Overpriced cards

[pbspelly]

Originally Posted by Duluth Eskimo

I would also like to comment on someone's previous assertion that eBay is a place to find deals. eBay marketing would definitely disagree with you. eBay markets itself as an online shopping marketplace. They want to encourage shoppers to come on there for their birthday purchase for their father or an item they cannot find somewhere else. I sell a lot of items to people buying gifts for someone else that are absolutely elated to find the item that their special person has always talked about, etc. That is the customer eBay wants, not a bunch of collectors like us.

And that is a crucial mistake that eBay marketing is making. Because the public does not view eBay as a place to pay full price due to the inherent risk of buying from someone you only know by an eBay name. If you saw a card that you wanted on eBay for $1000 from some seller you didn't know, but you could buy the same card at REA for $1000 (counting the buyer's premium), you would probably buy the REA card because it would seem safer.

As I said, eBay is indeed a place for items that you can't easily get somewhere else. But if what is being sold is something that can be found elsewhere, it needs to be sold at a discount on eBay or no one is going to buy it. When eBay tries to be another Amazon, it loses.

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by pbspelly

And that is a crucial mistake that eBay marketing is making. Because the public does not view eBay as a place to pay full price due to the inherent risk of buying from someone you only know by an eBay name. If you saw a card that you wanted on eBay for $1000 from some seller you didn't know, but you could buy the same card at REA for $1000 (counting the buyer's premium), you would probably buy the REA card because it would seem safer.

As I said, eBay is indeed a place for items that you can't easily get somewhere else. But if what is being sold is something that can be found elsewhere, it needs to be sold at a discount on eBay or no one is going to buy it. When eBay tries to be another Amazon, it loses.

That isn't true for all sellers and it isn't the perception of all buyers. Many buyers would much rather use the simplicity of paying through Paypal, and get their card quickly, as opposed to having to pay with a check and wait 3-4 weeks. I'm sure there is still a lot of trailer park mentality on ebay, but ebay's goal has been to move away from that, and it actually has been successful.

[steve B]

Ebay is a strange place for sure.

Not everyone is looking for a bargain, or at least not looking for what would be an obvious bargain.

When I was selling I'd occasionally ask buyers a question or two after the sale was complete. Especially of there was something unusual about the sale.

I sold a bike part to one guy in an auction, and it went for a bit over retail, maybe 5-6 dollars over on a $20 item. Brand new and readily available a most bicycle shops. (I bought a bunch on closeout from our wholesaler and did really well. ) So I asked out of curiosity why he'd been willing to go beyond retail even before the shipping amount. The answer was that he only had two "local" bike shops. One was a two hour round trip, the other more like 4-5 hours. And as he put it "I won't go to the closer one unless I'm desperate because the guy's a D***" So to him saving a 4-5 hour round trip was easily worth paying a few dollars extra.

Of course we all want to get that card right now and for a great price.....Who wouldn't?

The question about the BINs - A long while ago they changed the fee structure for people with stores. Lower or no insertion fees for fixed price, but a higher monthly fee for the store or something like that. For someone organized it was a good deal. I ran into problems if I had more than 20-30 items a week, missing emails, or not getting stuff shipped quickly enough. Quick enough for me that is, I put handling time as 5 days or something, but typically got stuff out within 24 hours. But a few late night trips to storage for an item I'd forgotten to pick up a few more of was annoying. If I was organized enough to have a few hundred items the store would have been a good deal.

Then they made some auctions free insertion, probably to try to get the ratio of auction to fixed price items back to reasonable.

The ever shifting rules and expectations was a big part of what made me stop selling. But I need to start again.

Steve B