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Originally Posted by isiahfan
I may be off on this...as I am not a big auction guy either....but I agree with this statement on #2...If it is semi-rare/rare and not well known...only a select group will be interetsed....depending on the era of the card a lot of PCers don't even use auction houses...but I seem to think that almost everyone checks eBay...except may for the few extreme high $ collectors. I think IMO my point is ...on average...that if you list on eBay you will miss fewer potential buyers than if you go with an auction house....plus there is only one eBay and there are dozens of AH.
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I think the issue with eBay is not eyeballs as much as timing for your auction needing to coincide with demand from multiple parties for the specific obscure and relatively unknown item. For a lot of really obscure pieces, there might only be 1 or 2 people in the market for it at any one time.
For the price to get above the starting bid, you need at least two bidders. And to get a really nice price they need to both be very motivated. If your item is on eBay in an auction for 7 or 10 days, for a really obscure item, the odds are low that you’ll get that kind of action, unless you’ve got a few buyers who have been looking for it for a long time, are desperate to buy now, and are paying attention during the 7-10 day window when your auction is running.
Sometimes you catch lightning in a bottle, the stars align, and your piece gets a good price. But my experience is that is really the exception rather than the rule for items like this, even on eBay.
Obviously you can start the initial bid on eBay at a high price. But a lot of those aren’t really auctions - they’re more like buy it nows masquerading as an auction in the hopes that more than one bidder will be interested and might bid it up some more.