Tell me why I shouldn't start the screwbay revolution

[brianp-beme]

I posted on another thread (one of an endless series) about ebay problems, and I thought this deserved its own thread. My post:

Isn't it about time all of us vintage bb card collectors decided, en masse, to move away from Ebay? Everyone is complaining about their regulations and fees and service. Stop complaining and do something. There is a viable and horribly underutilized option that was presented to us last year...Grand Slam Bids. Currently it has devolved into an exclusively fixed price outlet for cards, but all it needs is our collective decision to stop perpetuating the Ebay madness and switch our focus to their site.

So lets get this thing started. I am a lower condition collector who has hundreds of cards that I plan on listing on Grand Slam for auction at reasonable (at least I think so) opening bids. I plan to start in about a month, when I have scanning and listing time available. Come on everyone, let's screwbay!


Give me reasons why we shouldn't collectively consider using their site as an auction platform for our precious little cards. If we can get enough momentum, both with people listing and checking out their site for cool auctions, we can knock that evilbay out of the loop. Come join me on my crusade!


Brian (the motivator)

[iwantitiwinit]

Ok I just registered.

[egbeachley]

Love the idea. Works from a buyer standpoint. But what about folks who receive vintage cards for the first time (inheritance, antique dealers, flea market finds, etc.) who want to sell and have only heard of Ebay?

[Jcfowler6]

Let's give it a whirl.

[Bambino]

Why don't you create an eBay clone exclusive to baseball cards? For collectors, by collectors.

[Leon]

Thanks guys.....I just approved several people. GrandSlamBids has had a slow start but there are almost 500 registered users today. We just don't have the marketing dollars or the momentum of ebay or a few other sites. I am biased, but truthfully, the functionality with GSB is absolutely phenomenal. Think of almost everything you don't like about ebay, and we fixed it on GSB.

There is:
Sniping (internally set, works great, and is free)
ALL bidders are seen after an auction is over but not before.
Sellers can see how many snipes are set but not how much they are...
There is 2-3 click import from ebay and when something sells on either site, it automatically comes off of the other site. JustCollect imported around 10,000 listings in under an hour.....100's will only take a few minutes.

The list goes on and on.....and the fees, as of now, are 0 to list something (without any bells and whistles.) Winning bidders only pay about 2% or less.

There is some huge marketing and changes coming in the future which should propel the site to the next level. The negotiations are completed but it's going to take some months to launch.....but the site is 100% functional as we speak. I have personally sold around 35 cards and all transactions have been very smooth. And lastly, if you registered, you have to send back an email with some account info before you can be approved. That is to ensure we have you getting emails, which is very important, and that we can also get a hold of you if there are any issues. thanks again

[buckyball1]

Haven't looked at GS Bids for awhile -saw 7402 cards, ALL BINs and no auctions(perhaps i am missing something?) --in many ways now just another "storefront" albeit with sellers you can probably trust--site surely needs true auctions to be wothwhile for most buyers

Not optimistic, but hope you "succeed"

Jim

[Leon]

Originally Posted by buckyball1

Haven't looked at GS Bids for awhile -saw 7402 cards, ALL BINs and no auctions(perhpas i am missing something?) --in many ways now just another "storefront" albeit with sellers you can probably trust--site surely needs true auctions to be wothwhile for most buyers

Not optimistic, but hope you "succeed"

Jim

Absolutely true, right now there are only fixed price items. I am not sure it has the traffic to justify true auctions. They work fine but there just isn't enough traffic to get the prices needed. That being said, as I mentioned previously, there are huge marketing and system changes coming in the future which will hopefully fix the traffic issue. I am cautiously optimistic.....

[glchen]

Frankly, I think the issue with GSB is traffic. There just needs to be more traffic to make it work since just about everything else is great. A few months ago, I put up for auction ~10 Exhibit cards on GSB with what I thought was a reasonable start price. After a 10 day auction, none of them sold. However, it wasn't the fact that none of them sold that bothered me, it was that there were barely any page views on the listings. Other than when I viewed the listings, it looked like no one else did. When I put the same cards on ebay, half of the cards sold, and typically above the start price.

In fact, if GSB could just get the same traffic that BST on net54 gets, I think that would probably be enough. There are often 50-100 views for each BST listing, and when I've put listings on BST, they've typically gotten really good responses. Obviously, when I price too high, the cards won't sell. However, when it's reasonable, it does.

And of course, if you are able to "get" a listing on the main board for net54, things go through the roof. There was a duplicate Rick Simmons thread here a while back, where the OP put a link to my incomplete ebay listing. After I corrected the listing, I think I got a personal record 150 page views for my auction! The card sold for a fair price, also.

Maybe there just needs to be a new forum on Net54 BST called GSB listings, and where a bot can automatically create listings and links to new auction listings on GSB or something. That might be able to increase the page views and traffic on the site.

[brianp-beme]

Thanks Leon for pointing out a variety of advantages that Grand Slam Bid site offers...there will probably always be a reason to continue ebaying, but I think all of us cool kids can play a lot nicer in our own little field.

Just trying to push the world in the right direction...now if nasty little things like work and vacation wouldn't get in the way, I'd already be posting auction listings at GSB.

Brian

[Bambino]

Originally, ebay lived up to the saying "one man's garbage is another man's treasure." You had a lot more people who were just trying to move items and make some money because as it turned out, they couldn't buy diapers or food with Ken Griffey Jr. cards.

Nowadays, it seems people aren't willing to settle for "some money". They want book value or more and will not settle for less. So they set super-high reserve prices or they end auctions early if the bids are too low. Just set a "buy it now" for what you want in return and stop wasting everyone's time pretending this is an auction. If you put up a Mickey Mantle rookie card in mint condition and start the bidding at 1 cent with no reserve - you need to be willing and able to sell that card for 1 cent.

And so it doesn't sound like I'm placing all the blame on the sellers...buyers need to do some more research before you bid on an item. I've seen cases where they'll bid a certain amount on one card, see it for cheaper somewhere else, and then cancel their bid or refuse to pay. It's not the seller's fault that you didn't do some price comparisons before bidding.

That being said...

Leon - I'm not a internet wiz, so I'm not sure if this is even possible - but if you could find a way to allow actual paypal/credit card transactions on this message board - I think you've found the best of both worlds.

In other words, if I start a thread to sell a Hank Aaron rookie card, it would be amazing for people to be able to bid on, make offers for and even pay for an item within that very thread. In another scenario, someone mentions that they would love to buy a Sandy Koufax 1956 Topps card - how awesome would it be if I could reply to that post with a scan of that very Koufax card and give them the ability to click on a buy button within my post to purchase it?

[Leon]

Originally Posted by Bambino

Originally, ebay lived up to the saying "one man's garbage is another man's treasure." You had a lot more people who were just trying to move items and make some money because as it turned out, they couldn't buy diapers or food with Ken Griffey Jr. cards.

Nowadays, it seems people aren't willing to settle for "some money". They want book value or more and will not settle for less. So they set super-high reserve prices or they end auctions early if the bids are too low. Just set a "buy it now" for what you want in return and stop wasting everyone's time pretending this is an auction. If you put up a Mickey Mantle rookie card in mint condition and start the bidding at 1 cent with no reserve - you need to be willing and able to sell that card for 1 cent.

And so it doesn't sound like I'm placing all the blame on the sellers...buyers need to do some more research before you bid on an item. I've seen cases where they'll bid a certain amount on one card, see it for cheaper somewhere else, and then cancel their bid or refuse to pay. It's not the seller's fault that you didn't do some price comparisons before bidding.

That being said...

Leon - I'm not a internet wiz, so I'm not sure if this is even possible - but if you could find a way to allow actual paypal/credit card transactions on this message board - I think you've found the best of both worlds.

In other words, if I start a thread to sell a Hank Aaron rookie card, it would be amazing for people to be able to bid on, make offers for and even pay for an item within that very thread. In another scenario, someone mentions that they would love to buy a Sandy Koufax 1956 Topps card - how awesome would it be if I could reply to that post with a scan of that very Koufax card and give them the ability to click on a buy button within my post to purchase it?

ok....so here is a possible solution....list a card on GSB....put a link on the BST in the auction section to it......then someone can click on it and buy it and pay with anything they want to, including paypal, right there.....and the seller gets a ton of other value-adds for the 2% or less it will cost. I don't think there will ever be paypal and those other things on our BST...though obviously you can use paypal to pay for cards bought from the BST, you just have to click over to it....

To be fair, I would be careful about posting auctions on GSB right now, unless you start at a price you can live with. I would rather something NOT sell there than the seller be disappointed with the realized price. Hopefully that will change with the monumental changes that will come in the future....the future being about 3 mos to 6 mos away.....

[brianp-beme]

Changes beginning in 3-6 months...screwGSB that! Just kidding. I think I am a perfect candidate to get this thing rolling, at least on the lower end...I have a decent variety of vintage and I will not get upset if it sells for its reasonable minimum. Let the revolution begin NOW (or when I have time to make it happen).

Brian

[jcmtiger]

Even though we all have different problems with EBAY, it has many many more buyers when selling items.

Joe

[Leon]

Originally Posted by brianp-beme

Changes beginning in 3-6 months...screwGSB that! Just kidding. I think I am a perfect candidate to get this thing rolling, at least on the lower end...I have a decent variety of vintage and I will not get upset if it sells for its reasonable minimum. Let the revolution begin NOW (or when I have time to make it happen).

Brian

Brian- I can't do it for every item or for everyone, but if you put an auction item up there on GSB.....I will make it the next contest for guessing the price.....that will attract a few eyes.

[timber63401]

It aint much but Ill register and I have a low end T-206 coming that Ill put on there for .01 and see what happens.

[GoldenAge50s]

As a member who was selected to help jump-start GSB at the very beginning w/ some listings, mostly auctions, I had GREAT results & sold 12 items---everything from T206's, a '50's yearbook and an Old Judge periodical collection.

There was nice initial traffic for the kick-off & if not for a planned hiatus from selling at the time, I still planned on returning to GSB w/ some auctions.

The main thing that held me back (and has been discussed w/ Leon) was seeing a series of T206's go for much less than Ebay would have brought because site traffic fell considerably after nothing but Fixed Price listings dominated GSB (and still do).

I think GSB WILL definitely work if a certain amt of regular traffic & decent priced auctions can be created & promoted.

I'm aboard to help make it go!

[atx840]

I for one like the idea but have one recommendation.

I bought a card on GSB that I REALLY needed and a few days later got a note saying it had already sold on the bay/sellers site. If cards could be limited to GSB or if they are on the bay somehow reference the listing on the backend to keep the site up-to-date.

That is all.

[Jaybird]

For some reason, whenever I try and go on the site, the initial home page takes forever to load. Then I'm on it for a while, fine but on some searches, it takes forever again. I'm talking about a delay that is unlike any other page I search on a daily basis.

Does anyone else get this? Frankly it was frustrating to me a number of times and I stopped visiting. If I'm the only one, so be it. But I don't have this problem on other sites. Just GSB.

I'll go there now and try and be more specific on when it happens and report back.


Just went and the home page took awhile but eventually came up. Fine. Searching fine. But when you go onto an item and then hit "VIEW FULL SIZE IMAGES", it takes so long that I eventually give up.

[YankeeCollector]

Everyone complains about ebay yet we all buy and sell from it continuously. Ebay will continue to get better realized prices than any major auction house without exorbitant seller's commissions and buyer's premiums. A recent card was bought at a Huggins and Scott auction for 5000 or so and sold on ebay for 9200!

No website is ever perfect and eBay has many imperfections but as far as my cards getting the most exposure, theres nothing like eBay.

[Matthew H]

Leon, what if you offered sellers the option of having a 30 day auction? It will give potential buyers time to prepare as well as time to discover cards for sale. In the long run it might also help high end item sales.

It would not work somewhere like eBay, but might be a nice fit for GSB.

[mdschulze]

I was watching TV last night and saw the new ad for Ebay. The tag line at the end of the ad was, "But it new. Buy it now". Is the end coming where Ebay will no longer sell used items or have auctions? I guess time will tell!