Across America, semi-homeless "nomads" drive from big-box store to big-box store, hunting for items on clearance that Amazon customers are paying a premium for; when they find them, they snap them up and add them to the bins at Fulfillment by Amazon warehouses, whence they are shipped on to consumers. Read the rest
When your return your unwanted Amazon purchases, they end up with discounters who sell them by the palletload at pennies on the dollar, and millions of "reverse supply chain" specialists bid on these pallets of miscellania, sort the usable from the useless, repackage it, and make it available for sale again. Read the rest
Monopoly for Millennials, an edition of the game noted for its surprisingly contemptuous mockery of younger generations, was perfectly-designed to go viral. It's $55 at Amazon, but WalMart had it for just $20 (sold out, I'm afraid). The Bearded Picker went from store to store buying every box and selling them online. All he had to do was iterate the "available" count on his third-party seller listing at Amazon, raking in $2500 for a single (admittedly long and arduous) day's work.
Other sellers report that Amazon prevents them selling these as "New". One explanation is that they're may be setting the price too high, tipping the algorithm off that they're gouging customers. But The Bearded Picker also points out that he's an approved seller of the brand at Amazon:
Certain brands require approval before you can sell them. It helps AZ fight counterfeits or the brand has requested it by entering the brand registry.
Amazon-approved arbitrage! Read the rest
Alice Maz was part of a small group of players who came to have near-total mastery over the internal economy of a popular Minecraft; Maz describes how her early fascination with the mechanics of complex multiplayer games carried over into an interest in economics and games, and that let her become a virtuoso player, and brilliant thinker, about games and economics. Read the rest
The Paradise Papers continue to expose the economically useless activity that late-stage capitalism rewards with titanic sums of money: today, it's the story of Julien Lavallée, a botmaster ticket-scalper who has harvested the lion's share of concert tickets from all over the world, laundering them for millions through a secret "top seller" program that Stubhub offers to anyone who can move more than $50,000 worth of tickets per year. Read the rest
A "death put" on a certificate of deposit means that the bond matures immediately upon the bearer's death, rather than when its term runs out: they're used as a form of life-insurance, cushioning the blow to loved ones from unexpected death, and they can be held jointly, so that the bearer's heirs and a third party get a payoff on death. Read the rest
