Whenever I need a good laugh.....
 

I just look at some of the BIN prices on eBay.

I finally removed a lot of those sellers from my searches, some of them are really nice online museums though.

Brian, I lost quite a bit Sunday running standard auctions. Now I'm doing BIN's and selling cards at what I perceive as market value. Don't knock the BIN's - if sellers could do better with normal old-fashioned auctions, that's exactly what they would be doing. I personally prefer auctions, but I can't afford to sell cards that way - I can't get hold of inventory cheaply enough.

Not all BIN's are out of line, but some of them are 3 times or more than what the card has been selling for.

Here's another thought: no one can be certain what 'market value' is. I certainly am not. But one thing I do know: running straight auctions, I will sell at below my costs - if 'market value' is the average of everything, then straight auctions are below market value. This is just common sense. I've proven this every time I've tried running a series of straight auctions (overall, not individual cards). So what do you do? Well, you already know that almost no one is willing to give you your BIN price, unless it's low, so you pop it up high enough to where if you are wrong on the low end, you don't lose much, and if you are wrong on the high end, you're going to get talked down anyway.

I can't think of many cards I've sold too high, but I can give you a huge pile that I sold too low. Fortunately, most were just right.

This is mostly ebay's fault - if they got rid of their 'store' mentality and returned to the old auction days, we'd be back to bitching about shilling, and ebay would be a helluva lot more fun.

I agree Scott, can't give stuff away.

Joe

This is why I created this post and why I will knock BINs, although not universally. Not all BINs, but enough of them, are out of touch with reality (i.e. the economy, i.e. recent purchase prices). The prices are laughable.

Now, I understand some sellers are asking for a price that is high in hopes of drawing up the offer from the seller to maximize profits, but when the price the seller is asking is X and the market is Y and Y is 1/6 the price of X, it is no longer an attempt to maximize a profit margin. It is a case of launching the equivalent of a test balloon. eBay listings are full of a lot of balloons right now. Are there other motives for this strategy? Yes, but I will let board members carry that part of the conversation.

Well, that should take care of my hot air.

:D

P.S.

The X/Y scenario will not be listed as a question on the SATS.

Bins
 

Hi Brian,
Sending up a test balloon is OK, but leaving that balloon in the air for 3 years is a little ridiculous. There is a seller on ebay that I have been watching for a loooonnnggg time because he has some cards that I am interested in. I buy cards from this set on the board for $85 to $175, and sometimes I go as high as $250 for a common. This seller has his BIN's at $500, $600, and as high as $1000 for commons. He has his auto-decline set at a price that is still way out of my range. I don't want to even attempt to contact him and make an offer because his prices are so far out of line that I will just be wasting my time.

On the other hand, I have made offers on other high priced BIN's and my offers were accepted.

I guess I am just jealous that he has these cards but I don't want them bad enough to pay 3-5 times more than I would pay on the BST.

I agree with Scott on the ebay auctions. At one time I listed all of my items with a starting price of 99 cents and they did well. For the past couple of years I have been getting killed on auctions unless I have cards that are somewhat rare, or HOFers. Common T206's and T205's in lower grades just don't seem to be doing well on the bay right now.

Rick

Ebay BIN
 

I tried selling some cards on ebay last year and took a beating on some of them. There might only be a few guys collecting a certain set at that time, so the auction prices could be super low unless 2 guys are bidding each other up. I tried a few high BIN's and sold a few cards at high prices, but most didn't sell of course.

Some wealthy collectors don't want to spend the time searching and waiting for a card to be had at a low price. If they need the card, they might just spring for the BIN. They might put a higher value on their time, not wanting to spend several hours over several months to save a couple hundred dollars. So I can see why dealers try the BIN first.

As long as the BIN has the best offer feature it really doesn't matter what someone puts their BIN price at imo.