Tell me why I shouldn't start the screwbay revolution

[Bambino]

Why don't you create an eBay clone exclusive to baseball cards? For collectors, by collectors.

[buckyball1]

Haven't looked at GS Bids for awhile -saw 7402 cards, ALL BINs and no auctions(perhaps i am missing something?) --in many ways now just another "storefront" albeit with sellers you can probably trust--site surely needs true auctions to be wothwhile for most buyers

Not optimistic, but hope you "succeed"

Jim

[Leon]

Originally Posted by buckyball1

Haven't looked at GS Bids for awhile -saw 7402 cards, ALL BINs and no auctions(perhpas i am missing something?) --in many ways now just another "storefront" albeit with sellers you can probably trust--site surely needs true auctions to be wothwhile for most buyers

Not optimistic, but hope you "succeed"

Jim

Absolutely true, right now there are only fixed price items. I am not sure it has the traffic to justify true auctions. They work fine but there just isn't enough traffic to get the prices needed. That being said, as I mentioned previously, there are huge marketing and system changes coming in the future which will hopefully fix the traffic issue. I am cautiously optimistic.....

[glchen]

Frankly, I think the issue with GSB is traffic. There just needs to be more traffic to make it work since just about everything else is great. A few months ago, I put up for auction ~10 Exhibit cards on GSB with what I thought was a reasonable start price. After a 10 day auction, none of them sold. However, it wasn't the fact that none of them sold that bothered me, it was that there were barely any page views on the listings. Other than when I viewed the listings, it looked like no one else did. When I put the same cards on ebay, half of the cards sold, and typically above the start price.

In fact, if GSB could just get the same traffic that BST on net54 gets, I think that would probably be enough. There are often 50-100 views for each BST listing, and when I've put listings on BST, they've typically gotten really good responses. Obviously, when I price too high, the cards won't sell. However, when it's reasonable, it does.

And of course, if you are able to "get" a listing on the main board for net54, things go through the roof. There was a duplicate Rick Simmons thread here a while back, where the OP put a link to my incomplete ebay listing. After I corrected the listing, I think I got a personal record 150 page views for my auction! The card sold for a fair price, also.

Maybe there just needs to be a new forum on Net54 BST called GSB listings, and where a bot can automatically create listings and links to new auction listings on GSB or something. That might be able to increase the page views and traffic on the site.

[Bambino]

Originally, ebay lived up to the saying "one man's garbage is another man's treasure." You had a lot more people who were just trying to move items and make some money because as it turned out, they couldn't buy diapers or food with Ken Griffey Jr. cards.

Nowadays, it seems people aren't willing to settle for "some money". They want book value or more and will not settle for less. So they set super-high reserve prices or they end auctions early if the bids are too low. Just set a "buy it now" for what you want in return and stop wasting everyone's time pretending this is an auction. If you put up a Mickey Mantle rookie card in mint condition and start the bidding at 1 cent with no reserve - you need to be willing and able to sell that card for 1 cent.

And so it doesn't sound like I'm placing all the blame on the sellers...buyers need to do some more research before you bid on an item. I've seen cases where they'll bid a certain amount on one card, see it for cheaper somewhere else, and then cancel their bid or refuse to pay. It's not the seller's fault that you didn't do some price comparisons before bidding.

That being said...

Leon - I'm not a internet wiz, so I'm not sure if this is even possible - but if you could find a way to allow actual paypal/credit card transactions on this message board - I think you've found the best of both worlds.

In other words, if I start a thread to sell a Hank Aaron rookie card, it would be amazing for people to be able to bid on, make offers for and even pay for an item within that very thread. In another scenario, someone mentions that they would love to buy a Sandy Koufax 1956 Topps card - how awesome would it be if I could reply to that post with a scan of that very Koufax card and give them the ability to click on a buy button within my post to purchase it?

[Leon]

Originally Posted by Bambino

Originally, ebay lived up to the saying "one man's garbage is another man's treasure." You had a lot more people who were just trying to move items and make some money because as it turned out, they couldn't buy diapers or food with Ken Griffey Jr. cards.

Nowadays, it seems people aren't willing to settle for "some money". They want book value or more and will not settle for less. So they set super-high reserve prices or they end auctions early if the bids are too low. Just set a "buy it now" for what you want in return and stop wasting everyone's time pretending this is an auction. If you put up a Mickey Mantle rookie card in mint condition and start the bidding at 1 cent with no reserve - you need to be willing and able to sell that card for 1 cent.

And so it doesn't sound like I'm placing all the blame on the sellers...buyers need to do some more research before you bid on an item. I've seen cases where they'll bid a certain amount on one card, see it for cheaper somewhere else, and then cancel their bid or refuse to pay. It's not the seller's fault that you didn't do some price comparisons before bidding.

That being said...

Leon - I'm not a internet wiz, so I'm not sure if this is even possible - but if you could find a way to allow actual paypal/credit card transactions on this message board - I think you've found the best of both worlds.

In other words, if I start a thread to sell a Hank Aaron rookie card, it would be amazing for people to be able to bid on, make offers for and even pay for an item within that very thread. In another scenario, someone mentions that they would love to buy a Sandy Koufax 1956 Topps card - how awesome would it be if I could reply to that post with a scan of that very Koufax card and give them the ability to click on a buy button within my post to purchase it?

ok....so here is a possible solution....list a card on GSB....put a link on the BST in the auction section to it......then someone can click on it and buy it and pay with anything they want to, including paypal, right there.....and the seller gets a ton of other value-adds for the 2% or less it will cost. I don't think there will ever be paypal and those other things on our BST...though obviously you can use paypal to pay for cards bought from the BST, you just have to click over to it....

To be fair, I would be careful about posting auctions on GSB right now, unless you start at a price you can live with. I would rather something NOT sell there than the seller be disappointed with the realized price. Hopefully that will change with the monumental changes that will come in the future....the future being about 3 mos to 6 mos away.....

[brianp-beme]

Changes beginning in 3-6 months...screwGSB that! Just kidding. I think I am a perfect candidate to get this thing rolling, at least on the lower end...I have a decent variety of vintage and I will not get upset if it sells for its reasonable minimum. Let the revolution begin NOW (or when I have time to make it happen).

Brian

[brianp-beme]

Thanks Leon for pointing out a variety of advantages that Grand Slam Bid site offers...there will probably always be a reason to continue ebaying, but I think all of us cool kids can play a lot nicer in our own little field.

Just trying to push the world in the right direction...now if nasty little things like work and vacation wouldn't get in the way, I'd already be posting auction listings at GSB.

Brian