I want to apologize to all my friends and other good members who saw the deals and sent pm's. However, this exercise cemented a few things the mods have been telling us and many more of us suspected.
1. Fears of this market "dying" if non-contributing members, 10 year / 10 post members, and noobs were restricted from the marketplace are wholly inaccurate.
2. It isn't enough to post "These good prices are for good contributing members" in sales threads rules or headers. It does nothing. (we shouldn't have to post "no flippers", "no 0 post members", etc in our sales threads...that is a sign of a problem).
3. There were as now 120+ pm's (a few of those are doubles of me talking to legit members and apologizing). Unique member pm's are just shy of 100. They are split almost down the middle from good members, active on the site, active in the marketplace, friendly and legit. The other half are from members I have never seen on this site. It is truly shocking how many member accounts are lying dormant just scouring the marketplace. They never post "Sending PM", they just send the PM - they don't want to be seen. Now they have been...well, at least one more batch.
4. The marketplace is better without them and here is the proof: of all the pm's I received - it didn't take knowing the legit members to recognize they were legit; the way they pm'd emphasized it.
Almost every PM from legit members went like this: "Hey Mike, i'm probably 8th in line, but if that viewpoint is still around consider it sold. Hit me up w/paypal if it falls through. Thanks man."
Almost every PM from the leeches went like this: "Hi, please send me hi-res pics of the spine, label and case on *insert game*. I see US shipping is free, that means international will receive discount, yes? Cheers."
A $59 "nasty label windjammers" and these guys still want multiple pics. Regardless it says "no holds", "good contributing members only", "pics will take time". Doesn't matter. It is a cesspool of selfish individuals who spoil the marketplace. Those of us who love this hobby and when we tire of something want to pass it on at a fair price to our comrades shouldn't have to either inflate the price to avoid seeing it on ebay 2 weeks later. As witnessed by 50+ legit member PM's, this market is doing just fine without them.