Protecting Your Source

Hi. I was just wondering what everyone's opinion was on the disclosure of you Cel acquiring sources was. I'm not afraid of doing the work, (sometimes searching endlessly for those perfect cels)but I've often asked collectors where they get that great cel. A few times on rubberslug I'll contact a member with feedback congratulating them on a steller find. I'll ask them where they got it and would they mind pointing me in the right direction. Usually I get a vague answer that is politely telling me to get lost.
I completely understand the work that is involved in tracking down cels. Hours of searching on the Web, using deputy services (I use Rinkya), going to the conventions...
What's everyone's opinion on this?
Best regards,
Mark

It's not neccesarily the [i]work[/i] involved that's getting you the vague answers--it's the possibility of competition. Frankly, I don't really mind telling people if I got a cel from say, Ebay or YJ. Sure, they might start checking there more often, but they probably were already.

On the other hand, collectors might not be so keen to tell you about a dealer site they found--then, you might snap up the cels that they wanted--or drive the price up. Of course, you could do that with auction sites too . . . hmmm . . . maybe I better stop telling folks that stuff. :P

This hobby is just so dang competitive. ^_~

It is competitive. I'd rather someone from rubberslug acquire that dream cel than someone else...that way we can still enjoy it within this community.

I think it depends on where you got the cel. If you got it from eBay or YJ or a well known dealer, it just seems silly to protect your source. People are gonna know where you found the cel. But if you got a cel from a private individual, I can understand not wanting to send other cel collectors their way to hound them about other cels they might or might not have. Probably depends on what series you collect, but I'm finding as the cels I collect are getting harder to find, I'm buying more from other collectors rather than dealers with websites.

Yeah, I don't mind giving generic "Yahoo Japan" answers either, but I wouldn't want to get too specific about it. There's a lot of uh...interesting and innovative ways of doing things over there. Even though I've been acquiring items from YJ for over six and a half years, I'm still finding and learning better ways of searching and winning things over there.

I just wish I did some of the things I'm doing now a long time ago. I know I've missed out on good stuff I was looking for because I didn't know what I was doing earlier. Oh well. We can only do our best in the Here and Now. ^_^;;

It's an obvious point, but there are certain things people will tell their collecting friends that they won't tell people they hardly know. If I knew where to find a series and I have no interest in collecting from it, I would tell the person where to find it unless if maybe one of my friends was also trying to collect from it. In that case I might wait to see if my friend answers the question or not. The ball is in his court since he's collecting from it and not me.

If I knew where to find a series and I'm currently collecting from it, I think what I say would mostly depend on how well I know the person who asked and how politely they asked. As a whole though, not many people are trying to collect what I'm after. And even if they are it's not for very many items and the images are usually quite different from what I'm trying to get. So "conflicts of interest" rarely occur with me thank goodness. ^_^;;