Re: Stuffed Monkey WSOP game: hand-crafted Slingshot available for trade
- From: "Chris" <admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 8 Mar 2006 04:01:38 -0800
Aaron,
Fair question - I don't want to ruin the surprises, it takes away from
the game. But then RGP is probably not where most of my players are
going to come from... I try not to be too spammy with it, apologies if
you don't like it, feel free to killfile. But my first two trades have
been local, and ebay. In a couple of hours since I posted the
slingshot trade notice a few places, I've already gotten two offers.
The first principle is that one man's trash is another man's
treasure... I guess ebay has changed a lot of this, both in terms of
application, AND the ethics involved. In cases where people with a
basement full of junk that would never get around to selling it, get
offered a price for it, and accept the price, and then the buyer carts
it off and finds a buyer for it.... well in that instance, even if the
buyer resells for a huge profit, no one has been exploited, the
buyer/reseller has provided a service and created a market for
something that would have rotted otherwise. But this is old school.
Now, today, wIth eBay, anyone can sell anything, and there's a real
ethical problem if you don't tell someone the value of what they're
selling... like coins or books or less obvious stuff like siliverware
or toys and even clothing... everything is 'vintage' now. all they'd
need to do is type in ebay.com... so this being said, it's kind of like
watching someone drop his wallet but not telling him... we're not out
to dupe anyone or mislead anyone as to the value of what we trade.
But, I can repair broken items, clean old items, and increase their
value that way.
The second principle should have been obvious to you, you're a smart
guy... promotion, and buzz!
The 'one red paperclip' guy has bartered his way up from a paperclip,
to a cube van, to a recording contract. How? He made a couple of pity
swaps, got an old camp stove, found someone who wanted one, who gave
him an old generator... found someone who wanted one, who gave him an
old bar fridge and an neon old beer sign... throw in a keg of beer and
it's not just a pile of junk, it's an 'instant party kit'. suddenly
it's funny, and someone wants the instant party kit. who wants it? A
guy with a snowmobile. So now he has a snowmobile, and not only that,
the guy with the snowmobile has his own radio show... the one red
paperclip guy is suddenly getting press. A travel agent sees a promo
opportunity, and offers him a ski trip, for his snowmobile... it's
worth a lot more than the snowmobile... why did he do it? For the
press, and to be part of a story that was generating lots of buzz. You
get the idea.
There isn't a master plan and I dont have trades lined up, but of
course i'm thinking strategically; I have an idea for some cool stuff
I'd like to get ahold of, because I think I could turn them into great
promotional items. I know that for about $400 worth of stuff I could
create a promo item that would easily fetch 2k. But I'm not going to
keep $1 for $1.50 or whatever you cited in the example in your post...
I'm not offering people unfavorable odds and betting with them, I'm
getting people to play the game, and creating a lot of the value.
You saw my posts about the ivey autographs... I've discarded this, I
dont want to play around with a touchy issue.. if Tiger Woods agency
actually responds to my request and sends me a tiger autograph, I might
re-visit it... it was going to look something like this:
http://www.stacksback.com/tigerandphil.gif
With autographs on both pictures reverse autographs or even just the
right away around... come on, you have to admit that's a pretty fun
piece of poker memorabilia...
But I'm doing two things... devising ideas and seeing how I can make
them happen, but also just reacting to whatever gets thrown out of left
field (like the slingshot guy - he contacted me.. turns out he has
great canes and slingshots. I thought a poker player would like a
slingshot better than a cane. Maybe I can find a collector of unique
woodworks who likes poker and work something out with him. Or someone
with one of those old fashioned mechanized piggybanks that's shaped
like a donkey... Anyway I'm having a great time with it.
Better still, I have the attention of a major poker site, who was going
to make me an offer on the monkey... They've invited me to keep them in
the loop and say they'll trade with me if something fun comes along....
I've sent them lots of business, I really get treated well by them, I'd
like to keep working as their affiliate, and I'd like to do something
creative.. Why would they be interested? I feel lucky that they
are... and hopefully it's because it's fun, and because I send them a
lot more customers if my promo is successful. In the meantime I like
coming up with surprise items, stuff totally out of left field... I've
committed to quality and I refuse to try to stick a nice headline or
blurb on something that's essentially crap, everything is going to be
good stuff and at least have some hard value as well as
novelty/collector value.
Finally, I mean it - If I get a WSOP prize package I'm giving it
away... I'd like to play in the WSOP too, if the promo is successful,
hopefully they send me too.... but the idea is to reward my customers
and players in the trading game and have some fun, and leave a trail of
interesting stuff. It will be a small private tourney - probably
50-60 people. If you'd like to play, and you don't already have your
WSOP seat nailed down (I suspect you might) that would be very cool...
Chris
.
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