curiosity question on flipping
 

I am a collector. I do not purchase with the intent of flipping tho sometimes I buy to upgrade and then sell the lesser conditioned one.
So often I have sold a card (so I can upgrade) with a major auction house like REA, LOTG , others only to see the card then pop up a few weeks later on ebay and being sold as a BIN for at least 2-3x the price. For instance I sold this card thru REA recently (hammer price 2,200) https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?Spor...p=10&_svsrch=1.
So asking almost 5x.
I hate when I get outbid by 1 bid for something I need for my collection and then the same thing happens. It appears on ebay for too high a price for me to pay. My question is do you think these folks are getting at or near the prices they are asking. I am not going to turn into a flipper but do you think that ebay yields higher prices than major auction houses? Also does this piss you off like it can me or is it just part of the game?

No and no.

Listing at whatever price for however long on Ebay can be done at no cost. Therefore any buffoon can ask for any price on Ebay, and they do.

;)

I see this with cards that I'm an underbidder on in an auction. Often it's a dealer, but I think a dealer and a flipper are operating to the some overall business model (buy low and sell higher).

To your questions:
1. Are these folks getting the prices they're asking? I think the answer is sometimes. At 5x auction prices, I doubt it. Those are often people who are deluding themselves. At 2x auction prices...sometimes but they have to wait for the perfect buyer. I see this mostly on pretty rare items. I can see some logic in the model. They have to sit on the inventory for a while which requires capital. They have eBay selling costs and need to hold enough inventory to cope with the slower sell through rates. But sometimes the mark ups seem absurd.

I also wonder sometimes whether collectors buy a piece they want and then list it on eBay with a crazy "I don't want to sell it price". If someone comes along who wants it that much, they'll take the sale and roll the proceeds into other items on their want list.

2. Does eBay yield better prices? Sometimes but it depends on how much markup they're targeting. You might expect 10 -15% higher BIN prices on eBay just to cover the selling fees and the risks of having to deal with returns, etc. As Balticfox pointed out, there's no cost for posting and waiting on eBay. An auction only runs for a short period.

3. Does it piss you off? When it's a card that I need, it absolutely does. But that's the nature of the game.

Occasionally, an item slips through the major auction houses especially if it is not a commonly traded item. Doubling on Ebay is not an impossibility on some items.

Many items listed on Ebay at ridiculous prices are just a collector showing off his collection with no real intent of selling. Sure, if they can get 5 times what they paid they will sell but that likely never happens.

Pretty rare to have anything fall through the cracks these days. Lots of eyes with nothing else to do apparently but try and get rich quick on cards. Hence we see more theft and bad decisions!

:eek:

I haven't flipped any cards in the last 53 years and strongly advise against the practice. It's bad for the corners.

:(

About 5 years ago I met Paul Simon for the first time. I had some baseball cards with me and he wanted to flip cards so we spent maybe 30 minutes flipping cards.