Buy It Now Reality Check

[johnmh71]

I am never shy about making a fair offer for a buy it now item. It doesn't cost me anything to have them say no. I often have my offer accepted or I receive a counter proposal.

[Bridwell]

Yes, they are like ebay Museums. Rarely do any of the cards sell, it seems. Why would anybody pay 3x on ebay instead of using the auction houses to buy?
They must occasionally sell a card or two otherwise why bother?

[SetBuilder]

What do you guys think this is, Wal-Mart?

You can't catch a big fish if you're not fishin'.



You know what they say about fools with money.

[SetBuilder]

Oh, and I have a theory that hasn't been discussed. Search sorting. People will usually sort by highest price first to weed out the junk. When looking through art sometimes on eBay I've seen artists asking $2,000,000 for a painting but they'll accept $200 for it. It's a free way to get your stuff featured at the top and leapfrog over the "legit" names.

So if you type in E98 and sort by price, your cards will be "showcased" at the top in page 1 instead of buried in page 6. Plus, eBay usually charges like $2 for featured listings so its a way to bypass that by putting a high buy-it-now OBO listing.

[deucetwins]

Search sorting. Good theory and probably some truth in it.

[Exhibitman]

The beauty of the system is that if you don't like the price, don't pay the price. You can always go find another one elsewhere. Same is true of the offer price on wholesale: if you don't like their price, go elsewhere, consign the card to an AH or sell it yourself.

ETA: some sellers really do not need to sell, which I completely understand w/r/t a weekend warrior-collector type, but which makes no sense to me w/r/t a professional seller who could have turned over his money multiple times. There is one seller at the National every year who has a nice piece I'd like to own at a percentage of the ask but he never negotiates. He offers it on Ebay over and over with no takers, too. I visit the card every year, spend a few minutes saying hello, make my offer, get rejected, and then bid it farewell until the next year.

[Luke]

I've wondered about this for awhile. I never see any sold listings from these inflated BIN prices, but the sellers who do it must be making money on it somehow right? It just doesn't make any sense. I have a bunch of cards that I would sell if someone wanted to pay 3x market value for them. But I also value my time, and would expect that scanning and listing them on ebay for an exhorbitant amount of money would be a waste my time. So who is doing this, and what benefit are they receiving from doing it?

[Zach Wheat]

I've wondered about this as well. I think it happens as much for the advertising aspects with no intention to really sell the items.

Z Wheat

[tschock]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

There is one seller at the National every year who has a nice piece I'd like to own at a percentage of the ask but he never negotiates. He offers it on Ebay over and over with no takers, too. I visit the card every year, spend a few minutes saying hello, make my offer, get rejected, and then bid it farewell until the next year.

Adam, Just curious, does the seller's ebay ID start with a "d"?

[Exhibitman]

No Taylor, "C".

[HOF Yankees]

In my opinion I will use buy it now if the price I feel is right and best offer when I got a price in mind. If I don't win the item there are others so its not always a loss in the end when the item/items may or may not be all that rare.