Selling sport cards with shipping built into cost

[quickblitzhitz]

I have been selling low end sports cards on eBay for about a year. Sales have not been terrible as this is more of a hobby for me and have been averaging 2-3 sales a day, but my next goal is 5 sales a day. 

 What’s your guys experience with building in the shipping cost into price and offering “free shipping”? Has it helped with sales? Right now most of my cards are standard envelope and I usually charge .87 for 2oz to give a little cushion to cover more of the material cost of shipping (penny sleeve, Topp loader, envelope, thermal printer paper etc) 

also does eBay offer a sale event with free shipping for a weekend sale or such? 

appreciate all the help thanks!

[slippinjimmy]

It might help with single item sales but it may discourage multiple item purchases presuming you currently offer shipping discounts for combined orders.

[goodnu9]

I sell many low end baseball cards. Free shipping doesn't do it for me since I include shipping within the sell of  the item. For example, instead of selling a card for $1.99 with free shipping, I will sell it for 99 cents with 99 cents shipping and if the buyer purchase additional auctions, shipping is only 50 cents for each additional auction. So the buyer gets a discount on shipping buying multiple auctions at once.

[tobaccocardyahoo]

Most of what you are selling is low priced commons, though you have some bigger sales.

I think increasing the bigger bolder number on your offers will reduce your views. Add to that the multiple item issue previously mentioned.

[simba6]

You might want to try selling the commons in lots.  50 100  500  5000 cards.     About 17 years ago the home shopping club was selling Topps cards in a 70  yes 70 pounds at a time.   People like a treasure hunt.

[quickblitzhitz]

I used to sell in 1000 card lots of commons and they used to sell super fast at around $30-$40 but they stopped selling. Even tried lowering them down to $25 (was buying large collections for around a penny a card). Low end inserts rookies have been doing pretty good as singles and do $3 mystery packs that have probably been doing pretty well. May try revamping 1000 card listing. Thanks for help!

[doc-holmes]

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@quickblitzhitz wrote:

I have been selling low end sports cards on eBay for about a year. Sales have not been terrible as this is more of a hobby for me and have been averaging 2-3 sales a day, but my next goal is 5 sales a day. 

 What’s your guys experience with building in the shipping cost into price and offering “free shipping”? Has it helped with sales? Right now most of my cards are standard envelope and I usually charge .87 for 2oz to give a little cushion to cover more of the material cost of shipping (penny sleeve, Topp loader, envelope, thermal printer paper etc) 

also does eBay offer a sale event with free shipping for a weekend sale or such? 

appreciate all the help thanks!

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Mystery packs aren't allowed. Ebay doesn't really seem to care, but I wouldn't suggest it to others. 

[quickblitzhitz]

Really?! I never knew that is where most my sales came from. I always thought they were just stricter if you had bad reviews in them

[onefootflippers]

You are clearing a 25 cents each on those 99 cents plus shipping cards. There is not a card shipper in the world that can pull and ship those fast enough to make it worthwhile.  Even most fast shippers will struggle to fill more than 20 orders an hour. That is $5 profit in an hour and doesn't count the time spent listing the card or the money spent on the card. 

My card store is minimum 1.99 plus 84 cents shipping, I don't use toploaders for shipping and the cards are still only BARELY worth shipping out at that price point and I no longer list cards at all.

Free shipping actually discourages your card customers from actually buying more than one card in the same transaction.

[quickblitzhitz]

Ya I did away with the .99 listings now there are still some up from before. I was getting a few people that would buy more in an order. Figured with charging .20c over cost of shipping per card I could make a little extra if they are buying 5-10 cards. Thats not happening as much anymore so I have started adjusting the price a bit

[doc-holmes]

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@quickblitzhitz wrote:

Really?! I never knew that is where most my sales came from. I always thought they were just stricter if you had bad reviews in them

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Yup. You have to clearly list what the buyer is getting. I wouldn't sweat it, eBay really doesn't seem to care, but technically you're in violation of ebay's rules. 

[turtles-trading-post]

Agreeing with Jimmy...

For your low end cards, you need to encourage multiple purchases.  

I sell low end first day covers (the same kind of commodity) and charge $1 shipping in USA.  My low end was $1 but I raised it to $1.29 so I could do "Send Offers" with a quarter off.  I haven't seen any loss of sales.

With me, I researched what my peer sellers were charging for shipping and went right below them.  You could do the same in your category.

With my dollar shipping, it encourages multiple purchases of collectibles.  I do still ship a lot of one item orders, but  I regularly get 5-10-50-100 piece orders.  Those are my goal.  On the higher number orders I don't mind it costing me extra to ship.

I am currently focusing on selling sets instead of single items to get my average sale value up.  I see you are doing the same.

The other thing I can add is to take the "Make Offer" off your listings, especially the low .99 cent items.  They are low enough.  As a buyer when I see that I will always make an offer, so you are costing yourself money.  For instance, I bought a shirt that was listed at $12 the other day.  I would have easily paid $12 but there was that "Make Offer"  so I offered $10... what did I have to lose?  And it was accepted. That seller cost herself $2!