ebay News! More changes?

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Posted By: D. Bergin

No doubt when they announce this the trumpets blaring from Ebay will overwhelm the media with their new "Free" listing model.

Problem is, this will only encourage people to break up sets of 1987 Topps to sell as singles.

If you are used to actually selling stuff and don't base your business on listing as many items as possible, scraping by on a high volume, low sell through rate you are going to be screwed.

With free listings and 15% of the final take, Ebay will be taking close to 20% if you include Paypal in the mix.

Right now I hover around the 12% mark of total fees (Ebay and Paypal combined). It will stray into the 15% range if I've had a weak month with a lot of unsold relists.

It's really going to be more expensive to sell anything of value on Ebay then it is to just send it to one of the auction houses. Plus, you get to do all the work yourself, create the listing, take photos, deal with the customer, arrange the payment and shipping, go to the post office, etc..

Not a bad gig for Ebay. Just provide the listing software, take an auction house chunk of the proceeds and wash your hands of the rest of the work and transaction.

It's sad when you look back and realize Ebay was created initially so the normal person could somewhat control their own destiny with how they sold their collectibles, without bringing a middle man into the deal. Now Ebay have made themselves the middleman, but they don't really have to do any of the middleman work in order to collect a bigger slice of the pie.