Paranoia or healthy scepticism?

[Vocht]

Hi Forum,

During my hobby browsing evenings behind my battle station (PC) I like to carefully scan dealer websites and compare pieces and prices.
Living in Europe I mostly stick to home and shop in France, Belgium and Sweden. But I like to check out the larger dealers in North America as well.
What I see sometimes is an item being sold on one shop and then popping up somewhere else. Now I understand if a dealer finds something cheap and thinks he can resell it for more. The website upkeep etc. needs to be paid. However I came accross the following:

Forum Sponsor Virtual Grenadier sells a brownshirt for $1080 maybe 2months ago:

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Pops up on a US dealer again (stealing their images as well). For $1195

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Now. Don't tell me the initial shipping costs plus free shipping all over the world would cover the $115 difference. What dealer would invest in a piece with little to no margin? No business man I know! This makes me very suspicious so I was wondering if anyone had similar experiences. I am sure we sadly are all too familiar with the scammers pretending to own and sell items which they never possessed in the first place.

[M.E.E.]

I do not know in this case but I do know that retailers will trade items between each other fairly often, you see this with NA sites. With the good ones they will just say traded from this site or using original pictures from this site etc.

[Aldo]

Yes, I see that often but usually the profit margin is considerable. In this case it could just be the original buyer sold it back to another dealer at a wholesale price or maybe a trade. BTW both these dealers are legitimate and sponsors.

[MAP]

All plausible reasons. Could also be a consignment item that was moved from one dealer to another.