Regards,
@leadgard9 wrote:
@iart wrote:It's very clear that ebay would much prefer a $15 sale to a $300 sale.
Last week we had a $300 book up for auction (and it was priced very well but ebay hid is way back in the search reults). When it didn't sell ebay sent us a note suggesting we drop the price to $15.55.
We'd recycle it before we sold it that low.
Good luck!
What's the point of an auction, if you're starting your prices at what you want to sell them at? Just do a buy it now at that point. You're wasting auction space. They aren't suggesting you sell it for $15.55. They are suggesting you START it at $15.55. If you're stuff isn't being bid up, then no one wants to buy it for that price, and therefor it isn't worth that price. That's how markets work.
I agree with @iart on this one and Auctions certainly serve their purpose. And based on what the book is, First Edition, excellent condition, Etc. the $ 300.00 may be fair market value for a serious collector. I price my auctions so that 1 bid makes profit on the item but more bids increases profit. I too get suggestions from eBay at times to lower prices ... and not by a little which to me is rediculous. Anyway, that's my view point.
@mistwomandancing wrote:
@ted_200 wrote:Many of our items are rare and value is unknown. We start our auctions well under what we suspect the value is. But there aren't always enough bidders especially when ebay reduces visibility in favor of mass-market junk.
And the best way to sell a $300 item for $15 is to start it off at $15.
We're not new here.
That's exactly what they've done. Most of your bidders for those rare items stopped looking on eBay years ago - because it was a good way to waste a bunch of time on Chinese counterfeits and mass-market junk and auctions with a start price well over full retail. Now it's an auction house with 150 empty seats and two bidders, and you can't start that item at $15 under those conditions. Between the Chinese junk and their site policies and functionality that does not support Auction selling, they've pretty much killed that golden goose.
I don't think that's true at all. Just a single example would be if you put JADE BOWL in search, and then asked to be shown highest priced first, on down. Amazing bowls priced in the thousands!! And that's just a single search. You can find it all here... still. Amazing treasures.
I think many of us inhabit the cheapo end of eBay and for some reason have come to believe that is all there is to eBay. But HIGH END is here in every category I've ever looked in. I certainly can't affort the wares up in that rarified price range, but it's fun to window shop. And it's obvious there are a lot of people with a LOT of money shopping for treasures here on eBay! I know of one shop owner in New York who buys here for his shop. I expect there are many more. It's Big Bucks. It's just that most of us don't know much about that high level, so all we see is the sludge that settles to the bottom, where we shop.
Currently 333. US Only 124.
Who is going to send 3-8k to china?
d-k_treasures wrote:
mistwomandancing wrote:
ted_200 wrote:Many of our items are rare and value is unknown. We start our auctions well under what we suspect the value is. But there aren't always enough bidders especially when ebay reduces visibility in favor of mass-market junk.
And the best way to sell a $300 item for $15 is to start it off at $15.
We're not new here.
That's exactly what they've done. Most of your bidders for those rare items stopped looking on eBay years ago - because it was a good way to waste a bunch of time on Chinese counterfeits and mass-market junk and auctions with a start price well over full retail. Now it's an auction house with 150 empty seats and two bidders, and you can't start that item at $15 under those conditions. Between the Chinese junk and their site policies and functionality that does not support Auction selling, they've pretty much killed that golden goose.
I don't think that's true at all. Just a single example would be if you put JADE BOWL in search, and then asked to be shown highest priced first, on down. Amazing bowls priced in the thousands!! And that's just a single search. You can find it all here... still. Amazing treasures.
I think many of us inhabit the cheapo end of eBay and for some reason have come to believe that is all there is to eBay. But HIGH END is here in every category I've ever looked in. I certainly can't affort the wares up in that rarified price range, but it's fun to window shop. And it's obvious there are a lot of people with a LOT of money shopping for treasures here on eBay! I know of one shop owner in New York who buys here for his shop. I expect there are many more. It's Big Bucks. It's just that most of us don't know much about that high level, so all we see is the sludge that settles to the bottom, where we shop.
Currently 333. US Only 124.
Who is going to send 3-8k to china?
Museums. High-end interior decorators. The very upscale shops that cater to the very upscale shopper. The wealthy collector who buys fine pieces for his personal collection, most of which resides in secure rooms where it's hidden away from most eyes. Upper Crust business office suites where the bosses spend much of their time and require Upper Crust decor surround them, even at work.
Many treasures still come from China these days as well as the decades past. And much U.S. money (and European money too) goes TO China as well, where many of the world's finest designers (clothing, handbags) have their designs produced, which are then sold to the rich and famous who can afford things priced up in that rarified atmosphere.
It's fun to have somebody to hate on occasionally, I guess.. if we're hurting from whatever difficulty we are currently facing, but that no reason to lose sight of the truth of the fact that there is a lot of very successful business being transacted *above our heads.* I actually think it's much safer Up There.
@mistwomandancing wrote:
@ted_200 wrote:Many of our items are rare and value is unknown. We start our auctions well under what we suspect the value is. But there aren't always enough bidders especially when ebay reduces visibility in favor of mass-market junk.
And the best way to sell a $300 item for $15 is to start it off at $15.
We're not new here.
That's exactly what they've done. Most of your bidders for those rare items stopped looking on eBay years ago - because it was a good way to waste a bunch of time on Chinese counterfeits and mass-market junk and auctions with a start price well over full retail. Now it's an auction house with 150 empty seats and two bidders, and you can't start that item at $15 under those conditions. Between the Chinese junk and their site policies and functionality that does not support Auction selling, they've pretty much killed that golden goose.
I don't think that's true at all. Just a single example would be if you put JADE BOWL in search, and then asked to be shown highest priced first, on down. Amazing bowls priced in the thousands!! And that's just a single search. You can find it all here... still. Amazing treasures.
I think many of us inhabit the cheapo end of eBay and for some reason have come to believe that is all there is to eBay. But HIGH END is here in every category I've ever looked in. I certainly can't affort the wares up in that rarified price range, but it's fun to window shop. And it's obvious there are a lot of people with a LOT of money shopping for treasures here on eBay! I know of one shop owner in New York who buys here for his shop. I expect there are many more. It's Big Bucks. It's just that most of us don't know much about that high level, so all we see is the sludge that settles to the bottom, where we shop.
It just depends on what it is. There are certainly niche collectibles and antiques that you can still get good bidding on. For example, you can still run $20 gold coins here with a 99¢ start, and the odds it sells for less than $1200 are approximately zero. Running one worth $7,500 though... you might be better off selling it directly to a big coin dealer yourself, or consigning it to Heritage... because you might only get $2,500 here. That wouldn't have been a concern 10 years ago, there were enough bidders in the seats to prevent it, and you'd probably get full retail or more.
But if you run an obscure foreign coin worth $2K here, as a low start auction, you could get $75 for it. If you list it FP near $2K, or auction start near $2K, it might not sell for years - it's obscure, dealers don't want to tie up a lot of cash in it, none of the 5 collectors that want it enough to search for it look at eBay every week anymore (let alone two of them), and the other 95 who would buy it if they saw it and it was priced right (or put in a solid bid)... those are category browsers... don't browse categories here anymore, there's too much junk and not-auction auctions to wade through.
Jade bowls... That's not exactly fair, doing the search, sorting for sold high price first... you might well be able to do the same with active listings, but sorting anything "high price first" isn't really what auction buying is all about. And I can't judge whether a high price on a sold jade bowl is really all that high. If big money shop owners are stocking their shop here, that suggests stuff is selling for under wholesale.
The genius (not pre-meditated) success of eBay was bringing retail buyers into an auction format - selling Navajo rings to retail buyers at $75 in a liquidation format that actually moves items. I can sell stuff below wholesale to local dealers without messing with eBay, and if I'm going to sit and sit waiting for a FP sale, there're better places to do that than here.
