Rings Around A Draining Tub

[T206Collector]

It is really disappointing to see all the BINs on ebay these days, and virtually no true ebay auctions. Sellers setting "high water marks" on cards they bought in the heady pre-recession days; but as the values/demand goes down the prices stick.

Sure buyers are having some success making off-line offers to the BIN listers, but those prices are not being set by the intersection of supply and demand, but instead just what one buyer would pay in one situation.

For this reason, Ebay used to be a great place to know exactly what your cards were worth, but no more.

There is not much difference between the BINs and an on-line photo album. I've been watching certain cards go unsold, and unreduced, for years now. I really just don't get that.

I know this has been talked about a lot on here, but I think it is important to notice the serious shift in the way ebay works for collectors. I believe ebay incented many of us to get more heavily involved in pre-war card collecting. But the way it is now is not appealing. This discourages collectors, which brings demand and value down, which perpetuates the cycle.

[jefferyepayne]

Your comments are exactly on the mark. Usually when I make an offer on a BIN and that of is not accepted nor countered, the response from the seller is "I have more into that card than you are offering". Clearly the card was purchased either before the recession or at a premium.

If eBay is trending away from auctions that presents an opportunity for someone out there to do it better. Who is stepping into the fold?

jeff

[zljones]

I agree with everything you are saying. I grow tired of sifting through tons of pages of unsold high priced cards in hopes of finding something at proper market value. I have seen threads with people defending some of those sellers, that they can charge what they want or they are in no hurry to sell blah blah blah, but the bottom line is, is that they are in the way of a search. Someone could burn out searching everyday cycling through pages of results because it is flooded with the high priced cards. On many occasions I have given up searching through pages because it is tiring then I go find I just missed a great BIN or auction because I did not feel like sifting through tons of pages of crap.

Not only that I agree with you that it seems like a slap in the face to collectors by trying to upcharge the crap out of people just because of one incident. In statistics that is known as an outlier number. When I studied stats, we were tought to not consider outlier numbers because it creates inaccurate data about averages. Same could be said about cards, these sellers are charging prices paid by outlier transactions. for example, Maybe a card sold for $300 as a PSA 1 at one time because it was a beautiful PSA 1they may just have a spot of paper loss on the back or something, which would be a circumstantial situation. That does not mean a crappy bent up PSA 1 will sell for $300. But the high priced seller will sell any PSA 1 card for $300 based upon that one transaction. I am probably rambling on here, but those high priced BINs are getting annoying, and I don't care if the seller is in no rush to sell or is a nice guy, that stuff needs to go, and ebay needs to set a 6 month limit at the most.

[zljones]

I also want to make it clear that I am mainly complaining about sellers that charge 2x the value of a card or more. If I see a BIN that is slightly upcharged for a hotter item, that does not bother me, and usually that stuff sells within a month or two. I am complaining about sellers that charge $700 for a $300 card. I just wanted to clarify that.

[Rob D.]

There used to be a feature within eBay's search engine that allowed a user to block BINs from appearing in a seach result, i.e. search for auctions only. Is that no longer available?

[Leon]

Collecting today, to me, is as easy as it's ever been. Sure there are high BIN's on ebay, but there has been a proliferation of auction companies that have taken the auction venue placement. And since there are so many auctions now there can actually be some good deals to be had if you search and do a lot of tracking. The free market has ways of working things out....I am still having fun at it. And also, as the BIN's on Ebay have proliferated I have also gotten to know which dealers will actually negotiate to what I consider a fair price/profit and which ones won't. I spoke to an ebay dealer for quite a while last night and he says things are going well. The glass is half full for me :).

[mintacular]

While High BINS can be aggravating, one positive result is that sellers with realistic BINS usually do quite well...in a strange way they (hi BIN sellers) are a helping hand to the rest of us

[zljones]

While High BINS can be aggravating, one positive result is that sellers with realistic BINS usually do quite well...in a strange way they (hi BIN sellers) are a helping hand to the rest of us

This is true.

[David W]

I've had 2 cards on my watch list going on 3 years now.

Every 6 months or so I make a best offer of 75%, it always
gets auto rejected.

I don't really care if I have the cards anyway..... Apparently
the seller doesn't either.

[iggyman]

This might be going a bit off-track but for the past few months, I've run a combination of BIN's and straight auctions with both methods working quite well. The straight auctions received a bunch of hits, with some cards selling for a premium and others selling at the painful level. Overall, I was more then satisfied with the bids, but as usual there was no rhyme nor reason for the bidding; one day I would do fantastic, a few days later the auctions would bomb. With that said, at the end of the day, when you have a card that two or more bidders want, nothing beats a straight auction which starts are .99 cents. The BIN's was another animal entirely.

For the most part, they barely would get a hit, but sooner or later someone would bite on them (which was sometimes surprising to me), other times, they wouldn't sell but I would receive a respectable offline offer. That is both good and bad, but as a seller you always have the option of not accepting the offer. As someone, who has always run straight eBay auctions, I really enjoyed doing the BIN's. I didn't have to sweat out the hammer price and for the most part the cards would sell over the course of a few weeks (which made shipping and handling alot easier). From a sellers perspective, I'm sold on BIN's.

Lovely Day...

[MVSNYC]

there still is a feature that allows you to edit out the BIN "auctions"...i did a random pre-war search last night, it brought back around 42,000 total items. when i edited out the BIN's, the amount went down to around 4500...that's 90% BIN's...ridiculous. i too miss the good 'ole straight auctions. let the bidders determine the market.

[novakjr]

Personally when running a search of pre-war, I'll either edit out BINs and search by Time Ending Soonest. BUT I also run one with BINs by Price + Shipping Lowest First. Never have any problems with the first search. The second however is a nightmare. You have to rifle through tons of reprints, conlon cards, negro league postcards, national pastimes(or whatever), tcma's, stat game cards, amongst a bunch of other crap.. Even after using the "-()" for most of the bad keywords, you've still gotta go at least 20 plus pages before you really get to anything that's actually pre-war. I usually jump ahead, but I always wonder if I'm missing something that's lost in the mix of all the BS..

NOW I'd like to address sellers that list their cards and such with random inventory numbers. ie:1917(well, you get the point). Those cause multiple era listings and flood the hell out of every imaginable search. And those who list the Conlon cards by the year of the photo on the card. Please F***ING STOP...

I have no problem with somebody wanting top-dollar for their items...They're not gonna get it, but I have no problem with it...It's clearly the mis-listings(whether intentional or not) that piss me off.

[JasonD08]

While I agree with mostly what is being said on here, I have to say this has a lot to do with the way ebay restructured things. Also as an eBay seller, I have been on both sides of the fence. I used to purchase items mostly through ebay alot more when the stores were no so prevalent. I think the sellers like myself with alot of items are forced to used the store method because of the cheap insertion fees. Auctioning right now is a real gamble and I think listing BIN (reasonable) with a Best Offer option is best. It gives the buyer an option to make a fair offer. I try to respond to ALL offers as rediculous as they may be. Trust me, I get plenty of stupid offers as well. Listing 5000+ items with $0.05 fee is easier than $0.35 etc. With that being said, there are PLENTY of sellers with no Best Offer option that have rediculous prices on their items.

A good example of how it works for me as a seller, is that I just sold a 1933 WWG Ruth through a Best Offer on ebay. (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=180780264905#ht_500wt_699)
I had offers of $1 up to the price I sold it for at $1,025. I had it listed at $1,200 OBO. I settled on a price that I probably got out that at even money. The card was dead centered with EX corners and gorgeous color. It had 3 big creases through it and that is why is was an SGC 30. When I purchased the card, I bought the card....not the holder and paid more than a typical beat up 2. Aslo the WWGs are alot tougher than the regular Goudeys and not collected as much at all. With that being said, auctioning this card would have been a real gamble. I probably will not find another one like that with the same visual appeal. Now if you look at my stuff this week you will see some cards I have decided to auction like 54 B Ted WIlliams in EX+, a nice CLemente RC etc. I think the beauty of these cards will carry them so I decided to auction those.

My 2 cents........do not get hung up on how someone sells their items......its a free country and a free market still. Let them hold them forever. They will break sooner or later and BUY THE CARD NOT THE HOLDER. I have paid 50% more for items with eye appeal with the same technical grade. With that in mind, do not expect a seller to sell a much nicer appealing card for the same price as someone who just sold a card in the same technical graded holder that was beat to hell.

Jason
looking for 39-46 exhibit Gehrig

[zljones]

Personally when running a search of pre-war, I'll either edit out BINs and search by Time Ending Soonest. BUT I also run one with BINs by Price + Shipping Lowest First. Never have any problems with the first search. The second however is a nightmare. You have to rifle through tons of reprints, conlon cards, negro league postcards, national pastimes(or whatever), tcma's, stat game cards, amongst a bunch of other crap.. Even after using the "-()" for most of the bad keywords, you've still gotta go at least 20 plus pages before you really get to anything that's actually pre-war. I usually jump ahead, but I always wonder if I'm missing something that's lost in the mix of all the BS..

NOW I'd like to address sellers that list their cards and such with random inventory numbers. ie:1917(well, you get the point). Those cause multiple era listings and flood the hell out of every imaginable search. And those who list the Conlon cards by the year of the photo on the card. Please F***ING STOP...

I have no problem with somebody wanting top-dollar for their items...They're not gonna get it, but I have no problem with it...It's clearly the mis-listings(whether intentional or not) that piss me off.

Amen to that, I too am sick and tired of reprints and other garbage listed in the vintage category or as a card in general when they are not even cards. When I was on my hunt for a T205 Johnny Evers awhile back, I would put in T205 Evers in my search then it would keep pulling these two black and white reprint photos. What the hell do reprint photos have to do with T205!?

[JasonD08]

Yes the reprints need to have their own catagory and if a seller is found selling reprints, then they need 1 warning then a suspension. The only problem with this is that alot of the eBay reps are not real bright and not versed on what is a reprint or not. I think many would still slip thorugh the cracks. I think ebay cut down costs and time with personal by cutting the sub catagories out, therefore pushing everything to a store format and getting rid of the auctions. This was a move to downsize I bet and increase profit margin. Until someone or some company rivals ebay with their old idea of online free market auctions, this will never change. Many have tried and nobody has succeeded. I personally like the buyers that negotiate and negotiate prices then eventually purchase the card and give in. Even when you ship it next day, they hit you with less than a 5 star rating and we both know it was because the seller didnt give in to their offer demands.

[sycks22]

The one search on there that I rarely do anymore is putting in "cy young". When you put in Mathewson or Ruth you get their cards, but when you put in cy young instead of getting his cards you get a Felix Hernandez upper deck chrome refractor numbered to 5 for $2.99. 3/4 of the cards in that search are garbage cy young award winners.

[ScottFandango]

Look on the bright side, you can't get shilled on a BIN

[HRBAKER]

Look on the bright side, you can't get shilled on a BIN

Might as well poke yourself in the eye, huh?