know, but somehow they are always the ones with the most willingness to pay.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Though not a collector, having searched for particular books in the past, the "treasures" are rarely in getting a book for less than going rate: rather, it's getting my hands on a book that I really want to read. Luckily, none have had high market values, they're just out of print and didn't sell many copies when they were. But for me, the real treasure is opening up a package to see something that I've been searching for for months if not years and finally have in my hands. Then I can settle down to read and really enjoy.
Personally, I don't have a problem with this guy buying books like this. Has anyone considered that maybe he's performing a valuable social service by buying the high-value books? It may be that they don't sell at all which is no bloody good for anyone whereas if he buys them, the bookseller gets some money. And there's nothing to stop the book sellers themselves from checking out the value of their stock before hand.
bang goes my karma... again...
If a local used bookstore is trying to maintain their "unique" character, they might want to have a lot of hidden gems among the rest of the merchandise. Most of their real customers (the ones generating profit for the store) buy lots of different books on a regular basis. Perhaps having some priced extra low adds to the thrill of the chase for those customers. The same thing is true for those library sales. From the library's perspective, the usual customers they are trying to attract are going to buy several books, at wildly different price points and margins. The library is probably trying to balance four variables: get rid of as many books as possible, making as much money as possible, in as short a time as possible, without any of the citizens who support the library feeling ripped off because they just sold the books wholesale.
So, just like the supermarket can say "milk on sale; limit 2" to lure the regular customers without giving away too much to people coming into the store just to buy milk, so too is the used bookstore or library justified in banning the scanner.
Because it makes you a bottom-feeder. And no one likes bottom-feeders.
Millions of SpongeBob SquarePants fans are "no one".
FTA: 'If it's possible to make a decent living selling books online, then why does it feel so shameful to do this work?' concludes Savitz."
Because thrift store and libraries do not exist simply to collect, store, and present the books to be used for purely commercial purposes. After all, the library and thrift store could easily do the same thing to make money. There is professional licensing for such arbitrageurs – for example auctioneers, who pays licensing fees, etc. These sales are not there to enrich you. They are there to find a good home for donated books, to provide work opportunities for people that might not otherwise have them, and to survive as organizations doing work for the public good.
Savitz's regular use of this resource to supply his commercial enterprise is unethical and is probably illegal. Is he registered in his state as a profit-making enterprise? Does he collect appropriate sales taxes on his sales? Does he compensate the library and thrift store for their labor? Does he report this income on his IRS-1040?
If my donations to Goodwill were destined only to line someone's pockets, I would quit donating used articles and instead destroy and discard them.
Potential customer detected - eject him from the store, before he can has a chance to buy the products we have on offer at the price we decided to sell it at! Move, move, move!
Are these store owners fucking mental? Why not just hide all the books in a sack, demand the money up front, then hand one over at random? It makes about as much sense.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I work for a company that is in the used book business. I meet with the people who run the local thrift stores, and the local friends-of-the-library sales. They are very open about why they don't welcome these people to their sales/stores.
The reason people with scanners are not welcome is because they are disruptive and rude to other patrons. Typically these people show up and are waiting when the doors open, they come in and lay claim to an entire section of shelves, or display table and begin sorting into piles by price-point. They stay for hours, and systematically move through the entire inventory. They take up a lot of space, prevent other customers from accessing the merchandise and leave a big mess behind for the staff to clean up.
The reason they don't scan the books and sell them online themselves is because they don't have the staff to do it. It is a great business as a sideline, easy to do, low overhead, moderate profitability. It is an enormous amount of work to do on a larger scale. Many of the chain thrift shops are expanding into online sales, but the smaller ones do not have the resources. Library sales are typically staffed by volunteers with one or two actual employees overseeing the process -they don't have the staff to do more.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
Sigh... I wish that people could mod above +5... simply because your post deserves it.
Supply and demand is fine. These people are greasing up the wheels of commerce. The real question is why aren't bookstores doing this?
Well, there are good reasons that economists don't make good politicians. Failure to understand that what works in economic models doesn't work with people being the primary one...
I'd don't think there are too many people who are criticizing his business.
However, the original post asked why he felt shameful, so your not going to find people answering that question saying "you fely it's shameful because your providing a valuable service" :-)
However, I suspect that some readers might have had some difficulty distinguishing between answering the question and the personal opinion of the answerer...
You just described everyone except the places that mint pennies.
Monopolizes? Please clarify, is he preventing other people from also buying books in the book stores? Or is he preventing people from going to other bookstores?
Actually, he's filling a demand by increasing the flow of supply. If anything, the more books brought to the global market, the less they cost. If books that are in demand, collecting dust on a shelf, that contributes nothing to the economy.
Seriously, anyone in the book business that can't be bothered to check on the value of their inventory deserves to have their ... what was happening again? .... oh yeah, deserves to have their books bought. What?
1. Open a book store
2. Have a customer scan your books
3. Have them give you money for some of the books
4. Profit.
Why does this guy even bother. If 1 in 30 he can make a markup on, how much can this guy be making? $20-50 per day, if he's lucky. He probably spends all day doing it and probably makes $5k per year if he's lucky.
$50 x 5 x 50 = $12,500. Granted, I'm not subtracting cost of internet service, equipment, gas to drive around to these places (or subway fare if you live in the city), etc.
Please help metamoderate.
There could also be other aspects of the sale that are damaged by people scanning.
The sale could be a loss leader for the organization, a way to get book buyers down to see the library. (or stop by the charity shop)
The mixture of books could be part of the entertainment value of the sale, with a few gold nuggets mix into a lot of sand, it is the searching and looking, and reading a bit that is part of the fun.
Having someone scan and remove all the gems is not going to get the buyer and therefore the seller what they are looking for.
Maybe this person should offer to scan and price books for a fee. He I suspect he could make more money in the same time, and have the library staff help help him do it.
I process the donations for the local library's book sale. We get those people who give us stuff that's fairly new (eg, their last year of reading material), but we also get days when someone drops off 10-20 boxes of books overnight ... some of it's so old there's no bar code, so I'd have to type in every last item.
And it's not just the title that's important for the descriptor -- was it a signed copy? Was it a first printing? Is it the large print version?
I was told that years ago, there was someone who'd go through the work of selling the stuff on e-bay or amazon, and it might be worth it, *if* I had a scanner like this, but there's no way in hell and I'm going to type in the name of every book. And that'd still leave me maybe 1/4 of the pile, as many of the donations pre-date bar codes. (but well, a 1920s printing of Othello, in good condition? maybe it has value ... I don't know)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I've seen some books on e.g. Bookfinder for say $300, which are actually worth $10. Some crazy guy speculatively prices a copy at $250, when none are for sale. A few more appear for sale, and base their prices on that, so we get a load of books on offer with values in the range $250-$300, say. But actually, no purchaser may be prepared to pay more than $10 for it. So if you buy a copy for $50, and hope to sell for $250, you are going to lose big time.
You do realize that what doesn't sell at these sales gets thrown out, and not always recycled or anything? I did community service at a small thrift store in 2003. They had a giant pile of books that had been marked "unsold-destroy". In this were a ton of auto repair manuals. I'm a car nut. I asked, they agreed, I cherry-picked fifteen decent repair manuals and an issue of Cigar Aficionado magazine. The 12 car repair manuals sold for $107 on eBay. I kept and still have and use the other three. The autumn '96 issue of Cigar Aficionado went for $20 all by itself (Demi Moore on the cover). According to some of you, I should have let those things clog up a landfill somewhere. That $127 paid my electric bill that month and kept me out of the dark. Flame me if you must, but don't be surprised if I don't care what you think.
Those who know, do not say. Those who say, do not know.
Most librarians aren't in it to get rich by scamming the system, doucheface.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You seem to have misspelled "sociopathic fucktards".
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
More often than not the books for sale at the thrift store were donated, which means when they sell the store makes 100% profit (minus overhead). In my experience, however, some thrift store owners like to look at themselves as better than others because they are operating a "charitable" organization, more often than not with a religious organization backing (and providing tax shelter) the thrift store. These institutions claim to be helping the poor and the needy, when in fact they charge the "poor and needy" customers the same price as anyone else who shops there.
If they determine the customer is shopping with the intention to resell, they typically react negatively. I have been banned from shopping from a local thrift store for no other reason than the owner had learned that I had resold items on eBay. From the owner's point of view I had taken away opportunities for less fortunate people to purchase these same items. Here are some additional details, however.
I had already learned from employees at this thrift store that they frequently received more items than the building could contain. Each week, they gathered up items in the store that had not sold (I believe the items had about a four week period before they were gathered up). If they were glass, they were smashed. If they were clothing items they were bagged and prepped to be shipped off to a company that shreds unwanted fabric and packs it into insulation used in the manufacture of automobiles. I presume the glass was sent out for recycling. From what I gather, the company that made insulation paid the thrift store for the fabric and covered all shipping costs.
My point is - if we were denying the poor the benefit of obtaining these items, they were being replaced each week in such volume that would result in a significant amount of the items being destroyed/recycled/sold to a third party. So the reality was that there was more than enough to go around.
Another point of view is that we were taking advantage of the thrift store by reselling their product for a higher price than what we paid. I fail to see how this is a problem. What anyone who does this is doing is work. It takes time to sort through items in any resale environment and determine which are valuable and which are not. Any thrift store owner or employee knows this. It also takes time to take those items into a different forum. For example - to list an item on eBay it is typically necessary to provide detailed photographs of the item in question, create a listing and respond to questions about the item. Upon the completion of the sale it takes time to properly package and ship the item. So in effect, it is not that the item itself is being sold for a higher price, it is that the resellers are being compensated for their time, which is, in effect, a service.
My final point is that when the owner of a thrift store, yard/garage sale, or library gets offended that someone is reselling their items, it is hypocrisy. These individuals who are offended are already engaging in resale. Of the three, the thrift store owner is the most guilty because in most cases he or she is reselling product that was given to them freely as a donation. Unless the thrift store is being operated as not-for-profit and all proceeds are being donated to charity, they are usually making excellent money from a small business owner's perspective. In our current economy, thrift stores are one of the few business models that are doing rather well. Therefore when these individuals become upset with or feel threatened by resellers who purchase their product, it is ultimately a problem of greed - they do not like the idea that someone else will sell an item for more than they (the thrift store owner) was able to sell it. I have a simple answer for these people - try reselling these items on eBay or Amazon. Hire the staff to do it if you do not have the time to do it yourself. I predict, however, that the profit margin will not be as large when compared to the overhead of hiring people to do this and the amount of time necessary to invest in order for it to be successful.
If the above offends, perhaps capitalism is not your bag, baby.