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]

Originally Posted by 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

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.