ebay buy it now pricing

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Posted By: mpduq

am i the only one that is getting tired of seeing more and more cards listed with only a " buy it now" option? isn't this defeating the idea of an auction? if i wanted to buy it now, i would just go to these people's websites and overpay for the card!!

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Posted By: T206Collector

...I don't know why more sellers don't use it. The way ebay pricing works is that your item sells for the next highest increment over the second-highest bid. That means in virtually all auctions, your item is selling for below what the highest bidder would have paid. Buy It Now Pricing should be an effort to recoup some of that available profit which ebay does not let you realize.

And bidders should not be any worse for the existence of BIN. In fact, most people have a great story of a BIN that was their best bargain on ebay.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

As a seller, I would rather something sell 10 minutes into the auction than wait 7 days. Sometimes if there are two watchers on an item with no bid, I'll put a BIN at the minimum bid just to get it sold right away. Once in a while if there's only one bidder on an item for several days straight, I'll end the auction early and let them have it at the minimum bid-- in particular when I know the person specializes in that area.

I'm not into giving things at great deals and I do allow most auctions go to the end (I also have BIN items in a store), but I can live without items having 0 bids for 6 days. If I can get something sold at a reasonable price right away I'll do it.

So for all the bidders who don't place a bid for the first 6 days 24 hours 59 minutes, you now know why a seller would rather put something at BIN and get it sold right away. When someone places a minimum bid on an item, I would never end the auction other than to sell to them at the minimum bid-- so I never understand why people don't mark an item by bidding the minimum.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

FYI, you are seeing lots of BINS right now because of the ten-cent BIN sale that Ebay had last week. At a dime a shot, lots of big dealers dump their entire inventories into the system.

Apart from that, as a buyer I appreciate a BIN price on an item to give me certainty. If the last card I need for a set is there, I hate to sweat it out over the week. Also, some of the best things I've purchased have been BIN purchases that the seller pegged too low.

From a seller's standpoint, I like some BINs because it lets me set a price and be done with it. I also think it serves a buyer better by allowing a really eager buyer to circumvent the auction and take the item immediately. I hate having my item watched by a bunch of people who do nothing on it. The BIN at least gives them the incentive to buy it before the next guy.

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Posted By: Judge Dred (Fred)

BINs are kind of neat. Every once in a while you get a bargain out of it. Basically it boils down to good timing. The BIN also allows a seller to realize what they feel is a good price for them to sell it. Of course, ebay is going to collect their fees...

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Posted By: T206Collector

"I never understand why people don't mark an item by bidding the minimum."

Because it gives additional attention to the item, convincing other bidders to enter the bidding, while giving additional guaranteed cash to the seller. If you end your auction early with few if any bids, you must not understand (or at least care) that most ebay auctions are won in the final seconds.

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Posted By: jay behrens

Everyone talks about most auctions being won in the last seconds or minutes of an auction, but my experience is otherwise. It's the rare auction that actually gets last minute snipes. On highly desirable items, this may be the case, but for your run of the mill t206, Goudey, etc, I've seen little or no sniping on these auctions, whether selling or bidding.

Jay

I've just reached Upper Lower Class. I am now officially a babe magnet for poor chicks.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

I agree. From my experience as a seller, the majority of auction are not won in the last seconds.

Also, only a small fraction of people who 'watch' an auction place a bid. As a seller, the number of watchers means little to nothing to me. I have people place a 'watch' on a BIN For Sale item, which make goofy sense. I judge the interest in an auction solely on the number of bids placed as that's the only concrete thing that I can use to judge interest.

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Posted By: T206Collector

...and you would be hard pressed to prove that many many T206 auctions do not end with a sniper. Even if it is only 50% or 25% of all T206 auctions, that is a significant amount of sniping activity. The point is that a large number of ebay auctions for pre-war cards end with snipes. And if that is the case, then you should not be ending auctions early.

But my other point is always that early bids are absolutely and completely without any merit, unless you want other people to see what you're bidding on or you just want to give money to the seller.

I often watch items that I own to guage value, with no intent to bid. I just want to see if a seller can get a certain price for something.

Here's a random lot that just ended.
Ended: Mar-06-06 10:44:00 PST
Start time: Feb-27-06 10:44:00 PST

http://cgi.ebay.com/LOT-OF-TEN-1909-T-206-TABBACO-CARDS_W0QQitemZ8772693553QQcategoryZ86844QQrdZ1QQc mdZViewItem

And here's the bidding history.
User ID Bid Amount Date of bid

tbarlage ( 812) US $83.65 Mar-06-06 10:43:54 PST
mybuddyinc ( 285) US $82.82 Mar-06-06 10:43:54 PST
mustang31585 ( 94) US $76.89 Mar-06-06 10:39:59 PST
morr6486 ( 0 ) US $75.00 Mar-05-06 21:35:40 PST
bagger77 ( 3334) US $73.12 Mar-06-06 08:16:32 PST
vtechfan ( 173) US $68.00 Mar-06-06 06:48:01 PST
vtechfan ( 173) US $60.00 Mar-06-06 06:47:23 PST
cwjorge ( 37) US $55.00 Mar-04-06 19:27:03 PST
waynea432 ( 61) US $50.00 Feb-28-06 17:11:29 PST
sac.fly ( 272) US $50.00 Mar-04-06 08:47:46 PST
mjhbear ( 142) US $43.22 Feb-27-06 18:19:24 PST

There were two snipes on this rather mundane T206 auction, with 6 seconds left, and the winner was tbarlage. All of the rest of the bids were totally irrelevant and only served to drive the price up for the eventual winners. In fact, vtechfan did multiple early bids, which is perhaps the highest form of irrational bidding.

And now I've learned that bagger77, who has a ton of feedback signaling his frequent participation on ebay, likes to bid on T206 lots early, so I can follow him now in my searches and let him do the work for me. Want to see some cool pre-war card auctions that are still out there, check these out:

http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBidItems&userid=bagger77&sort=3&page=1&rows=25&completed=0&all=1

I don't mean to beat a dead horse here, or out Bagger77 in particular, but I like to imagine a world where no one bids on an ebay auction until the final seconds, because in that world, the bidders truly save money.

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Posted By: dennis

i think the original poster is talking about "BIN only" auctions where over-priced store items were dropped into the regular auctions because they had a 10 cent BIN promo last week. so the same items are in stores but also show up in the auction listings at the same high prices.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

The discussion is about bidding early versus bidding late. The original question was why do sellers have Fixed Price Sales. The answer is if so many people are waiting until the last seconds to bid, the seller may figure why not have it as a BIN Sale, get it sold right away and skip the 6+ days of wasted time and space. There's nothing wrong with late bidding and using snipe software to get the lowest price possible, but I'm confident that this bidding strategy is exactly why why sellers use Fixed Price Sales. Most sellers would rather get something sold at a stable price and several days earlier, instead of having their finances be subject to the whims of the last second sniping gods.