eBay 2022 - Less auctions, more high buy it nows
 

eBay in 2022 - I have noticed less auctions on sports cards and more museum priced buy it now. Is it now just a showcase for some sellers?

You can probably add eBay auctions with an initial bid that is basically a high retail buy it now price as an example of this phenomenon.

It makes you wonder if they even want to sell.

well a lot of cards did sell this year for prices in 2021 you would of said are never going to sell for that price

its their card they can do what you want....go and bid on auctions..but you can always get outbid and card may go up between auctions..

the only way to knock down card prices is to see ebay auction prices continually go under their prices on ebay.. yeah i know that will be true for some cards and the prices still dont go down but for many that you dont see many auctions..thats why they can keep their asking prices with a straight face.

This has been the case for years, but probably worse than ever now. Especially with PWCC gone.

Yep. EBay seems increasingly like a wasteland these days. I never thought I'd say it, but I get nostalgic for those PWCC Sunday night prewar 99¢ auction drops...

eBay 2022 - Less auctions, more high buy it nows
 

The new $600 Threshold has driven many casual sellers away.
In my experience 50-75% of casual sellers do auctions. While 90% of dealers only do insane bin prices and don’t give any kind of offers or deals (having to buy 30 cards for free shipping isn’t a deal).
This isn’t a big issue for cards with massive volume say ‘60 mantle or a ‘58 koufax, they will always have running auctions, almost 24/7.
But when you get into even the slightest obscurity you hardly see auctions anymore. It’s seemingly Bi-monthly or worse for even a more common food issue. And the ones you do see listed are just sitting on 10,000+ feedback accounts priced 5x too high. Never answering messages or sending any offers, It’s very annoying. I know it’s hard to send an offer when you have 5000 items listed and you get 250 watches a day, but check your items that have been on ebay for 2+ years and maybe give 10% or 20% off your 5x retail price.

Auction houses with 20% bps are becoming more affordable.

The Market is Down and they’re afraid to roll the dice on mediocre stuff that was rocket ship over the past two years in the auction. It no longer is rocket ship people are being smart with their money. Unless it’s top tier. Middle-level stuff is not being risked anymore by giving to auction houses.

As one of the guilty parties here, with a handful of items for sale on eBay for generous prices, while you could certainly ascribe pejorative motives to my actions, the fact is that for most of the items that I have listed, I’m not really motivated to sell them. They’re available if someone really wants them so badly to pay a lot for them, but otherwise I’m happy to continue to enjoy them in my own collection.

Most of the items that I have listed are also not easy to find, so if someone wants it badly enough, and doesn’t want to wait for months or years for another one to come up for sale, my item might be their only viable option to pick it up.

And I’m okay with waiting years to sell them. I’m also fine with never selling them at all.

I think this explains quite a few listings. Personally I'm more binary, either I want to sell a card or I want to keep it, but it makes sense.

99.997% of my collection isn’t for sale. Just a small slice that I enjoy greatly but don’t love to bits.

In addition to being rather difficult to find, the market for the items that I’m willing to sell is often also very thin. So selling in an auction typically is a poor mechanism to reach the handful of people that might be interested in buying them, at least at the highest price, since only 1 or 2 of those people might be in the market and paying attention during the window for my auction, whereas it can stay open for years until the right person comes along through the BIN feature.

You said it!! It's tough to find any eBay bargains these days...or even 'normally' priced items, so you have to decide if it's worth it to overpay to secure a card you desire. I just bought an oddball Mantle in ungraded, mid-range condition, but they almost never come up for sale, so as much as I hated doing it, I plunked down the money to make the grab. Now, I'll be forced to eat nothing but ramen for a while. :(

Is there a "collectorism" for that? "Oodles of Noodles"? I'll see myself out ..

No more bargains on eBay. None of the old stuff I like shows up on eBay anymore, and when it does, it's way out of my price range. Not just cards, but everything. And every category seems filled with modern, useless repro trinkets and gee gaws that are never going to be desirable.

I think this has had a chilling effect on casual sales. There are many collectors who finance their buying with stuff they no longer need/want or extra stuff they picked up along the way. I have a handful of things that I would love to list, but frankly won't do it because of the $600 limit. It is ridiculously low. It also impacts Paypal transactions.

I've been looking at Mercari and Twitter (set up a new handle just baseball card related) to try and source stuff. I can't abide the book of face. I also scroll through Sportlots, COMC, Beckett, Reddit, and Blowout.

I saw Alt mentioned the other day, looked into it. I was redirected to a .xyz domain. I immediately exited out. No good has ever come of an .xyz domain.

I think this is why we have a further reduction in auctions this year. I expect it to plummet next year; a lot of casuals do not really realize they will be getting 1099's that assume 100% of the sale was profit.

I feel like I've still done very well on bargain hunting on eBay the last year, but mostly via BIN's, which require being quick when a deal gets listed. It may be different for people in other segments of the hobby than myself. A lot of things have definitely fallen out of my price range. A T206 520 set and a T3 set is never happening for me at this point; its just too much to justify.

most of my bin cards that sell are because a auction was run and it went for the bin amount + / buyers want it but need to make sure it’s priced right.

had a cracker branch rickey that buyers were beating me up on offering 1/2 asking.. some auction house ran one and it went almost 2x asking. sold immediately after lol

Ebay
 

Yes, Ebay is going downhill as a good source for prewar baseball cards. I've been bidding less and less on Ebay. The Ebay changes in procedures are mostly the cause.

As someone who has begun using eBay quite frequently this year due to getting back into collecting, I'm thankful even for the little bit that is out there in auctions.

I enjoy $50-$500 rare-ish or low pop prewar items so I can't imagine what you all must be comparing it to previous. Sounds like days of old on eBay, a guy who collects like me might have had even better action.

Arent there times you wish someone would just name a price for certain items...as you are willing to pay way over market

at least some people who may not really want to sell something are naming a price that will make them sell it..nothing wrong with that

Great point.

Yeah - the 1099 era for ebay is definitely driving Sellers away....I'll be getting a 1099 for sure this year, but will have documentation to back up my overall net losses on those sales that are legitimate....

I still find and have bought a few high end cards and game used memorabilia at what I would consider market price.....but there are so many items, if not the majority that are way - way over priced.....Bargains as most of you have said, are almost impossible to find....

If you are patient, you can still set build relatively cheaply off of ebay.....but you have to be patient for sure......

eBay is definitely not what it was years ago....

I listed some T202’s on here, and nobody bothered to contact me. I then sold at auction on eBay for well over my asking prices on here, after fees. I have found it is much better to do a 10 day auction, and get what you are hoping for, and not asking for some astronomical number that just isn’t going to happen. There are deals to be found on eBay.

I will also say, EBay is getting more difficult in some aspects. They are currently holding on to cash of mine, even though everything is delivered. They also had a card I am waiting on arrive at their “hub” to verify authenticity in Sarasota last Monday. So I am out the cash, and God knows if the card will ever show up. So, all in all, eBay is holding 2k in cash since the 19th, and a card valued at 2k as well.

Then again, you have some guys on here do the Goods & Service on PayPal after being clearly told not to when i sell, and i have to go through quite the hassle of getting my money from PayPal.

Vintage is on fire. Auction House prices are high. Card Show prices are high. BST prices are high. Why shouldn't eBay sellers list their cards high? You can always lower the price if it doesn't sell. You can always accept best offers. I recently listed a card at a high price. Soon after, I received an offer at 50%. A couple hours later a buyer hit the buy it now. There is no need to leave money on the table because when you spend that money back on your collection, you aren't getting a bargain either.

Those are good points. I am selling some excess cards; listed some through auction and some through BIN's. Auctions sold for 30% of the BIN price, but the BIN's were on the market for 4x+ as long. For me the selling time differential was not important.

I always would list BIN and just slowly lower the price until it sells. With auctions, what if someone is out of town, real life stuff, etc,... and misses the auction.

I completely agree that on rare or esoteric items where there is no ready pricing history, sellers sticking to their guns is the best way to get a price that makes them happy. Whether it makes shoppers happy is irrelevant; that buyer who needs that rare card is the focus.

I understand that people who want to score bargains are getting frustrated with the lack of low minimum bid auctions, but selling is not an eleemosynary activity, it is a for-profit endeavor. I am switching over to doing BINS or auctions with openers at what I want to get on the card. No more "start it cheap and see where it goes" auctions, unless I am blowing out something for some reason and don't really care where it ends up. I think that is the only formula that really makes sense for a part-time seller, especially when prices are rising but also volatile.

Wish I had taken this stance. I have given away a slew of monsters I would loved to have had back. I remember BEGGING in here for someone to buy my Hank Aaron PSA 4...lol

One of my favorite stories......A Dealer in the early 2000s told me that cards don't sell for one of three reasons:

1. They are overpriced

2. They are not desirable

3. They are overpriced and not desirable

:)

Precisely. I figure the worst that can happen is people tell me to bugger off and keep my overpriced pieces.

Why is the eBay verification program discouraging casual sellers? I’m just not making the connection. I’m a casual seller. What’s the difference for if I send it to Joe Blow at PSA or Dick Jones in Topeka. I just print out a label and send it to whoever is on the label. People may not like the program for a number of reasons, but why would it bother me as a seller. Maybe I’m missing something obvious.

For me, as a seller, sending it out to a 3rd party just increases the chances that it will be lost or damaged.

Not true. As a seller, you have the same risk you did before of UPS/USPS/FedEx losing or damaging your package. Before you sent it to the buyer, now you send it to either PSA or CSG.

If they can't deliver to your customer it's on them not you.

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Al, I'm not sure what you mean by "if they can't deliver...? if the TPG does a shit job of packing (which I have seen claimed) and the card/slab gets damaged, who is on the hook?

I think eBay's modern card "experience" follows from business changes eBay had to make to continue growing their business in other non-collecting areas. Even with our sports collecting market jumps during COVID, we're nowhere near the traffic and value of people make a living off drop-ship retail consumer goods, to pick one example.

As eBay morphs from a low-rent 2000s flea market into a glossier 2020s shopping mall, you see some of the same results: higher fixed selling prices for customers with more spending power. Sellers can offer occasional discounts if they need money today and otherwise list things for what-if amounts to see if the market catches up.

Still the best place to buy and sell sports cards, all in all.

That said, when they transfer the costs of their authentication services to the seller, I just don’t see how that won’t hurt them. The seller will transfer costs to the buyer. There’s already a 14% vig. I can’t see how this works for $300 cards although maybe it won’t be as impactful for >$1k cards since the fixed cost of authentication will be a lower % of the sell price.

Overall as a seller the new service is great. But I’m not sure I’ll feel the same way when they start pricing it out. And the display stands they are now including seem like a waste of resources.

Drew- Less auctions, and more (high priced) BIN's have been a "thing" for years now...nothing new. I find it rather annoying. Just let the auctions fly! The bidders will determine true market values.

I totally get this. I have things that aren't for sale but can be bought. Sometimes I'll throw a line in the water and see if anything bites. But I generally leave it up for a couple weeks. There are things on ebay I've seen in my search results for 5 years. One high priced item in particular, the seller doesn't even respond to offers (and I've sent offers that were within $200 of his $1800 asking price, so I'm not trying to lowball him). Some sellers treat eBay like their virtual man cave.

The $600 threshold has definitely hurt ebay. To the point that they're now touting faster payouts on their home page, trying to draw sellers back. But right now I can go five hours between searches and there will be one or two new hits in a search that brings 42,000 largely old stale results. That was never the case before, as recently as a year or so ago.

I certainly have felt the same way in the past. As an amateur economist, I definitely found a strong attraction to having the market price be determined by bidders in an open auction format.

I think one of the factors that changed my opinion was the steep rise in auction final prices, and my consistent losing streak because some bidders were willing to bid up items to ludicrous levels. It got to be that auctions were no longer my fave anymore. On the flip side, with a BIN, if I really wanted an item, and the price was a price that I was willing to pay, then I could skip the drama of an auction, and skip the letdown of getting my hopes up just to lose in the end or having to exceed my original price point, and instead I can just buy it, with it landing in my mailbox within a few days.

The market is still determining the value. It’s just a market of one now, rather than the entire hobby having a crack at bidding it up.

Would I trade the current environment for the good old days of 2019? All day every day! But since the good old days don’t seem to be coming back anytime soon, I suppose it’s my way of making peace with it, while continuing to collect pieces that bring me joy.

If the seller wants true market value, he needs to send it to an auction house. EBay is the worst place to determine value. Bidders wait until the last second and snipe. The only way to determine value is to give all bidders a fair chance to top the current high bid. I can't remember the last time I auctioned a card, but it was 10+ years ago.

Not in what I collect. There was a time, several years back, in which ebay was trending towards more of an Amazon model and auctions really dried up in favor of BIN. Over the past couple of years however, the auction format has made a major comeback.

I don’t know what it is but anything at auction is usually low grade cards. I guess some people are ok with it but for some issues especially 1970s I’d rather have some nicer cards. Anything that’s in nicer shape at auction is from Greg Morris and those go beyond what a reasonable price should be. If it’s a single the bidding goes beyond what a graded card would go for. Lots even more ridiculous. I have been able to pick up some decent stuff at auction but it’s very rare now. Most stuff is high priced card BINs with rounded corners listed as mint. I don’t know if these people are just new collectors that don’t know what NM means or it’s someone being deceptive. It’s really frustrating these days trying to build sets cheaply.


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Vintage, high grade, and cheap are not really a cross-section I think one will find with any frequency with any avenue of buying.

I still lurk ebay to buy but haven't sold there in a long time. I imagine the 1099s will hurt sales even more next year. It's way different than it was in the old days but every now and then a nugget can be found. They are just few and far between.

and yes, a lot less auctions than a long time ago.
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