Quote:
Originally Posted by Snapolit1
I could be wrong, but I think in the early days of eBay they charged you a minimal amount every time you listed an item. That might limit the variety of items listed, but would surely limited the endless relistings at insane BINs.
|
This is exactly how you cut down on the number of unrealistic BIN's. There will still be some for sure, but when you force people to have some skin in the game in order to play, they quit seeing it as some kind of free lotto ticket. "Maybe I'll hook someone, maybe not, but if it doesn't cost me anything to try, who cares? $1000 reprint coming up." Even a nominal up-front fee will deter much of the endless relisting. Or if you want to encourage true auctions, only offer free listings for $0.99 starting price auction listings. The days that everyone pines for, with regular offerings of reasonable-starting-price auctions were a direct result of tiered listing fees based on your auction starting price and a basic fee for Store listings which were then hidden from general view unless you specifically searched Store listings. If it cost more for sellers to roll the dice and have their items seen, they would be more motivated to move the merch rather than rolling the dice over and over and paying a fee each time.
As much as I like Free Listings (and take advantage of them whenever I can), they have killed the collectibles market on eBay. The problem is, eBay does not focus on nor care about the sports collectibles (or any other collectibles) market. It is a small fraction of their overall sales, and they have worked hard to skew it that way. Even if the suggestion to legislate lower prices for each successive listing were possible, it's not worth their time to implement.