The State of eBay
 

I troll ebay strictly for pennants and have done so pretty religiously for the past 10+ years. It used to be like shooting fish in a barrel, to the point I was spending way more money than my wife was comfortable with. There was just that much good stuff. But that all seemed to change during Covid.

I think the number of eBay trolls (this a term of endearment, not a critique) increased exponentially during lockdown and has never reverted back to the good old days when it was just me...and maybe one or two other guys. There was still plenty of good stuff, but you had to be quick on the draw to get it. Annoying for sure but not hopeless.

Fast forward to today and eBay is dead. I can go hours without searching and still only find a handful of new listings when I go back. And the good stuff has largely diseappeared, replaced by a never ending supply of cheap, redundant, modern garbage. Even when I check the sold listings, I rarely find things I'm disappointed to have missed.

Are other areas of collecting experiencing this as well? Are people not selling any more? If they are...Where?

I do a lot of collecting on different Facebook groups or on here through Net54. That’s where the quality at scale is in my eyes. Shows are another good place to find good cards.


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noone wants to pay taxes on their sales.

Yep nobody wants to pay taxes. They are still selling just on other venues that they can avoid paying taxes on. Depending on how the tax thing goes we might see eBay back to its glory. I seen a piece saying the reporting limit was going to be $5000. If it goes to that several will go back to just using several IDs to stay under reporting limits and a lot of stuff will appear on eBay again.

EDIT to add: They sent me an email yesterday saying they are going to change all my shipping fees to whatever they believe the price would be if I buy shipping from them. They said I can opt out for one month. Seems they are trying to force everyone to purchase shipping through them.

Sometimes you get lucky, but for the most part, I call it the Card Museum. Museum cards, museum prices.

I also know lot of sellers list their cards to attract offers, but then work outside Ebay to sell cards.

Can you imagine the uproar if Ebay charged members to list things? OMG

I don't believe eBay will ever be what it was for the simple reason that stuff gets "collected up" over the years and by the time it comes back onto the market it's in a collection deemed valuable enough by auction houses to go into a catalog. For many years I made a living, more or less, off of bottom-feeding on eBay and selling at shows. Of course, I always had plenty of competition for the good stuff, but it felt like there was always plenty to go around. It helped that I had a niche--D.C. sports--that few others cared about (or knew the true market for), but still, it was amazing how easy it all seemed as long as you didn't mind spending a few hours a day scouring a ton of eBay bookmarks and then humping stuff on the road on the weekends. It sure beat having a real job, I figured! That all changed starting about ten years ago when eBay started squeezing sellers for more of their profits, resulting in fewer of them (duh!), and I also think that America's attics and basements began to be depleted of many kinds of things as word got around of their value. I can't tell you how many things I used to see with some regularity in the good old days that I will now realize it's been years since the last one surfaced. I'm retired now, but I still scan a few listings a day out of nostalgia and rarely see anything interesting anymore. And if there is something cool, it's usually wildly overpriced. Oh well, it was great while it lasted...

It's a combination of things including, but not limited to these:

less sellers on eBay due to the 1099-K thresholds depending on their state
more sellers going thru facebook groups, FB marketplace, etc,...
more sellers consigning to auction houses
more sellers setting up at local shows and/or regional shows

However, for what you collect, Rob, local or regional shows really no longer seem to have much football memorabilia. :(

Very true. I go to shows to see one guy. Rick Haskins. If he's not at a show, I'm probably not going. The National last year was very disappointing in terms of football memorabilia as well.

Facebook Marketplace is frustrating. First, there's not a ton of stuff out there and when there is, there's a 75% chance the seller won't ship. Thought I found a pennant on there a couple weeks ago and the guy was willing to ship, but wanted to cash only. I haven't been ripped off on marketplace yet, but I'm not ready to start mailing cash.

ebay
 

I understand the complaints,

but I still say where can a collector go at anytime of the day or night and find for ex. - multiple Goudey cards of Ott, Foxx, Grove, etc., 52T high #s, thousands of Mantles, etc.....its ebay...

yea it sucks with shipping and fees and the occasional rip off or shady dealer, but until another site can do it better...Im still going on three or four times a day...looking for " stuff"

It's a feature, and we can debate just how buggy it is.

By its very nature, stuff that is over-priced will malinger for ages. Stuff that is correctly priced will get snapped up pretty quick. Auctions only last for 7-10 days, so even those are over pretty quick, and therefore the window where that specific item is available is pretty limited.

It also doesn't help that one of the biggest former eBay auction operators is now off the platform (PWCC), which dramatically reduces the number of items sold by the auction format.

Bottom line is that as a result of these dynamics, coupled with some others mentioned earlier, most of the time when you check eBay, you're going to see the same overpriced stuff. And it will keep annoying you every time you see it. Blink and you might miss anything else that isn't tragically overpriced, as if it was never really even there.

Ebay has become a terrible venue for sellers across all categories, not just vintage baseball . The categories have been destroyed and ebay is basically a word search site. Sellers are treated poorly unless you are a giant seller then even shill bidding and dishonest behavior is winked at. Buyers have all the rights and the seller has none. Buyers are allowed to remove their bid on an auction. WOW.
Negative feedback is permitted by buyers only. I typically offer 14 day returns which is plenty of time to determine whether someone wants the item. Ebay gives them an additional 14 days to ship the item back making the 14 days really 28 . None of that means anything as ebay has a 30 day return policy that includes free return shipping ebay forces the seller to pay even if your item states buyer pays for return shipping. In addition to ebays 30 day free pass allows the buyer an additional 30 days to return the item . All the buyer has to do is hit the right button claiming inaccurate website description. Big dealers may list 100's of items at inflated prices. Most people just bypass ebay and go to the big dealers website whether that seller is Clean Sweep, Tony E Trade or others. I sell legacy parts for businesses I am in a few baseball items and various odd stuff. The baseball items never get returned. Legacy parts never get returned. My spring cleaning stuff like old anything that works fine like electronic equipment or a designer scarf or shoes from my wife is all subjected to unfair buyers whose remorse returns are forced on sellers and the policy does not cost ebay 1 penny. All this and I offer returns . I can imagine the sellers not offering returns how mad they must be when ebay overrides their policy

I agree

I've read Net54 for a long time, but it wasn't until the prices and amount of bidders on EBay got crazy that I decided to join up here. Being able to see the pictures hosted locally after joining is a nice perk.

I wanted to get in on that "How much you want if you're selling outside of EBay?" action.

Opt out for a month or you have one month to decide whether you want to opt out?

According to eBay:

"...Starting May 15, 2024, your listings with calculated shipping will default to show eBay discounted shipping rates. By filling out this form by May 13, 2024, you are confirming that you would like to be excluded from this change...

I didn't read it too close. My understanding was I opted out until May 15 and then it will be automatic. There is a work around but I can't remember what it was. On the opt out they had a drop down and I chose the "I do not always us eBay to purchase shipping" option for opting out.

Covid changed the whole price landscape throughout virtually any type of collectable. Sellers are still selling but at crazy prices. I'm just thankful I have what I have and purchased at reasonable prices "back in the day". Just like my house which has shot up price wise as well..

This change only impacts sellers who let ebay calculate the shipping cost...which is a big mistake. I see items with $100+ shipping cost nearly every day on items that can easily ship for $5-$10.

If you offer a flat rate shipping cost or free shipping, you're not impacted.

I've been selling on eBay for 21 years and have seen the changes. When I first started, eBay made Sellers feel wanted. If you had a question, you could easily pick up the phone and speak to someone who speaks English. If you had a bad Buyer, you were able to leave negative feedback. Seller fees were reasonable. Buyers were not taxed. The only competition out there were just other Sellers with a small business trying to make an extra buck.

Today, all of that is gone. The fun in selling is gone. eBay makes my life miserable. I have done over 7 figures in sales, yet I am treated like I do not exist. I am a 1 man company but can no longer compete with companies that are fully staffed plus plenty of dough to run their business. They list thousands of cards while small companies like mine can only list about a dozen per day. The rising eBay fees and postage rates take most of your profit. Whatever is left, Uncle Sam takes a bite.

eBay is flooded with modern cards. Difficult to find vintage cards to sell. They are just hard to find and are priced too high.

Yes, eBay has changed and not for the better. I had a good run but will be closing shop in the next month or two.

While I did pick up a good amount of vintage and pre-war in the 90s and 00s, I got really complacent with the very flat and stable 2014 to mid/late-2019 market prices.

By the time 2020-2021 rolled around I had a good amount of regret not chasing down some of the "bigger" names I was holding out on.

That said, it was nice to finally get rid of a ton of junk wax graded that had been sitting around for decades. That helped take the sting out of the explosive prices and new auction competition for my buying.

I see a few cards (lately vintage hockey to finish sets) i am interested in once in a while, but if half decent i cannot win an auction no matter how strong i feel i am bidding. I will no longer waste my time bidding on stuff. I think it’s made up auctions, not real sellers on the vintage stuff on EBAY.

Buyers were not taxed.

Note to Howard *and others* having owned a store at one point in my life and as someone who does appreciate having LCS (Local card stores) nearby, I'm actually in favor of the taxes being charged. It levels the playing field to some extent and EBay does take care of computing taxes for the buyers and sellers.

Rich

What about the vault-dwellers?

I think with a couple of exceptions, vault-dwellers are taxed as well. Oregon and Delware I think are tax exempt for vault-dwellers

Is there a single vault in a place that is taxed? The whole point is avoiding having to pay off the state.

Ebay
 

eBay is to card/collectible sales, as WalMart is to shopping. It’s a necessary evil, with emphasis on “evil”. Are there good people there? Sure. There are also lots of people in pajama pants screaming at their toddlers. Private sales>eBay all day. Trent King

I think Howard was referring to State sales tax being added years ago.

I agree with this. I signed up and started buying on eBay not long after it started. The things I am into... railroad timetables, beater baseball cards, baseball scrapbooks, tube radios...have drastically dried up. Either the supply is drying up or the sellers are going elsewhere. The bargains are far fewer the past couple of years. The cards I have gotten of late, probably better than 90%, have come from folks here on this forum.

Has there ever been a better dealer than Rick? Incredible inventory of pennants and pins, of which his knowledge is encyclopedic, and absolutely the nicest guy you will ever meet? A true hobby icon.

I was just telling some friends that eBay has become completely worthless for buying memorabilia. The endless supply of overpriced common, mass-produced crap dwarfs anything of rarity/quality/value that might be hiding there. The searches have become a complete waste of time.

Yes, the supply may have dried up a bit, but re-selling has always been a "thing" until now. It's because of the 1099-K forms and lowering the reporting threshold to its ridiculous new level. NOBODY wants to sell under these conditions, and is crazy to do so under their current policies.

I used to do very well, selling on eBay. It was quick, easy and inexpensive. But with the new "rules" I do not have the time or ability to scrounge up non-existent records of what I paid for something 30+ years ago.

Much of the stuff has actually gone DOWN in value (Hartlands, Stanford Pottery, etc.) and if you can't prove it, you are completely screwed. Not to mention that you typically need to sell something for 40-50% more than you originally paid, just to break even! You must sell a given item for enough money to overcome the original purchase price, the sales tax, the Buyers Premium, the original shipping and insurance charges, etc. And then when re-selling, you have to cover the eBay and PayPal Seller's fees, which exceed 15%. NOT WORTH IT!

To Howards point... eBay has taken ALL of the fun (and profit) out of selling. Perhaps it's still okay for cards (which have appreciated more and cost little to ship), but that's the reason most sellers have left the platform.

The best part of the eBay museum is the sellers who ban you after refusing your reasonable offer.

Doesn't cost anything to look. I have probably logged onto the site 3-4 times a day since 2002. It does suck how it's turned into a museum. But every once in a while something surfaces and if you are at the right place at the right time you can grab it. Got a nice Jackie rookie type 1 photo recently for a very fair price, probably 1/2 or even 1/3 of what it might get at a top AH.

Darryl---do you get notification when you are banned by a seller or just find out when you try to bid on another one of their auctions or make another offer ?

Steve +1... except on the Jackie part :)

Hey Al, there’s no notification. I just see this when I try to make another offer:

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...1a8e6288b8.jpg

Couldn't agree more.

eBay seller policies are so punitive and unfair that eBay relocated from CA to UT, where policies that are blatantly illegal under CA commercial law are much harder to prove. My column on it:

https://adamstevenwarshaw.substack.c...seller-penalty

I got into 'below standard' status nearly a year ago because of a blown set break and I have barely sold on eBay since as a result. I am hopefully back to normal fees next month.

The tax stuff is a canard. The real issue is that eBay has raised its fees to the point that listing there for less than museum prices isn’t worth the hassle. I’ve sold hundreds of cards with auction houses over the last year instead of on eBay and the results have been very good. eBay works best now for obscure things and lower priced cards that need to be sold as singles rather than lumped into an auction house grab bag.

While I left a scorching post about the difficulty of being a seller on ebay with no rights, I believe being a buyer on ebay still is fruitful. While not as good or plentiful as it used to be there are good items that can be purchased below market value if you spend the time looking. Ebay has destroyed the category search and ease of finding good items. It requires what I refer to as ebay mining. You have to dig with clever word searches and techniques to find the rare treasures. I still find good stuff, it's just harder.

I agree with Adam. Ebay is punitive to their sellers in the ways he describes in his blog and additional ways. The 30 day ebay return policy is a happy button that is similar to Amazon or Macys. Amazon and Macys policies and business model is fine with their money. Ebay offers the same policies with my money. Buyers ignore the sellers' policies as they don't matter. I have received 3 returns in the last two months. All for fake reasons and ebay sides with low feedback moronic buyers with fake claims even past my return deadline. Claims of damage or doesn't match sellers description is used to get free return shipping on my dime. I actually lose money. Ebay loses nothing . When I get the item back and there is no damage, item works fine etc I can get a homework assignment from ebay to request my 15.00 of shipping returned which may or may not happen. The amount of time it takes to track and follow up isn't worth 15.00. I am out the time it takes to do the listing, handling the return, packaging time and materials relisting and shipping again. I laugh when I call and they say thank you for your 25 years . The seller has no rights. There is no dispute process as they don't allow it. I will say selling baseball cards aside from the fees is usually hassle free but I prefer selling elsewhere like the board or Auctions Houses that appreciate the consignments

It is an unwelcoming experience being a seller on eBay. You have little recourse and even if you want to complain, after the thank you for being with them for XX years, your call is routed to someone in another country who truly does not give a shit and is likely working for 20% of what they would have to pay someone doing the same job in the states.

A few of my favorite things:
1) Not being able to leave negatives to buyers who do not perform.

2) eBay's refusal to ban someone after chronically not paying.

3) The bullshit returns policy that is usually nothing more than buyer's remorse or an inability to flip the item they bought and the leniency and ease with which they give buyers the ability to lie about the reason for the return.

4) As Adam points out ya have to be virtually 100% right in each sale transaction from start to finish or risk serious infractions that last for an unreasonable amount of time.

I am sure it is less abusive when you get to where PWCC got or Greg Morris or Probstien123 are but that I am able to navigate the uneven playing field when I sell is strictly luck. If I sold there regularly I am sure that would have a very short life there.

All of the complaints against eBay are 100% spot on and I agree with everything stated. But all of those factors have been in place for years and ebay, until the last year or so, was still a place I could find good stuff pretty frequently.

Something more recent changed all that and I think it has to be the new reporting requirements. I agree that people are likely selling elsewhere but for my niche...pennants...they aren't showing up elsewhere. It's like people just stopped selling altogether. Either that or I already bought them all. :)

I think a whole lot of this inactivity is due to the 1099s. I don't want to have to deal with selling something I don't know what I paid for, and try to put a cost on it.

But these same people could be using any number of eBay consignment companies to sell the same stuff. Those consignment companies, so far, are not required to issue 1099s. I could see the day where they will be required to and I could also see that to expanding to auction houses. Then what? Maybe we will all go back to putting ads in the newspaper and doing all of our sales at shows.

I sell much less on Ebay then I used to and reporting requirements have nothing to do with it. I've been reporting my Sales on Ebay since 1998 or so (as I also do when I sell stuff on Net54), regardless of their requirements. I just assumed all that could be tracked if they wanted to, anyways.

Also has nothing to do with return or feedback policies, which I learned haven't really affected me over the long haul.

Listing takes twice as long as it used to for unique items, requirements for item specifics is a pain in the ass. I used to be able to just type out very detailed descriptions, and a search engine that used to actually make sense, would be able to find your item easily, through either a Title or a Title/Description search.

The search now is awful. They've prioritized making people sift through pages and pages of unrelated stuff, rather then picking out the very specific terms I've thought hard about putting in my listings, so the right people find my items easily.

They've also made it harder for me to put my unique spin, graphics and stamp on my listings, by prioritizing "Specifics", over an actual, well thought out and professional looking "Description".

I've tried using their "AI" tool to write descriptions, and it was almost comical how much more time it took me to go in and edit the inanities that it would spit out for me. :rolleyes:

Item categories have been bastardized to become almost indistinguishable, in the search to complicate things with "Item Specifics".

Attempts to integrate combined shipping into your shopping cart has become a complete mess, whether it be with auctions, or BIN's. I spend an inordinate amount of the trying to get shipping policies to "match up", until I just throw my hands in the air and go "F#%k it!". It is what it is, and I'll deal with it when it becomes an issue.

And the fees......they go up up up, even when they don't go up. They just figure out something else to ding you for, and pretend it's still the status quo. Every time I get a payout now from Ebay, I scratch my head and go to myself "That's it...they must have made a mistake?".

They claim their fees are in the 12.35% in most categories (15% in Books and Magazines for some damn reason). Then there's the monthly store fees to get those rates. Then there's the fact they take a full final value fee cut out of Shipping Costs/Tax Collection/VAT Collection for overseas customers...and you discover that heavyish piece of memorabilia you sent to Washington State/Louisiana/Oklahoma/Ireland/etc..., cost you 20%+++ what you sold it for.....and they did exactly zero work for you, outside of providing a simple software platform for you. (ok ok, they did the incredibly generous task of collecting and reporting the sales taxes for me from other states, since they no longer wanted to just be a "venue", and wanted ME to also be their "Brand", for the bargain basement price of a 12%-15% vig, of revenue that I don't see at all.)

Also lost my meager 10% discount on final value fees (though that only applies to the item itself, and not the final value fees on the shipping and tax charges), when I lost my "Powerseller" (groan) status, because I didn't have enough "transactions". Had plenty of revenue to meet the requirements, but apparently Ebay is more impressed if you have (200) $10 transactions, then if you have 50 $100 transactions. Also, I'm pretty sure I discovered, if a single buyer purchases/wins 5 different things from you, and you ship those items to them in a combined package, that only counts as (1) transaction in their reports.


Sigh! Rant over. :D

Fini!

I forgot about how awful the listing process is. They keep changing it too. If it only took twice as long to list I would be ok with that but each time they tweak it I say to myself they must really be trying to get small timers like me to go elsewhere.

And I too alluded to the search feature in another recent thread. Figured it was just me since nobody commented but when you search, you get back results that include items whose titles do not share a common word of what you typed in the search along with other unrelated items.

Hey guys the search engine is now horrific horrible

Yes that is a fact. An ebay search usually returns items that have nothing to do with your search . The items likely come from people who pay ebay promotional fees.

It is also a fact that listing an item has become more difficult and time consuming. They also tweak the listing process regularly. Items do sell and there is no similar site to change to and they know it

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one having trouble with search results. I have some very specific saved searches and a few of my searches often get results that don't exactly match.

I think the lack of quality listings is mostly due to the fee increases and hassle of listing. When my real cost approaches 20% why would I DIY eBay list when I can consign instead?

I’ve bought a couple of things, but haven’t sold on eBay in many many years. Probably won’t ever again. I loved it in the beginning when you could just sell your personal property without government interference. It’s a mess.

eBay has gotten worse in silly ways.

Others have mentioned a number of them:
- Items sit for years. No cost for listing means no incentive to lower prices or remove things that you have up and are not in a rush to sell
- Ruined search - I have no idea what is actually going on when you search particular words, but it certainly is not pulling up items with those words. They removed the askerisk option years ago which was a massive help and it has gotten worse and worse
- They started allowing people to send offers to others who viewed the item, even if the item is not watched. Another example of pushing items in front of people that they likely don't want.

All that said, it is still a platform that occasionally turns up gems. A large percentage of my collection comes from eBay over the years. In the last few months (which has been a very good stretch by eBay standards for the last few years, I've won around 10 auctions, each of which was a reasonably difficult item to find. (I do have a number of collecting focuses, so there are more options out there for me.)

Part of the issue with the search is all of the "item specifics" they've added over the years which gives sellers multiple opportunities to shoehorn in extra keywords, etc. That's compounded by the fact that many sellers list their items by copying existing listings.