Seeing Red On Ebay
 

It seems as if several of the sellers on Ebay do not care if they sell their cards or not. I remember the days on Ebay before the Buy it now and Best offer format. I was partial to the $9.99 and let it fly for both buying and selling. I guess I am venting slightly and realize I have to change with the times, though sometimes it can be rather difficult. Though I am very fond of old cardboard I have learned to live without it if the price is too steep. Thanks for listening. Dennis.

I was just thinking the same thing today...remembering the good ol' days when items were priced to sell as opposed to them sitting on the site for months and years.

I also miss the old days of eBay. Not just from the buying side...it was also a nice place for me to sell a few things every now and then. These days, I hardly ever bother. It seems (to me, at least...personal opinion) that the odds are stacked pretty heavily against a little guy having much success. I am all for buyer protection systems...but eBay seems to have tilted the table a bit too far, allowing abusive buyers to roam free. It would be nice to have the option to leave negative feedback as a seller. This would probably level things out.

But what do I know? I'm just a small fish in the great wide ocean who wishes he could still make a few bucks here and there selling off unwanted stuff.

By the way, I typically listed items at 99 cents, no reserve, 7 day auction. Watching the number of bids add up was part of the appeal to me.

Ah, the good old days. OK...rant over.

Best regards,

Eric

ebay I hate listing stuff on there takes sometimes weeks to get your money. I mean great if your the buyer but damn haha. Oh well thats why I love this site so many good deals and great people to work with.

I don't miss the "security" measures in place during the old days of eBay. :eek:

Dennis, ebay sellers have little choice - ebay fees are now higher, and collectors are now paying retail for large lots sold by major auction houses. If there are no deals for the dealers, they can't offer deals to their customers. The large dealers can get inventory cheaper, but they also have more overhead. I don't know what the solution is, but $9.99 auctions with shill bidders is not it.

When it costs nothing to list an item....enter the era of the "eBay Museum"

With the ebay store that I operate, my goal is to sell 15-20% of my inventory each month. Based on the expenses associated with operating an ebay store, coupled with my avg unit sell price and then maintaining my monthly sell-through rate of 15-20%, I am able to keep my ebay expense percent below 20% of my income. For me, if I am not selling 15-20% of my inventory each month, my expense percent soars and any profit that was possible is gone due to ebay expenses (paying listing fees with not enough sales to offset this major expense). If I am trending low on my sell through percent during the month, I run sales, accept lower offers via best offer and ensure my newer listings are more liquid items in order to drive the transactions.

There are a lot of business models for selling on ebay, but yours is very close to mine, except in the past I would get rid of old inventory by running $9.99 straight auctions, and those ended up killing me - never came close to covering costs when I did that.

It started going down when eBay dealt with PayPal as the only solution. Bad for sellers.

You get hit three times...eBay listing fee, eBay final value fee, and PayPal fee.

I feel your pain, my friend. I listed a black leather sofa and Sony tube TV together to sell on Ebay a few days ago. It was the very first time I'd ever listed something for sale. Well, I took it down before the offers started coming in. It turns out I hadn't done a few things I needed to do, so I'm going to re-list it. But the number of hoops a seller has to jump through is simply crazy. Then, for your troubles, they take a pint of blood before letting the body go, so to speak.

Somewhere in the world, there's an enterprising young man or woman developing an alternative to Ebay. A place where an honest person can sell their items and not feel like they've just gone seven rounds with Rocky Marciano. Someplace where buyers and sellers are held equally accountable, and there's no tolerance for things like schilling.

Thankfully, for pre-war and vintage cards/memorabilia, we have that kind of a place already. Our members operate on an honor system, and look out for one another. And the members of Net 54 are truly passionate about our hobby; they're not just looking to squeeze every last cent out of somebody's pocket.

I know I am naive about how some things work in this world, but Net 54 has spoiled me. Once you've seen what the mountain top is like, you don't want to settle for less. And Net 54 is the Mr. Everest of card, memorabilia and ephemera collecting sites.

It would be interesting to see a comparison of eBay's fees (for straight auctions, not BINs), then and now. If I sold a card in 2004 for $1,000, what was eBay's cut back then?

A rundown of fees over the years would be quite telling, and it would be only one of the reasons eBay has gone downhill.