Market Saturation: is there a cure for this plague?

[vintageantique77]

I assume this theme is a horse long ago dead and thoroughly beaten, but I'm feeling social, and want to talk about it with my fellow sellers. Several items I occasion to selling - vintage telephones, vintage photo slides, etc... Have seemed to reach a point of market saturation on eBay.  Just several years ago, some of the items I had listed would have been snapped up in a second, and now they sit for weeks, sometimes months before getting a single watcher. What is the solution to this saturation? How has it impacted you as a seller? Do you think eBay will experience a resurgence in the near future?

[dhbookds]

Personally, I think that's the major problem for most sellers.......you can say fewer buyers, but people rarely say too many sellers.........  The herd will get culled because of few/no sales; but whether new sellers will come on to keep it a "buyers" market, who knows?   I would guess they probably will.   As always, sellers who can adapt, cheaper prices, changing products, buying cheaper.......will probably come thru ok........

[whatmorefabric]

You have to sell what people are buying and they are not buying too much vintage or antique.     There is also the loss of uniqueness as you can find anything on line.  

I used to sell vintage toys,   children books and sewing items.    A 1930's McCalls children pattern with transfers would often go in the hundreds,  now maybe 15.00.   I sell mostly new fabrics and unique fabrics.    I do not buy from the larger distributors of closeout fabric.    I use smaller distributors which insures that a lot of what I sell isn't on every discount vendor's listings.    I buy some children fabric like Nintendo,  Daniel Tiger  etc.  to draw in more customers.   So if someone is searching for Mario Brothers,  at some point my fabric will show up.   They may browse my listings and buy something else.   I buy some newer popular lines of fabric when they give a discount at the wholesaler and than list them at cheaper prices.   

The 70's and 80's are coming back,  so my estate purchases are heading in that direction.    Instead of the vintage cottons with small florals,   I am buying bright and blingly florals.

One of the other people on the floor at my warehouse sells sports memorabilia.   He also looks for Blind boxes at discount prices.    They fit into what he is selling,   they are really popular and they pull up all of his sales.

[rschissler]

Interesting, that you seem to be the only vintage seller that can see reality.  Vintage isn't what it used to be! A lot of vintage sellers here, complaining about slow sales, usually take the cop out--blame eBay for hiding items and keeping buyers from buying.  No, I don't have an answer other than try to something else.

[vintageantique77]

I keep hearing this theory that a large number of buyers on eBay, " buy on eBay - to sell on eBay." and I think that is absurd....Even though I've done exactly that a few times! 😄

eBay is the go to place to find out what the value of something is now! the priceguides, the auction houses...I don't even look at them anymore - I just use eBay!

It's a shame that Joe Blow can find a $1000 item and sell it for $200, and now THAT is the "value" of the item when someone starts getting cute and looking at "recently sold" listings...Don't get me started! 🙂

[bach4231]

Too many sites to compete with for selling, too much competition for a limited market for collectibles, vintage, used items. New generations are moving away from collecting and clutter. Personally I hope people will move away from cheap, quantity products and focus on quality products. But there is market saturation in even rarer desired items, many of which go for a fraction on here than their perceived value- old toys, jewelry, art, coins etcetcetc

[byrd69er]

I was at an estate sale this weekend. I heard a dealer say what I've been saying for years....People don't want this bleep anymore.

She was about to close her shop due to the antiques market taking a nose dive over the past few (or more) years.

I went to another estate sale yesterday. I confirmed to myself....I don't want this bleep anymore either.  Nice stuff, but nothing interested me at all. I didn't spend a dime.

I'm ready to have a pair of pickers return to my home soon to let them have at it. Get this bleep out of here.

[byrd69er]

snip:  New generations are moving away from collecting and clutter. 

You hit the nail on the head. They don't want this bleep.

[bach4231]

I’m also wondering how vintage does in the global market? Back in the day, I knew eBay sellers who sold a lot of American vintage to Asian and European markets. 

[vintageantique77]

I've also wondered this!
I used to get a lot of buyers in Canada and abroad, and now I've been several years without a global shipping buyer...

[southern*sweet*tea]

The one thing that made Ebay great is that anyone can be a seller. The one thing that makes Ebay bad is that anyone can be a seller.  That's why we're at the point we are today.

Now that everyone is a seller, nothing is special anymore. Nothing is hard to find. Well, to be fair, most things are not hard to find. There are still some true hard to find collectibles and vintage out there, especially if you deal in things that are normally thrown out after a period of time.

Yes, everything is flooded, and that's great for vintage buyers, but not so much for vintage sellers. Case in point - I always wanted a first edition first printing 1950 Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook in decent condition. Twenty-five years ago they were impossible to find, and when I did find them in antique stores and vintage shops, the prices were far too high - anywhere from $200-500. Now, I can get them all day long on Ebay for less than $40. I currently have three copies of this "extremely rare" collectible cookbook. Are they rare? No. Are they hard to find? Not anymore thanks to Ebay and sites like Ebay and the internet in general.

The gate has been opened, the horse has escaped and he ain't coming back, thanks to the internet.

Just my two cents.

[vintageantique77]

I personally still LOVE vintage items, but I like to get them cheap. I even love it more when I find them for next to nothing!
I don't go to estate sales to pay $40 for a pyrex dish....I'm trying to get it for like 4$ or maybe a little more. These estate sales are trying to milk every last dollar of perceived profit, and they end up losing a bunch of potential buyers. I've seen it so many times. I haven't been to an estate sale in years. The blue moon estate people here in NC are pretty rigged - they have a guy that comes in as a potential buyer, and he rakes up all the valuable stuff like a chipmunk....drives me mad.

[southern*sweet*tea]

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@vintageantique77 wrote:
I personally still LOVE vintage items, but I like to get them cheap. I even love it more when I find them for next to nothing!
I don't go to estate sales to pay $40 for a pyrex dish....I'm trying to get it for like 4$ or maybe a little more.

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Me, too! I don't buy them to collect, I buy them to USE daily, and they're impossible to find anymore in the thrift stores because...they're all listed for sale online.

[vintageantique77]

You're two cents are worth about 200$ my friend. Very well said, indeed.

I hope Mr. Horse does come back...Maybe eBay could make it harder to be a seller? Weed out some of the riff raff?

[kelekt]

I love vintage & I am proud to buy almost everything I own Second Hand!

+ my 20 year old daughter and her friends all LOVE vintage & my daughter and her friends also frequent THRIFT Stores INSTEAD of the mall (sooo proud of them1)

Vintage is ECO FRIENDLY and should be appreciated more than ever! in this world & time of climate concerns  instead of throw away mass produced *BLEEP*

to me imported mass produced modern cheap "stuff" is the BLEEP people should stop buying or at very least slow wayyy down buying.

I must add: my daughter and her 20 something friends avoid Ebay for this reason: FEAR OF BEING SCAMMED. I believe the scammer sellers + Ebay playing favorites with mass produced imported sellers are the two big problems here. plenty of people I know still love and buy vintage...just not on Ebay