Im sure this is definitely talked about already but I couldn’t find a recent thread. I’ve just been seeing a theme (mainly with a-rt yoyos) that even though at retail they are sold for about 145 with shipping, people will price them upwards of $180. I’m a big a-rt guy myself but i just don’t want to spend an extra $50+ for a yoyo that i know Jensen and Charles didnt even make that much off of. Was wondering about everyones thoughts on rarity/sentimentality and pricing.
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This happens in most collector-type hobbies. Models that go out of production will sell for higher prices when people are willing to pay those prices. A-RT yoyos are highly sought after and probably won’t be decreasing in value anytime soon.
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Once something goes out of production and retail price no longer governs its market value, supply and demand forces take over and a product’s market value is entirely governed by what buyers are willing to pay for it. This is the nature of collector markets. And since yoyos from boutique makers tend to be produced in small numbers, it is not surprising that the highly-regarded ones become highly sought after collectibles pretty quickly.
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When people stop buying them for $180+, they’ll stop selling for that. Luckily I’ve purchased all three of my Grails for around or under retail (even my two mint ones). It’s just a matter of being patient and waiting for what you want at the price you want it at - it’ll likely happen eventually. But man, I would be lying if I didn’t seriously think about hopping on the $200 mint raw Grail I saw pop up for sale today. Who knows how many are out there? Who knows how many mint ones are out there? Thoughts like that are what drive the price up and make people jump on em. And it’s funny… no external factors considered (rarity, desirability, etc) I feel like the Grail would likely be sold for something like $79 if mass produced by a bigger company. Is it intrinsically worth over retail? Definitely not. All factors considered however, is it worth paying over retail if it’s something you really want? Hell yeah.
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How would one even begin to assess a yoyo’s intrinsic worth? Not to get too philosophical about it, but It seems to me that in a capitalist society there is no such thing. There is only market value, which is a highly dynamic property in which retail price is only the first stop in an item’s long journey of value over lifetime.
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Haha I definitely didn’t intend to get all philosophical either… “intrinsic” was perhaps the wrong word to use, but the closest thing to what I could think of at the time. I just meant when you remove rarity, popularity or desirability from the situation. Basically I thought about what a company like One Drop (who makes the Grail) would charge on their store for a simple, no frills, organic 6061 yoyo like the Grail.
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From what ive learned given the right circumstance… even toilet paper can be a hot commodity 
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Too many factors go into what a company sells a product for. The same yoyo made by FPM would cost a lot less. If FPM made the Grail and sold it for $55, would that be its true value? How can the same object be worth both $55 and $145? I’m only digging my heels into this because I think it makes a lot more sense to get away from notions of intrinsic or baseline value, and just accept that a yoyo’s true value is, and always will be, whatever it fetches in the marketplace at any given time (the reasons being largely irrelevant).
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yeah it comes down to that just what people will pay.
Yeah plently of folks sell their a-rts and other hot limited yos for retail or below but why do that when they’ll pay the extra 50$ for it. i personaly dont have the nostalgia for a lot of the older stuff like anti yo and old clyw so its hard for me to justify paying 200 for a mono metal just bc it was cool before i started throwing . i def am guilty of doing so though lol.
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Yoyos have mostly gotten cheaper over time, though in the last year or so that has become slightly less true because of increasing material costs, supply chain issues etc. These high prices are for limited yoyos targeted at collectors or people chasing high end. While I can justify paying $150-200 for a Turning Point or Yoyorecreation bimetal, because to me that is chasing the highest end yoyo you can get, that pricing is insane for an aluminum mono that isn’t an old school collectable yoyo. How different is a FYFO from an N12 shark? I mean I do think the FYFO is a bit better, but how much of that difference comes down to marketing and expectations? The FYFO costs 10x as much.
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I don’t think anyone disagrees with this man. The first thing I said in the thread is in line with this thought:
I think you’re extrapolating what I intended to be an offhand comment/interesting thought and getting into semantics a bit.
Anyway… let the discussion continue…
Regarding Intrinsic Value…
I think all of the following yoyo’s should be priced at $20 and people should sell me them:
- Anything by MarkMont
- YYJ Jamboo
- YYF Kapital (Red, Small Rim Engraving)
- YYF $100 American
- Anything else I am currently shopping for.
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“A horse is worth what you pay for it.” - Don McClean circa 1972
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I have a Titanium YYD Dazzler I will sell you for 69 cents.
Only drawback is I will deliver it myself to make sure it gets there.
And my shipping rate is $1800 a day/2day minimum).
PS…… It wasn’t that long ago when people were All ‘collecting’ toilet paper. Actually fighting over it. Buying it in the black market. Bidding for TP on EBay.
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Well, Jensen… I happen to be ‘ok’ and ‘handy’.
And I am from ‘back in the day’……
And…… I also am terminally left handed.
Remember when Snickers were 5 cents.
I use to put gas in my 52 Chevy for 25 cents.
We could see a double feature at the Show for 35 cents.
Bowling was a quarter a game.
Admission to Disneyland was less than 15 bucks.
My friends bought packs of Marlboro cigarettes for 25 cents.
I took my girl to see Jimi Hendrix last West Coast performance before he unfortunately died. We doubled out and bought four tickets. The tickets for about $20 apiece, maybe less can’t remember. That was over 50 years ago obviously. That same girl I took the Disneyland. And the same girl that I took to see Jimi, has the same mailing address that I have right now. I remember the first day I saw her I told my buddy I need one of those ha ha. I guess I did. Once in while we talk about how cheap stuff used to be.
I remember stuff she forgot and she remembers stuff I forgot.
I use to buy Levi 501 jeans for 3.98 plus tax.
I still wear 501’s a half century later. Uh, they cost more now and feature less quality.
The bus going to the beach was 10 cents.
Oh well…
Now in a heartbeat I can spend more on one titanium yoyo than I used to spend for a whole month‘s rent for my apartment by the beach.
My parents bought their house in San Pedro on third Street in 1954 for $12,000. A realtor just offered me $750,000 for the same house. What the heck is that all about? The house on the west side of my parents house just sold for 779. And the house to the east of my parents house is up for sale right now 800,000. The yearly property tax on my house is almost exactly the same as the entire cost of my parents house originally.
Obviously none of that information has anything to do with yo-yos. But it does give a little insight into what older handy guys used to deal with when they were learning how to be handy and were much younger.
Life is an adventure. Live it🤓
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If people pay the inflated prices that’s fine, that’s just the market value. It sucks because nobody likes to pay extra, but it’s like that with all hobbies around discontinued items that people want to collect.
A-rt discontinued the Grail. People want Grails and are regularly willing to drop 150-200 bucks for them. It only makes sense that if you’d want to sell a Grail, that you’d charge as much as people regularly pay for them. Why sell something for way cheaper than what people are readily willing to pay for it?
That said buying one that comes up for cheap explicitly to resell and make a profit would be incredibly lame to do, but if you’ve already got one, why wouldn’t you just sell it for the price people will pay?
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But my dad always said that the secret to financial success was “Buy low, sell high”… 
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I get that not everybody is in a great financial position, and sometimes any amount of extra money can help. But if you’re really in a position where you just HAVE to buy and resell a yoyo to get a 20-30 dollar profit, you should maybe reconsider how you’re spending your time.
I have a job to make money, yoyos are just a hobby to have fun with, not another vehicle to try and make a tiny bit of extra money off of. But that’s just me 
(This isn’t directed at you specifically, I know you’re way older than I am, this is just a response to the general sentiment of buying cheap yoyos on the BST to resell for profit)
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I don’t know anyone who goes around buying yoyos and then waits for them to go up significantly in value just to sell them off to make a profit. If such people exist, they are few and far between. Yoyos are a lousy investment vehicle, to be honest. You can make a lot more money investing in mutual funds or index funds than trying to flip yoyos. I don’t think anyone in the hobby/community is dumb enough to think otherwise.
The bigger point though, I think, is that selling yoyos–which happen to become collectible–for more than the original purchase price is not some nefarious scheme to crush the souls of people with less money. It is merely making the most of a BST marketplace full of available and willing buyers. It is worth remembering that every BST sale is completely consensual, and that nobody is getting cheated unless the buyer doesn’t receive the yoyo they (willingly) paid for. And let’s be real, 90+% of used yoyos get sold for less than sticker price. We shouldn’t begrudge those (relatively) few that get sold for more.
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$25 or $30 could get you the only yo-yo you’d ever need, at least for a particular style. It’s a cheap hobby.
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