New places to Sell?
I have been slow on listing on ebay this last 2 years but I need to get going. I do a little listing on hipostcard but that is my only other place beside the local flea market. ( which does well) . Any suggestions on other outlets
13 comments
deltilogical
·8 months agoShipping on an intl ppc is tough I'm charging $2.50 - regular 1 oz international is 1.70, plus 13.5% ebay fee about .23, so $1.93 cost, plus the .30 transaction fee plus 13.5% about .03 so .33, so a simple envelope transaction costs about about $2.23 for shipping and fees, any costs of envelope, packing or transport are rolled up into the remaining .27. There is some kind of international fee too - I don't make any money off the s&h. I use some protective packing, but if it becomes nonmachineable and over an ounce I can see a seller charging $4. The Additional Ounce for Canada, which is usually less than Europe, totals around $3.50 + 13.5% - when I have to charge $4.50 for shipping its due to weight or thickness and I'm not making any money on that.
I see my overseas customers paying not only the shipping but the extremely high VATs and I greatly appreciate every purchase they make.
As a postcard buyer I just factor in the shipping cost as part of the total price and how much I need it. This is one reason postcard shows are great, you don't have to pay shipping.
njrtsr
·8 months agoYou only have 39 active listings, and you've sold 8 of them in the past 90 days. That's a really good ratio! If you want more sales, add more things to your store.
tobaccocardyahoo
·8 months agoI decided that Ebay is the best place to sell all types of paper ephemera during the covid lockdowns. I had left Ebay for Amazon in 2008.
Nothing has made me decided to rethink the decision.
On first glance HipPostcards looked like a possibility but if anyone thinks Ebay prices are overpriced, that site definitely seems more overpriced. I would not consider selling there unless I figured out how determine what has sold there and for how much.
I frankly would still be resistant because of its heavy European influence. I do not wish to handle my own exporting.
Postcards are a minor part of what I sell here, and what I sell is priced for some other type of collector other than a postcard collector, so postcard collectors would find my cards to be overpriced.
10k postcards strikes me as a small inventory. Most of the postcard dealers I have known had substantially higher inventories.
A brief look at your Ebay listings suggest your photographs are more interesting. Too bad the market is not what it was before the pandemic.
c*me*4*lefton*info
·1 year agoThere are of course other places off ebay. But my experience is most knowledgable sellers of postcards list FIRST on ebay and then elsewhere if the cards do not sell on ebay. I search multiple sites looking for a specific type of postcard and I see this (listed on ebay first then listed elsewhere) quite frequently.
If I were looking for other places to sell postcards the first thing I would do is to see HOW MANY postcards a potential selling site has for sale. This will accurately tell you WHICH site sellers like most.
ebay has them all beat (using this as a metric) - no question about it. A simple search including description on ebay yields 16 million listings with "postcard."
gloopy01
·1 year agoI don't think "How many" tells the full story. Ebay postcard listings on the US site now come from every country in the world. So, yes there's a lot, but there's also a lot you don't necessarily want to see. The last few years have seen a dramatic exit of both postcard sellers and buyers from ebay.
And lastly, postcard prices on ebay are incredibly inflated right now. And it's not as if the cards are selling at the requested price. So yes, you'll see a lot, but it's going to be a lot you don't want. A niche collectible like postcards is not going to get much attention from ebay. There's been a lot wrong with the listing process and they haven't shown any interest in fixing it.
gloopy01
·1 year agoI forgot to mention the two great scourges of buying postcards on eBay. One is postage costs. It’s infuriating to pay $4 or more to have an item weighing less than an ounce mailed to me. Too many sellers pad their profits with excessive mail charges. This long standing problem could be solved by putting a cap on mailing fees. Just tonight, I saw a seller from the UK with a postcard listing with a mailing fee of 83 pounds. Why would eBay even accept a listing like that? Don’t they have a button where they could remotely make that seller’s computer explode?
And the other great scourge of buying is reproductions. The listings are inundated with them. And too many sellers get tricky with their descriptions to try to slip them slip them by you. Reproductions should be put in a separate category, but eBay doesn’t do categories anymore.
And yes, years ago it seemed inconceivable that eBay would not be the best place to buy postcards. Now it seems inevitable.
lbigfoot
·9 months agoThat "a mailing fee of 83 pounds" is eBay generated.
Do you think it is right for eBay postage costs to be $75 for a $4 item?
Also for non-American sellers, selling on eBay is expensive because they use a company named Payoneer (and now Delcampe is using MangoPay).
What it means is that for a seller, they sell an item for $4 and assume they want to be fair and charge a realistic postage price which can be $4 for international mail), then eBay takes their commission on the $8. This means that supposing the commission is 10% then it is 0.80cents and that is from the $4, because the postage is $4.
Over and above that, they only payout twice a month, so if you sell something on the 3rd of the month and send it, meaning you paid for postage out of your own pocket, they will only transfer the $7.20 on the 15th.
Do you get the money? No, it is transferred to an account in Payoneer and they charge $10 for withdrawing funds. So can you use your $7.20? No!
rickms
·1 year agoI have started posting on a group called "Buying & Selling Postcards (Worldwide)". The group is on something that rhymes with Placerook.
gloopy01
·1 year agoIf eBay has you killed, can I have your postcards?
galfamtwo
OP1 year agoIf you read my question I did not say eBay has been bad just that
I have not sold postcards in a couple of years and I am looking for other outlets for my 10000 cards
gloopy01
·1 year agoMy guess is they won’t like you asking for recommendations for their competitors .
Didn’t mean to offend.
But if anything does happen to you, can I have your postcards?
lbigfoot
·8 months agoif you have cards by a publisher J.A.&A.A. I am interested. They issued about 8 postcards images in 1905
soh.maryl
·1 year agoNot sure eBay likes it when a seller uses their site to recommend other selling sites.
However, that's research you can probably do just as well yourself.