Would you consider this person to be unethical?

It’s technically “sold out” in the sense of no longer being mass produced and sold in regular stores. After so much time has passed, it has become a collector item and the value of it has gone up. So that Ebay person saw or thought he saw the opportunity and sells with that high price. It happens with every rare items out there. I can theorize that maybe the seller isn’t doing this out of malice, but he genuinely thought it was sold out. And you somehow stumped upon the item right after it was restocked, somehow.

You can message the seller if you want. If you think it’s a scam, you can report it to Ebay and see what happens.

But for your point of Even if it was sold out, I think buying it for $27 dollars and then going online and selling it for $80 is messed up, I want you to think about this for a moment: what if the original price, the price that was sold when the item was still mass produced, wasn’t 27$? What if it was something like 5$? Would you say the shop you just bought the gun from was unethical because they sold a 5$ item for 27$?

Situations like this is a morally-grey area that isn’t as cut-and-dry as you seem to think.

Whatever the collector/enthusiast/cray cray wants to pay for it, is probably the motto of this seller.
One could say he does a good deed by offering it (to a potential person that is searching for said item for twenty years).
Possibly making two persons happy.

The person is in business to sell, and ethics are not usually a requirement for being a seller. Not just for Ebay, but for real stores as well.

He’s a capitalist, and he wants to make money. You fell for his pitch. He made the sale. He made some money and you got what you wanted.

If you go ahead and sell the item at a higher price, you are doing what is technically called arbitrage – buying something at lower price with the intention of selling it higher.

Totally legal and totally ethical.

It’s just a thought, but the one from Spirit Halloween might be altered just enough to escape the copyright, and is newly manufactured, so they can sell the new items cheaper than the original.

You can’t actually consider a player unethical if the game is capitalism. Bilking the sucker is the requisite expectation when the rules of the road dictate maximization of profit. The fair price is in fact “whatever the market will bare”. You’re in the game whether you know it or not. Of course it’s “messed up”, but that’s the game. The proper response to the ripoff price of 80 bucks is to undercut his offer. You buy the guns for $27 and offer them on the same site for 5o bucks. That’s how you play the game.

If you don’t like the price, don’t buy it. It’s really that simple. Not everything in life needs to be a moral dilemma. You should be beyond thrilled that Spirit is selling it for only $27 because that place is usually pretty expensive.

Who knows? It might have been sold out at his local Spirit. But in the end, I agree with @cheebdragon…if you don’t like the price, don’t buy it. That is how capitalism works.

I think this is the way the world turns…...get used to it. Concern yourself with yourself.