My two bits worth.....
1. Don't have 102 different rules and regulations. Too many guidelines and you are going to piss people off. I'm already completely disagreeing with the prior suggestion to force mandatory feedback. Keep it simple!
2. No down time or slow response time allowed. This was a major problem during the rookie years of eBay.
3. Just throwing this out there, as a stupid idea. But I always thought it would be neat, to have certain groups of prewar cards end on a given time/day of the week/month. For instance, T206 cards would end every Sunday and Wednesday nights (with one minute intervals between each auction). T3's and Exhibits would end Monday nights. Goudey's would end Tuesday nights, caramel's every Thursday night, etc, etc, etc.
Thus, the auction house would offer three styles of auctions; the standard 7 day auction, the buy-it-now auction and the "group" auction. All cards in the group auction would have to start at .99 cents. To make-up for this, perhaps they could run a little longer then 7 days (10 to 15 days). Thus, on Wednesday night you could have three-hundred-and-sixty T206 cards for auction (running from 7:00 pm to 1:00 am at one-minute intervals). As a buyer, I could plan for T206 Wednesday. As a seller, I will definitely get more eyes on my auction (which is half the battle).
4. In order to really succeed, you need to reach a larger audience then the hard core collector. Advertise, advertise, advertise! American loves baseball cards...
A little ramble.... I already spend way too much time browsing and bidding on eBay, looking at monthly catalogs from major auction houses, glancing at the B/S/T section, keeping track of the latest Mike Wheat offerings, selling cards to finance everything, and updating my want lists. So you are asking alot, if you expect me to devote more time to an eBay-like-auction site. You will have to to emulate what eBay gives me. On any given day, I can find rare cards, and perceived bargains. On any given day, I can sell cards and be pleasantly surprise with the bidding. Give me that, and I will take more then a peek.
One quick shot......"Graded Cards" only, that is way too narrow for me. Especially, when there is nothing wrong with including raw cards...
Lovely Day...
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