Lately I've been spending most of my forum time on the SomethingAwful forums. So last night I was browsing their forums and I came across this thread titled "Fighting Dell and winning never felt so good!" started by dukeofurl.
Now, up to this point what I knew about dukeofurl was that he bought and sold guns, scrap gold, and other various stuff. He posts mainly in their gun forum and seems to be pretty knowledgable about guns. I was under the impression he was in his 30s or 40s.
I clicked the thread, and saw this in the first post "I ordered 200 19" LCD's at $400 each. Note: This is 2002, so LCD's were really ****** expensive. They killed the order. I got pissed and threw a ****** fit. They threw $1k at me and said they'd take it off my next order. I belived it. What the ****** did I know, I was 17. "
Immediately I think, it's PAB. It has to be. I can't believe it's PAB, but I know it is. Sure enough, dukeofurl is SomethingAwful's incarnation of PAB. To make things even funnier, he was on my AIM buddy list but I didn't know who he was. He had messaged me a while ago when I was buying hard drive platters trying to sell me some.
Anyway, we got to talking and we decided an interview with PAB was in order. Those of you who remember PAB probably know him best for the enormous shipments he used to order from Dell and then resell. Maybe PAB will reregister an account to answer questions. Without further ado:
1) Pics?
Ahahahah. There's no way I'm posting pics right now of me. Evadman supposedly has some of my old hot deals pictures of playstation 2's and pallets of dell merch. He's attempting to locate them as we speak. On another forum, there's a picture of me wearing a leather jacket and Stetson in front of my suburban, but that picture sucks. When I get a better one, I might let you post that but I don't know.
2) Where are you from?
I am from Florida - I'm a southerner born and raised. I'm kinda odd in that I'm a bit of a redneck but I'm Asian, so I think I'm the first Chinese person ever to buy a 4x4 diesel suburban in the history of our culture. I attribute it more to environment than genetics though. If I grew up in Boston, I'd probably want my parents to buy me a nice 2001 Integra like every other Chinese kid with a 4.0 GPA.
3) Why did you post from PsychoAndy's account so much? Is he actually your brother?
I was too lazy to get my own account. I also thought it was kinda neat to be different. He's my brother, but depending on how I'm acting that day, he might deny any knowledge of knowing me. He's done it before and I can't say that I blame him. I'm an obnoxious ass at times.
4) What made you get into buying/selling things? How did you start out?
Asking how I got into buying and selling things is like asking RossMAN how he started getting into credit card debt. We don't know how it happened, it just did and we were taken into it's hypnotic grasp for life. I liken it to a train wreck or a thread by Millennium. We know that its going to end horribly, but can't avert our gaze.
I remember when I was probably about 5 years old and my school had to sell candybars as a fundraiser. I staked out a position in front of a grocery store and at the end of the week we would tally up how many candybars we sold. It kinda went like this in my classroom.
Teacher: Timmy, how many did you sell this week?
Timmy: I sold 10.
Teacher: Jimmy, how many did you sell this week?
Jimmy: I sold 4.
Teacher: Barry, how many did you sell this week?
Barry: I sold 16.
Teacher: PAB, how many did you sell this week?
PAB: I sold 2.
Teacher: Only 2?
PAB: 2 cases isn't a lot? Give me a break, I'm only one man!
So at the end of the summer, the PA/PAB team sold something like $1000 in candybars between hustling people in front of Publix and having a cash register display at our parents restaurant. We won a clock radio and a stereo, which we both have till this day. I attribute part of the success to my Dad's ability to guilt people into doing things. I just found a picture he attached to the display, so don't give me any huff about not posting pics.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v186/psychoandy/IMG_0072.jpg
5) How were you able to spend so much money on computers as a teenager? Were your parents rich?
Its a complicated story, but as a child I had socked away all my birthday and Chinese new year money and I lost it on tech stocks in 2001. Before I graduated high school, I latched onto my the company amex account and started using the credit line to my advantage. I still have the first Amex Gold card I ever got when I was 15. My mom gave me $500 after I graduated high school and coupled with American Express I started banging away Palm handhelds and at the end of the summer I had a sizeable war chest. I rolled that over into numerous Dell deals, Virgin Megastore PS2's, basically buying and selling whatever possible and that gave me the experience and know how on how to roll money that continues to benefit me today.
My parents were far from rich, they lost 90% in the tech bust. They always worked 7 days a week, so growing up was a bit weird. I never got what I always wanted, even though I knew we could afford it but I got what I needed but we managed to get by with the occasional hot deal airfare vacation.
Not that it matters or anyone would bother to check, but we have had the ugliest looking house on the entire street for the past 20 years. We even have cars that don't run out front under the tree.
6) How much education do you have?
Not enough. Money and education are two things you can't have enough of.
Don't confuse education with knowledge though.
I know plenty of educated people who are completely clueless sometimes. I know one person who is a software development VP who designs software for heart monitors. Very educated man, and one day he locked himself out of his house and couldn't figure out how to get in. He called his wife, 1200 miles away who told him to call me. I go over to his house and find him trying to pick a lock with a flathead screwdriver. I looked at the door and I there were two hingepins looking straight at me and I asked why he didn't pull the pins and just take the door off the hinges. He looked at me funny and I just went and did it in two minutes.
That whole story was a just one illustration that there are some really smart people that can think rings around me, but they can't think up pulling hingepins to get back in the house. My uncle Jimmy told me "If you're not going to be book smart, at least be street smart" and I wound up in both columns.
7) Have you ever worked a "real" job?
Yes. It was an interesting experience since I worked with a bunch of so called "professionals" that were criminally insane. I fit in pretty well, for the most part. At some places, the water cooler talk would be about McNeil/Leherer or Wall Street Week with Reukeyser. At our place, it was about South Park and Family Guy.
8) What do you consider your biggest success so far? Monetarily or just something that worked out amazingly well.
That's a good question, but I've got to say that I can't single out a single event or deal that really makes itself worthy of mentioning. The experience that I gained in selling on the internet and in person right out of high school has been something that I've continued to benefit from. So I've got to say that putting together deal #1 with Palm would be the biggest success since it established a foundation for everything else.
9) What do you consider your biggest loss so far? Monetarily or just something that was particularly dumb.
I made a joke at work and got fired. It wasn't a good joke, but it was appropriate for the moment. Also worth mentioning, at the time, HR asked that me to overlook a barrage of derogatory comments based towards my ethnicity. My attorneys are on it.
10) Do you sell a lot of stuff on EBay, and if so what percentage of your auctions have finished with a NPB or scammer winning?
Great question - I've pared down my ebay selling a lot over the years based on a number of factors. I can't get anything worth selling on ebay regular enough to make it worth the headache and whenever I do list something for sale, I have to deal with scam artists and buyer supported fraud. Out of 10 items I list, 6-7 normally pay up and the last 3-4 make my life miserable. Ebay refuses to do anything about it, since they still collect fees on the initial and re-listing, so the scam artists are actually improving their bottom line. God forbid they actually make a level playing field between the buyers and sellers.
11) Do you think reselling merchandise is profitable enough to live off of in the foreseeable future, considering the big trend towards cutting out the middleman and marketing directly to consumers?
It really depends on the items at hand. Dell made a billion dollar business out of marketing directly to the consumer, but that's on new computers. Simple price effect economics dictate that there's always a market for merchandise, whether it's cars, computer hardware, or even dog doo on a stick. There are plenty of auto, boat, and aircraft brokers that make a very good living at what they do because they're good at it. One thing that will always sell are cheap cars. People who need a car and can't afford a new one are something that this world is not going to run out of anytime soon. Same goes for cheap computers.
12) Regardless of your answer to #11, would you do this forever if you could, or do you have other plans?
It's really hard to say at this point. If I can make $25,000 a year selling stuff that's mine or other people's on a commission - that's plenty for me. I might parlay my earnings onto a J.D. eventually.
13) Give us a brief timeline of what you've been doing since that huge Dell deal.
My memory sucks since dates are not a strong point with me but, there were a few sizeable deals that didn't pan out. Since then I've branched out into buying and selling ANYTHING that can turn a profit. Before, it was strictly computer stuff. Now it's cars, trucks, soda machines, boats, jewelry, tractors and trailers, whatever. I'll buy an airplane if I think I can make a buck on it. Interesting is a dull word to describe the business I'm in. I once scalped tickets to a high school graduation and sold Braille playboys.
Now, up to this point what I knew about dukeofurl was that he bought and sold guns, scrap gold, and other various stuff. He posts mainly in their gun forum and seems to be pretty knowledgable about guns. I was under the impression he was in his 30s or 40s.
I clicked the thread, and saw this in the first post "I ordered 200 19" LCD's at $400 each. Note: This is 2002, so LCD's were really ****** expensive. They killed the order. I got pissed and threw a ****** fit. They threw $1k at me and said they'd take it off my next order. I belived it. What the ****** did I know, I was 17. "
Immediately I think, it's PAB. It has to be. I can't believe it's PAB, but I know it is. Sure enough, dukeofurl is SomethingAwful's incarnation of PAB. To make things even funnier, he was on my AIM buddy list but I didn't know who he was. He had messaged me a while ago when I was buying hard drive platters trying to sell me some.
Anyway, we got to talking and we decided an interview with PAB was in order. Those of you who remember PAB probably know him best for the enormous shipments he used to order from Dell and then resell. Maybe PAB will reregister an account to answer questions. Without further ado:
1) Pics?
Ahahahah. There's no way I'm posting pics right now of me. Evadman supposedly has some of my old hot deals pictures of playstation 2's and pallets of dell merch. He's attempting to locate them as we speak. On another forum, there's a picture of me wearing a leather jacket and Stetson in front of my suburban, but that picture sucks. When I get a better one, I might let you post that but I don't know.
2) Where are you from?
I am from Florida - I'm a southerner born and raised. I'm kinda odd in that I'm a bit of a redneck but I'm Asian, so I think I'm the first Chinese person ever to buy a 4x4 diesel suburban in the history of our culture. I attribute it more to environment than genetics though. If I grew up in Boston, I'd probably want my parents to buy me a nice 2001 Integra like every other Chinese kid with a 4.0 GPA.
3) Why did you post from PsychoAndy's account so much? Is he actually your brother?
I was too lazy to get my own account. I also thought it was kinda neat to be different. He's my brother, but depending on how I'm acting that day, he might deny any knowledge of knowing me. He's done it before and I can't say that I blame him. I'm an obnoxious ass at times.
4) What made you get into buying/selling things? How did you start out?
Asking how I got into buying and selling things is like asking RossMAN how he started getting into credit card debt. We don't know how it happened, it just did and we were taken into it's hypnotic grasp for life. I liken it to a train wreck or a thread by Millennium. We know that its going to end horribly, but can't avert our gaze.
I remember when I was probably about 5 years old and my school had to sell candybars as a fundraiser. I staked out a position in front of a grocery store and at the end of the week we would tally up how many candybars we sold. It kinda went like this in my classroom.
Teacher: Timmy, how many did you sell this week?
Timmy: I sold 10.
Teacher: Jimmy, how many did you sell this week?
Jimmy: I sold 4.
Teacher: Barry, how many did you sell this week?
Barry: I sold 16.
Teacher: PAB, how many did you sell this week?
PAB: I sold 2.
Teacher: Only 2?
PAB: 2 cases isn't a lot? Give me a break, I'm only one man!
So at the end of the summer, the PA/PAB team sold something like $1000 in candybars between hustling people in front of Publix and having a cash register display at our parents restaurant. We won a clock radio and a stereo, which we both have till this day. I attribute part of the success to my Dad's ability to guilt people into doing things. I just found a picture he attached to the display, so don't give me any huff about not posting pics.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v186/psychoandy/IMG_0072.jpg
5) How were you able to spend so much money on computers as a teenager? Were your parents rich?
Its a complicated story, but as a child I had socked away all my birthday and Chinese new year money and I lost it on tech stocks in 2001. Before I graduated high school, I latched onto my the company amex account and started using the credit line to my advantage. I still have the first Amex Gold card I ever got when I was 15. My mom gave me $500 after I graduated high school and coupled with American Express I started banging away Palm handhelds and at the end of the summer I had a sizeable war chest. I rolled that over into numerous Dell deals, Virgin Megastore PS2's, basically buying and selling whatever possible and that gave me the experience and know how on how to roll money that continues to benefit me today.
My parents were far from rich, they lost 90% in the tech bust. They always worked 7 days a week, so growing up was a bit weird. I never got what I always wanted, even though I knew we could afford it but I got what I needed but we managed to get by with the occasional hot deal airfare vacation.
Not that it matters or anyone would bother to check, but we have had the ugliest looking house on the entire street for the past 20 years. We even have cars that don't run out front under the tree.
6) How much education do you have?
Not enough. Money and education are two things you can't have enough of.
Don't confuse education with knowledge though.
I know plenty of educated people who are completely clueless sometimes. I know one person who is a software development VP who designs software for heart monitors. Very educated man, and one day he locked himself out of his house and couldn't figure out how to get in. He called his wife, 1200 miles away who told him to call me. I go over to his house and find him trying to pick a lock with a flathead screwdriver. I looked at the door and I there were two hingepins looking straight at me and I asked why he didn't pull the pins and just take the door off the hinges. He looked at me funny and I just went and did it in two minutes.
That whole story was a just one illustration that there are some really smart people that can think rings around me, but they can't think up pulling hingepins to get back in the house. My uncle Jimmy told me "If you're not going to be book smart, at least be street smart" and I wound up in both columns.
7) Have you ever worked a "real" job?
Yes. It was an interesting experience since I worked with a bunch of so called "professionals" that were criminally insane. I fit in pretty well, for the most part. At some places, the water cooler talk would be about McNeil/Leherer or Wall Street Week with Reukeyser. At our place, it was about South Park and Family Guy.
8) What do you consider your biggest success so far? Monetarily or just something that worked out amazingly well.
That's a good question, but I've got to say that I can't single out a single event or deal that really makes itself worthy of mentioning. The experience that I gained in selling on the internet and in person right out of high school has been something that I've continued to benefit from. So I've got to say that putting together deal #1 with Palm would be the biggest success since it established a foundation for everything else.
9) What do you consider your biggest loss so far? Monetarily or just something that was particularly dumb.
I made a joke at work and got fired. It wasn't a good joke, but it was appropriate for the moment. Also worth mentioning, at the time, HR asked that me to overlook a barrage of derogatory comments based towards my ethnicity. My attorneys are on it.
10) Do you sell a lot of stuff on EBay, and if so what percentage of your auctions have finished with a NPB or scammer winning?
Great question - I've pared down my ebay selling a lot over the years based on a number of factors. I can't get anything worth selling on ebay regular enough to make it worth the headache and whenever I do list something for sale, I have to deal with scam artists and buyer supported fraud. Out of 10 items I list, 6-7 normally pay up and the last 3-4 make my life miserable. Ebay refuses to do anything about it, since they still collect fees on the initial and re-listing, so the scam artists are actually improving their bottom line. God forbid they actually make a level playing field between the buyers and sellers.
11) Do you think reselling merchandise is profitable enough to live off of in the foreseeable future, considering the big trend towards cutting out the middleman and marketing directly to consumers?
It really depends on the items at hand. Dell made a billion dollar business out of marketing directly to the consumer, but that's on new computers. Simple price effect economics dictate that there's always a market for merchandise, whether it's cars, computer hardware, or even dog doo on a stick. There are plenty of auto, boat, and aircraft brokers that make a very good living at what they do because they're good at it. One thing that will always sell are cheap cars. People who need a car and can't afford a new one are something that this world is not going to run out of anytime soon. Same goes for cheap computers.
12) Regardless of your answer to #11, would you do this forever if you could, or do you have other plans?
It's really hard to say at this point. If I can make $25,000 a year selling stuff that's mine or other people's on a commission - that's plenty for me. I might parlay my earnings onto a J.D. eventually.
13) Give us a brief timeline of what you've been doing since that huge Dell deal.
My memory sucks since dates are not a strong point with me but, there were a few sizeable deals that didn't pan out. Since then I've branched out into buying and selling ANYTHING that can turn a profit. Before, it was strictly computer stuff. Now it's cars, trucks, soda machines, boats, jewelry, tractors and trailers, whatever. I'll buy an airplane if I think I can make a buck on it. Interesting is a dull word to describe the business I'm in. I once scalped tickets to a high school graduation and sold Braille playboys.