Pro-Talent and SPPL rules - Who is a pro?

I was listening in on the new blast radius pod cast and I noticed that a restrictions on "pro-players" per team would be enforced. Well here is my question what does spec ops consider a pro player? I am having problems reaching a conclusion on what I think spec ops views as a pro for a few reasons... I'll try to simply outline why.

1. SPPL is the PRO woodsball league anyone who plays in an SPPL game I would view as a woodsball pro and thus how can you restrict how many pro's play on each team? Even if you look at factory teams right now as woodsball stands with only one league everyone should be allowed to play.

2. AIRBALL pro's should not be considered professionals in woodsball. Why? I know I have played against D1, D2, and D3 speedball’ers in the woods and while they might be hot stuff on the airball court I have not been impressed with their play in the woods. Besides until we have more divisions I think its unfair to stop players from playing because they play airball. For extra fun with D1 airball players play "hoppers only", but now I'm getting sidetracked.

3. Sponsored Players should not be considered professionals in woodsball. Why? I think it would be shocking to some if you realized how many players are actually sponsored in woodsball. I know I'm sponsored by a few companies and a few fields and than a few more from my team. But does that make me a professional? I don't think so but if you just look my team is sponsored so does that mean everyone is a professional? And most paintball sponsorships (at least none of mine) have an actual dollar amount of services donated. Sure you might get free gear, paint, or upgrades here and there but I don't think that makes you a pro as much as someone who got lucky.

4. Anyone who was in the military, special forces or no. I've done my share of military combat training and let me tell you. While it does help paintball is a completely different ballgame. So this one should not be brought up. Now if you took a special forces team and let them learn how to play, that would be an impressive sight to see.

These are all the scenarios that I can think of for someone who would be considered a paintball professional and I don't think that restricting the amount of members on any team because of any of these cases. If I'm wrong let me know but in all seriousness restricting a team because of these factors just seems wrong until you make separate divisions. But even after the separate divisions who is considered a pro?

WTS (used) ION 200$ - Is lowballing always lowballing?

So recently I have been looking at purchasing another marker. Yet since I have already ordered a new marq-7 (thank you archon paintball!) there is no need for me to get another brand new gun. So I figured hell I will buy a phantom or an Ion! Both guns are fun to play with and easy to upgrade; yet as I searched e-bay and the forums I was a little shocked at what I found. Here’s the story. I headed over to PBN and found some guns that interested me. One of them was a used, stock ion. The kid said he has had it for about 5 months and wanted to sell it so he could buy a nicer gun. His asking price for the stock gun was 200$. Looking at the marker I decided hey, I would be willing to spend 160$ top on this gun and thus I sent a PM.

About a day later I got one back with many vulgar words telling me that I was wasting his time and how dare I PM him with such a low price. He said quoting directly “If your going to lowball me go to hell you n00b.” He proceeded to tell me he paid 200$ for the gun brand new and that’s what he was going to get for it. Now, I could be wrong but since when would people prefer a used paintball marker over a new one? What made the use of his ion for 5 months make the value stay the same? I know you are all probably thinking that I just dealt with one bad seller but I challenge you to take a look around the BST forums at any major paintball website and you might be surprised at what you see. Since when does the value of equipment not decrease with use?

The one marker that always seems to get away with breaking this rule is the Phantom, mainly because they are custom made and have a two week turn around. But even sooo…. Why am I getting flamed for offering 240$ on a gun that’s probably been dented that cost 260$ brand new?

The first thing that comes to mind with this whole idea of item depreciation is cars. As soon as you drive a car off the lot, you lose thousands of dollars on the resell value. The reason for this is there is so much you can do to a car that will make it look fine on the outside but hurt it on the inside. Also a new car sounds better than a slightly-used car. Another thought is what you might get for the car selling it on a sunny day or a rainy day, or in winter versus summer. Convertibles are worth a lot less in the winter – trust me.

So unless you have performed some upgrades, or somehow managed to enchant the marker, I am not going to pay you within 20$ of what you paid for it new, and if you did upgrade the marker, the value of the upgrades depreciate too. So the fact that you strapped a flat line and an e-grip on your A-5 a year ago, doesn’t make it worth an extra 200$ today. Regardless of how many upgrades you have, or how shiny your marker is, how can you prove to me the most important thing… how well have you taken care of it. This alone could be worth hundreds of dollars especially if you’ve been using CO2 on your Tac-One.

I spend a lot of time on e-bay. From that experience, I can tell you there is no such thing as a “fair price.” There is the price a bidder is willing to pay and there is a price at which a seller is willing to sell. When the two overlap, you know what the market price was for those two people at that point in time. For any other two people, or any other point in time, it could be something else. I would love to see the seller above buy a used car (as he likely will when he learns to drive a few years from now.) I hope he gets some help from someone who is a little less naïve about how it works. If not, well, good luck with that “fair price” thing.

Meanwhile, when I see someone posting a used marker at the original price, I promise not to think, “You’re trying to highball me go to hell you n00b.” I will just see it as someone who either doesn’t know the real world or someone who wants to start the process somewhere above where they hope to settle.

When I offer you 160$ for your used stock Ion, please recognize that, in this case, I have no intentions of raising the price because for me that is a fair price. If you really needed the money ASAP to buy textbooks, you would take it and that would make it a fair price for you too. So please don’t flame people if they are offering to give you money. Sure it may not be as much as you wanted but how hard is it to just say “no thanks, I’m holding out for more.” Why chase away someone who might come back later with more? So in conclusion, the value of markers depreciates and the value of used markers and even sometimes new makers) will vary. And no, I will not buy your used stock ion for 200$... even if you throw in the AGG red scythe trigger…