eBay auctions

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Well I'm still pretty new here. My biggest problem with my ebay store is keeping it stocked. I list every item individually so that you get a thorough description of every item. I peaked at 550 items, I'm down to 400ish right now and I have thousands to list. Tons of prewar too. Complete sets etc... Glad you liked my store, it must be succeeding for a reason, and even in a marketplace that is apparently hostile to fixed price stores.

As for some of the complaining on the buyer's end ITT, I can't speak for all sellers, but for me this is a business. It does me no good to pay for a store ($50/month) and not make sales. When I do have over 500 items I then pay listing fees as well, so it does me no good to overprice items so that they sit for a year. If I relist a 30 day item more than a few times I start reevaluating my price. I also can't imagine predicating an entire store on hoping enough suckers stumble by to pay inflated prices to keep me in business. There have been lots of ideas floated in this thread as ways to, in effect, punish sellers who have practices with which you disagree. Isn't not spending your money with them all the necessary punishment? Unless it's just a bunch of rich weirdos costing themselves money for no reason, the free market will eventually sort out the issue. Just my 2¢

[Luke]

Yeah, punishing sellers for overpricing shouldn't really be the goal. Ebay should want to create a fun buying environment for its customers. Right now it feels predatory to a lot of people.

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

I keep beating this poor horse's corpse. Vote with your money.

One of the first people to welcome me here was a regular customer of mine. I didn't even know he was a member. I have very loyal customers and I assume that means I have a "fun buying environment."

It's a mass marketplace, you're never going to be able to regulate it into a "fun buying environment" because that means too many different things to too many different people. "Predatory" sellers only succeed if buyers keep rewarding them. If I feel someone is predatory I simply don't buy from them. I have a shit list of guys who sell counterfeits as reprints, rest assured I will never do business with them, and yes Ebay should in fact enforce rules they have in place, THAT may help it feel more "fun", but I can't imagine making rules to solve most of the problems people are discussing here. If you go to the mall you have a choice between Kohl's and Nordstrom's. You may even find the identical item in both stores at widely different prices, does that mean the mall needs to pass rules make Nordstrom's more "fun"?

[Luke]

It sounds like you think you're disagreeing with people. Not buying from sellers with outrageous prices seems pretty straight-forward. I think everyone is with you on that.

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

LOL, I'm sure, but the proposals to in effect legislate sellers into complying with what some buyers want is disturbing. For fear of getting political I will let the subject rest now.

[Snapolit1]

I could be wrong, but I think in the early days of eBay they charged you a minimal amount every time you listed an item. That might limit the variety of items listed, but would surely limited the endless relistings at insane BINs.

[thecatspajamas]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

I could be wrong, but I think in the early days of eBay they charged you a minimal amount every time you listed an item. That might limit the variety of items listed, but would surely limited the endless relistings at insane BINs.

This is exactly how you cut down on the number of unrealistic BIN's. There will still be some for sure, but when you force people to have some skin in the game in order to play, they quit seeing it as some kind of free lotto ticket. "Maybe I'll hook someone, maybe not, but if it doesn't cost me anything to try, who cares? $1000 reprint coming up." Even a nominal up-front fee will deter much of the endless relisting. Or if you want to encourage true auctions, only offer free listings for $0.99 starting price auction listings. The days that everyone pines for, with regular offerings of reasonable-starting-price auctions were a direct result of tiered listing fees based on your auction starting price and a basic fee for Store listings which were then hidden from general view unless you specifically searched Store listings. If it cost more for sellers to roll the dice and have their items seen, they would be more motivated to move the merch rather than rolling the dice over and over and paying a fee each time.

As much as I like Free Listings (and take advantage of them whenever I can), they have killed the collectibles market on eBay. The problem is, eBay does not focus on nor care about the sports collectibles (or any other collectibles) market. It is a small fraction of their overall sales, and they have worked hard to skew it that way. Even if the suggestion to legislate lower prices for each successive listing were possible, it's not worth their time to implement.