Who Has Left Ebay?

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by Runscott

... there are plenty of collectors out there who will pay the extra 13% for stuff that Net54 folks won't touch at much less.

We bitch about ebay, but we are barely a drop in their pre-war bucket.

Absolutely true. There are so many collectors who never heard of N54 but who cruise eBay daily.

I tend to divide my selling depending on what I am offering. If I am selling baseball cards, I definitely go elsewhere than eBay first. The BST here is a great resource, but not my go-to on lesser cards because I still have to set the price and fulfill the orders. For items under $200 it isn't really worth my time to do the listings, fulfill orders, etc., if there is a low cost outlet I can use readily. I have been very pleased with the job Lee Behrens has done and the results Lee has gotten me with consignments to Sterling. It costs me 2% above eBay for slabbed cards, 12% more than the BST here [I simply will not do PayPal gift deals, so I pay the 3% if I sell here], which is well worth it to me to avoid the time and headaches. However, for the more esoteric stuff, eBay still has the customer base, so I still sell there. Like it or not, feebay remains the best retail venue for much of what I deal in. I've been busting up vintage boxing sets and accumulations and got next to nothing done here but everything I've offered thus far has sold through eBay.

That said, eBay is a particularly problematic venue in terms of seller security and fairness. I realize that there were sellers committing fraud but the pendulum has swung way too far the other way. eBay has a $hitty set of rules for selling. Yeah, I said it. I try to limit my risks by avoiding overseas transactions except through the eBay overseas shipping program, by using eBay postage to generate their mandated tracking, etc. The buyer bias eBay has makes retail dealing more costly, difficult and risky, but still beats wholesaling or letting a bigger AH lump my stuff into dealer lots. Plus, it is fast cash flow if that is a consideration. I sold stuff that closed last weekend and already have the money in hand.