As a buyer and a seller on ebay, I know the first time I sold a card I purchased for $77 and sold it a year later open auction on ebay for $8.16 it made me think twice on how I was selling cards, once it happened a couple more times I had to make some changes. I am not sure why my cards sold lower, maybe the economy, maybe they were run up by me and one other bidding and when I was out then the card sold cheap, I dont know but I felt it was best to make a change.
Since in most cases I am selling only to buy more cards and I am not in any kind of rush for the money, I started running auctions with high starting bids. This has worked well with about half selling, then I decide on the unsold to either relist lower or move to my store BIN. On the cards I think are quality and I like having in my collection they go to BIN, I look at both what i paid and VCP and come up with a price I am ok to sell at, then mark it up 10% over that. I do not care if my price is xx% higher than VCP if I feel thats what the card is valued to me at because worse case it will just stay in my collection. My store has done great for me, I have about 50 cards listed at any time and I sell 2-4 a month, my inventory has been turning in about 18 months. I had a 15% off sale for a week in Nov and sold 15 cards, great week. I always hear of the negative about stores/BINs here but I have really experienced the opposite. My issue is getting more quality cards to put in my store.
I really also should prefix that with the cards I am selling are not your common 1950-70's topps/bowman types, most are exhibit or oddball Clementes that have low pops and not a lot of VCP data.
I do accept offers and it just depends on the card, I just sold a card that I had listed for $175 for $85, it had been in my store a while and the buyer had purchased another card at my number so I was happy to deal. In other cases like I have a nice 1921 Exhibit Ruth, I have it priced pretty close to what I expect to get out of it and have turned down over 10 offers that were lower than I was willing to go, I am ok with that because its a great card and if I still have it in 5 years that works for me, its also the kind of card that makes for good trade bait.
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