Dealer mad for good reason?
 

When a card is listed with 'make an offer' on ebay..

and there appears to be a reserve with automatic rejection...

is it card collecting protocol to just make your highest offer on the card..or can you bid up incrementally (you only get 3 offers that can be rejected than you cant make an offer again for the forseeable future so it would not be useful just go up a dollar) to see what the lowest amount that gets past the auto rejection..

i had a dealer say that my first offer that was auto rejected (in which i made 2 increased offers without any counteroffers, the second of which got past the auto rejection) was a low ball offer..and since i make such low ball offers he was offended..

just trying to find out if first, you understand what im explaining happened and second whether you really take that first offer seriously that auto rejected when the buyer increased the offers to pass the auto rejection..


Ok now im going to hear it ..i not expecting great comments but hey..this stuff does happen....

Offended? This is business. Who gives a crap if a dealer you don't know well is "offended" by an offer. If your offer is too low for him to accept and you cannot come to an agreement move on. Whether he is thin skinned enough to be offended is irrelevant. Apologize for having offended him and move on.

Tom C

You did nothing wrong. If the dealer doesn't want to engage you in negotiations, that is his perogative. Personally, I see no difference in what you did than in what a dealer does when he puts an aggressive list price on the card in the first place.

You're overthinking all this.

right
 

i not saying dealer has to sell...he can keep the card...but would a reasonable person in the business be offended with the scenerio i described

I would say it depends on the card you are trying to buy if it is a high end card and you are lowballing, yes, he could be offended---The dealer most likely knows what he can get for the card at a show etc.

I get lowball offers all the time and while I'm not offended, I don't understand the point either. Offering 50 percent of what a card regularly sells for is not, in my view, a good faith negotiation.

I have had offers of 50% countered at 60% and bought the item. I have had a million low ball offers made on my items and have never been offended. Other things offend me, low ball offers not so much.

60 percent of the list or 60 percent of what the card regularly sells for?

I offend eBay sellers by asking the best offer they refused.

Offers
 

I use the buy it now/best offer most times. The buyer can make any offer he wants. If it is low ball it gets rejected. If it is within the realm of possibility I then review and either take it or counter. I don't get sent any notifications of offers I would feel are too low. Going back to review previous offers that were rejected is not something I even consider.

I think the starting price is important here. I had a best offer of 50% of the asking price accepted (my first offer) but the card was also a good deal higher than it should have been. I wouldn't offer 50% of a fair price though. That said, while a 50% offer on something fairly priced should be rejected I see no reason not to counter or accept a later offer that you are happy with because of some perceived slight. The person showed their interest by making an offer so why not try to make a sale, it takes 3 seconds to counter. Listing it with a Best Offer option means you are willing to negotiate, so either get to it or take down the BO option.

I don't make low ball offers on stuff that generally sells. You forget what I collect. :cool:

I very rarely sell on eBay anymore. When I do, all of my listings are BIN with BO option. I don't have it set up to automatically accept or decline any offers.

In the description I clearly state "Serious offers will be considered, ridiculous offers will be ignored". If someone makes a ridiculous offer on my item, I don't get offended, I just ignore them.

And let me clarify that by 'serious offer', I mean I’m looking for a ballpark price that the last similar item sold for.

I do this same thing. If I have a $80 card listed at $100 obo and someone offers me $12 for it, I'll probably chuckle and shake my head, but I don't get offended or angry. It's not personal at all, because I'm obviously not going to have any kind of dealings with this person.

Considering that the offer was automatically rejected and (I think) took none of his time or effort, it seems a bit weird that he took it so personally. He's entitled to his own reaction so there's not much that can be done. Move along and let him enjoy the inventory.

If a dealer is offended by low ball offers then the dealer should either A) just start the auction at the price they're comfortable with, or B) get some thicker skin.

If I submit an offer it's the price I feel comfortable with. If the dealer is offended, then phuc'em. They can ban me from their auctions. If they do then that's their choice and I'd rather not deal with an a-hole like that.

I've seen offers accepted at 50% of the asking price and less.

I've found that, as a dealer, you will upset certain buyers no matter what you do. I thought the low 'automatic reject' would solve the problem of having to interact with low-ballers, but found that some of them will do what the OP described, increasing the low-ball offer until they have used up all 3 offers. Then they will contact me and ask for my bottom-line price.

Peter summed it up well when he said that low-ball offers are not negotiating in good faith.

One more point - it's no big deal to get an offer of $15 on an $80 card. But when the same person puts in 5-10 such offers at the same time, it's a pain in the ass.

As a buyer, if you are going to make a low-ball offer and you genuinely are clueless as to the item's value, then just say so. The seller will almost always respect that. I've done it before and never gotten a rude response from the seller. If the item was genuinely priced ridiculously high, my 'clueless' offer is sometimes actually accepted.

This is all about being a human and interacting with other humans. Once you learn how to step over the genuine a-holes, it's not all that difficult.

Offend
 

I only get offended when the offer doesn't meet market price.



(Actually I very rarely sell cards. I dont even do eBay as a buyer on BIN very often but I offer what I think I want to pay and if the offer is rejected, I just look elsewhere. I assume most hobbyists do the same rather than obsess with it)

I get offended when the buyer starts telling me all the things that are wrong with my item, and that it's worth less because of all the flaws they have found.

As a buyer, I have only been offended once. I wanted a card very badly because I needed an exemplar quickly. I offered the seller MORE than retail value and was rejected. I asked him via email (he was a dealer) what he needed for it, and he wanted the BIN price, which was about 50% over retail. I called a friend who knew him, and he told me that the guy never budges and that he eventually gets his '50% over retail' asking price. This was for a T206 common. I met the dealer at the National, and he's a great guy. Who can argue with a seller's strategy, if he's getting 50% over retail for T206 commons? He's a genius.

I like this approach. But does it work?

Obo
 

Here is my story of an odd OBO situation. Last winter one of my white whales was put up on ebay as a buy it now or OBO. The buy it now price was 1K, about 2/3 higher than the last similar example that sold at auction for, which was about $325. I best offered three times with my last bid being $450. Seller declined all three of my bids. However, seller contacts me a couple days later and says he will take my $450 for it. I tell him no, you refused my offer of $450 and now my offer had dropped to $350 which was still $25 higher than the last comparable one that sold at auction. Needless to say he declined my offer with several expletives. But as far as I am concerned - he did that to himself.

Fast forward to this summer, same dealer has same card for same price on ebay. He has had no bids on the card since my winter time bids. This indicated to me that there is no interest in this card, particularly from where his starting price is. I place an OBO offer for $400 as I think this is the absolute maximum the card is worth. He responds that he will not take a penny less than $450 for the card, and that he would rather be buried with it instead. I shrug and go on with my day. The card still sits on ebay with his initial price of 1K with no recent bids.

This is just an example of my frustration as a buyer with OBO. Why ask for 3 times what a card is generally selling for with an OBO? Maybe you get a sucker to bite every so often if this is your marketing plan. But for most things don't you just sit on inventory?

I usually just laugh...I get $1 offers all the time on my items in my store listed at $9.99 OBO...I send them back $9.98 counter offers.

I also do not understand the majority of offers I get on my items end with .99...does the prospective buyer not understand the psychology of offering one penny more is more likely to get him/her the item?

And in the "Did you know" category, did you know that you can offer MORE than the listed Buy It Now? A lady offered me $11 on a $9.99 item...I accepted it just to see if it actually would accept her offer and it did. I threw a dollar bill into her package.

So he thought about your last offer of $450 and changed his mind and accepted it….and you got upset that he didn't accept it immediately, and ended up without the card that you really wanted? And he is in the same situation as he was before he ever heard of you, and probably has forgotten all about it.

I hope I don't have any customers that are still grieving over transactions with me that never occurred.

Dan, you just made my day. Great story.

This thread deserves a commercial break from a real low-baller.

Are you still able to bid on other items or send BO requests to this dealer? If so, then he didn't ban you so he must not have been that offended. ;)

You missed the part of him saying he would rather be buried with the card than sell if for less than $450.

I bought a copy of the card this fall for $400 at a show.

Haha. I did read that, but forgot while I was posting. It does sound like you pissed him off, at least for the moment. Glad you got your card.

If they respond, it ends up in a sale about 33% of the time. But, response rate is lower than that.

One seller refused to tell me because I made what he considered a low ball offer. When I explained the GAI 7.5 didn't convince me of the condition because the photo wasn't clear and could he provide me a scan or better photos, he told me to have a blessed day. If I thought it would have crossed to a 7, I would have paid his asking price.

Dumplings are good. Dumplings are better than...pork chops!

ebay is so strange. I saw a $15 Starbucks gift card bid up to $18 plus $3 shipping. Things that make you go "Huh?"

That happens a lot on iTunes gift cards, they go for more than the face value. Part of it might be the convenience factor of not having to go to a store to make the purchase?

Ok, so we're into funny stories about fleabay sales. Here's a good one.... this is before the days of "best offer" and crap like that.

D304 Cobb, SGC10. If they had half grades back then, they'd have given it a .5 instead of a 1. It was pathetically ugly, but it was real/authentic. I had a couple of D304 Cobbs and the one I was going to sell was really fugly.

I put it on ebay for $1200 (opening bid). I got ZERO interest in it.

A couple of months later I put it up for bid at $1400. I get an email saying they'd like to buy it for $1200. I decline. The card doesn't sell at $1400.

A couple of months later I put it up for bid at $1600. I get an email saying they'd like to buy it for $1400. I decline. The card doesn't sell at $1600.

A couple of months later I put it up for bid at $1800. I get an email saying they'd like to buy it for $1600. I decline. The card doesn't sell at $1800.

Finally, I sell it for about $2000 on ebay. :p

During the time I tried to sell the card and received the diffrent offers I never once became indignant or nasty or indicated they should have bought it the last time it was up for sale. I politely declined the offers. I just didn't care if I sold the card or not. Perhaps some of those dealers (I'm not a dealer) just don't care if they're over priced. On the flip side, if I'm a seller all I have to do is say NO or just not respond to the offer. I think ebay provides the ability for the seller to counter. To me, there's no use in getting upset if an offer is considered "low ball". In any case, as a dealer it's easier to just say NO or ignore the offer. Why be dikk about it?

If someone wants to "reason" with the seller, then that's fine, just be nice about it. And if the seller declines, then that's their choice.

Don't worry about it. I get a ton of low ball offers and it never offends me. If we cant agree no problem just move on to the next deal.

right
 

but you guys keep changing the fact pattern..

when bidding on a best offer card that has a built in auto reject..there are also auto accepts...so why cant start low or find out what the reserve is.......

no additional time spent by the dealer on the auto reject..and i eventually got an offer above the reserve for the auto reject...within the 3 bids you are allowed..i dont think the first offer that was auto rejected should of offended th dealer..

incidentally .if you just put the word 'Dealer' in the post name you get lots of views on Net54 i noticed..

Let me preface my remarks by saying that I do not collect boyntons.:eek:

Hypothetically I have a card worth $1000 based on recent sales.

I list the card on eBay BIN/Best Offer for $1200. I set my offer limit at $800 with anything below that figure getting the auto-reject.

That does not mean I will necessarily sell the card for $800.

Scenario #1 - Ten minutes after listing the card I get an offer for $950. Do I sell? No, maybe my price point is too low and I choose to wait for a number closer to $1200. This could explain why my BIN price is higher than I think the current market is.

Scenario #2 - While the card is listed, my neighbors house burns down with his son's baseball card collection which I helped him begin. I might give the kid the card in such a case to start a new collection.

Scenario #3 - A hobby friend whom I have dealt with before expresses an interest in the card and wants to know if I have wiggle room. I like the guy and let him have it for $900.

Scenario #4 - (assuming unlimited bid rejections) A stranger on eBay offers $50, then offers $100, then offers $150 and so forth finally reaching $800. Would I be obligated to accept his offer? My answer is no. The BIN price would still be $1200 and my floor of $800 is designed to weed out such clearly unacceptable offers. Offers of $800 or more would be considered on their merit and be influenced by whom the buyer is, how long the card had been on the market and whether I felt a need or urgency to sell it for an undermarket price and not because some bidder feels he has hit the jackpot by hitting $800 on the nose.

Finally it's only cardboard so I would never get mad.

Gotta go, my dumplings are ready.;)

funny
 

good post..

again never said just because i got the offer over the auto rejection reserve the dealer has to accept the offer..just asking if the dealer is reasonable to be offended by the first auto rejected offer.......

no

You can also try emailing seller, i have done that in the past

I don't understand the question or the concern. Either you close a deal or you don't, if you don't you move on. Who cares who is offended, if they are reasonable or not, etc.?

My thoughts exactly.

There's lowballing and then there's lowballing ...
 

I've had lowball offers way less than 50% of the asking price. Damn right I get offended at those types of offers. I'm not running a goddamn charity. :eek:

I have an early 1970s Trader Speaks on eBay (BIN) with Best Offer. It was priced at $18 and I offer free shipping. I got an offer of $3 which I declined then $4.50 which I ignored and now $5 which I will ignore. I am surprised he didn't offer that I send it for free and pay him as well. :(

I never get offended when someone offers me money . Even if it starts out low it's no big deal .

Dealers offended? Really? If I walked into a card shop with 200$ worth of cards and told the dealer I'd like 30$, what would most dealers do? Tell me that they should be giving me much more, or would most just shake their head in agreement and hand me my 30$? In my years of experience, the latter would happen in most cases. That's what anyone in the secondhand business tries to do regardless of what the product is.... Buy as low as you can and sell high! And EVERYONE tries to get a deal, so when I hear sellers and dealers say they're offended if the receive an offer under retail, I find it ridiculous and hypocritical.
.....buck up! We're all big boys here, let's try to remember this should be a fun hobby, and not everything is business.

Have a great day and enjoy collecting! 😁

I would expect that any buyers attempt to purchase a card would be made with the goal of buying that card for the lowest amount possible. To act any other way would be non-sensical and ignorant. In my opinion, anyone that is offended by that is not truly trying to sell the card. Secondly, who cares what the dealer thinks, the dealer should be more concerned with what a potential buyer thinks. Move on.

👏 👏 👏

I think is true in single-shot transactions (if I don't expect to deal with you again). However, if I want to establish a relationship with you then I may be willing a slightly higher price in order to ensure access to future cards.

Well I'll probably sound like an ass for saying this, but not EVERYONE is trying to get a deal.

Some collectors realize that they are going to have to pay to get the cards they want for their collection.


Jantz