Decline in eBay listings?

[glchen]

Originally Posted by DezHood

Thanks guys - in my head this is what I was thinking.... Card sells for $500 on eBay with 88% consigner, I get 440.

Same card for auction house, the first thing that comes to mind is they would want more on a item that will sell for less than 1000 (maybe I'm wrong here??) - at least the emails and mailers they send me, they always ask for high end consignmnets. So, say they ask for 3% and the buyer's premium is 18%. The buyer only wants to pay 500 so he bids 424 and wins. I get 97% of 424 or 411. I've done about 30 dollars worse than I would've done on eBay.......

The issue here is that you can't always guarantee that you will get the same price on ebay that the items sells for in the auction house. Auctions in ebay are usually 7-10 days in length. There are tens of thousands upon thousands of cards listed on ebay (via BIN and auction) on any given day. You are hoping that the right eyes that want your card are seeing your auctions during that time. If not, you are at high risk that your card will not be seen by the right audience that wants to buy your card. If the card that you are selling is a 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth or a T206 Ty Cobb common back, you will probably get enough eyes on ebay where the auction will sell close to VCP. However, if you have a rare Kalamazoo Bats card which typically high rollers go after, your card will probably not bring the best price on ebay in an auction.

Auction houses typically run from 2 weeks to a month (and some start showing your item on their site even earlier via previews). They advertise on many areas such as sites like this and other places. The larger auction houses even ship a print catalog to their mailing list so that there is an even greater chance that your item will be seen by the right people who want to bid on it. Therefore, there is a better chance that the card will achieve a higher price in the auction house. However, there are drawbacks, especially with the higher BP and seller's commission noted earlier. In addition, if it's a high end auction, and your consignments aren't so "high end," your items might be "lost" among all of the other top tier items that are being sold in that auction. That is, bidders will be bidding on those "iconic" cards and may miss your listings or not bid in them because they want to save their funds for the items that they are really trying to get.