> At the end of the day demand is so high for these things even taking dissatisfaction into account it really isn't costing the retailer anything at all...

Well, the retailer only cares enough to look like they care enough so that they don't garner negative press.

The retailer really only cares that they sell. Yes, the retailer would like to capture some of that scalper premium but doing so without also alienating the customer base is difficult. (see: Ticketmaster--whose almost sole purpose is to serve as a blame repository for egregious ticket prices)

> The retailer really only cares that they sell

In the space of limited special edition stuff, a retailer is not going to last long with that mindset. If a brand gets a reputation that they have lenient buying restrictions, and all their stuff ends up at resellers instead of true enthusiasts, that brand will swiftly become irrelvant.

This article may cause waves in niche for Jordans and Yeezys, and suddenly those products are no longer quite as cool or worth quite as much, simply because now you know it was just some dude buying up stock... it really kind of takes away part of the fun ownership of the stuff in way.

In this case if they create enough supply to match demand the price will fall as they are no longer "limited supply". They would far rather leave money on the table than push it too far and lose the value proposition entirely

Yea, if these sellers actually cared about allotment restrictions, they would invented some pre-registration account system that verified actual identification.

> the more intensive your verification, the lower your conversion rate ^ True, but selling through stock does not seem to be the issue for this segment of sellers.

To some degree the concert ticket sellers have already (finally) solved this, haven't they? I like your idea tho, that type of vetting costs money because it probably involves humans do some amount of work. I have never investigated what is available, but the fact that I would even have to investigate what is available tells me there isn't already some obvious choice out there.

If it's an item in limited supply that you know is going to sell out, does the conversion rate from click to sale matter?

no, but for seller reputation sake, WHO gets the sales matters a LOT. A limited brand that everyones knows 90% of stock is going to a reseller marking it up is going to quickly be done.

To the degree I'm describing it would

Imagine going to buy a pair of sneakers and the site asks for a scan of your federal ID. Do you even know if you have one? Where is it? Do you trust the site? It could take days to verify... maybe the scan was blurry and needs to be redone...

No retailer would add something like this to their checkout flow, it's a very extreme solution

Not extreme at all. You seem very out of touch with the reality of the enthusiast markets for such things. People line up for days for stuff like this. If all you had to do was provide ID online and wait 3 days at home... no problem at all.

I'm not out of touch with anything. I have a closet full of every almost every Yeezy 350 colorway ever released.

Just because some people will do something doesn't mean everyone will. Many people would protest having to provide government ID to buy sneakers.

Even if it scares off 1 person why does a retailer want to do that, pay the money it costs. and deal with the optics of being the ones asking for federal ID to buy shoes when they can literally just not instead.

Like I said above, demand is so far above supply it doesn't matter if 100% of sales go to scalpers anymore, they'll still sell out, and the aftermarket will still eat it up, no matter how bad they feel about not being able to get drops directly.