Buy It Now or Auction?

[michellasboutique]

Hi, I sell vintage items here on eBay. I have been doing very well but recently my sales have slowed down. About 99% of my listings are Buy it Now. I don't feel I overprice anything. I look at what has sold and price accordingly, But I am considering possibly moving everything to Auction. Any advise for which way works best? 

[athugala-super]

@michellasboutique 

I think that Auction style is the best way to list your items. It will help you to increase traffic to your store.

[silverstatetreasureboxes]

I'll tell you what works the best..put up all your vintage treasures up for auction than start a YouTube channel showing where you bought them!!! Have you ever seen some of our Ebayers doing this? They're killing it!  Follow on YouTube.." go thrifting with me" she is a delight and a great ebayer! Good luck to you!

[disneyshopper]

When using the auction format, you have to monitor those listings more closely, as the durations are shorter, so you will be relisting more often if the item doesn't sell.  In addition, the number of included categories using the auction format is limited.

[u_cant_take_it_with_u]

Let's talk about the elephant in the room... EBay has long since lost the bidding fire it once had a decade (or more) ago, and that's just all there is to it. For an auction listing to be successful, one must have at least two perspective buyers who want the item badly enough, for a seller to receive a palatable price. Anymore, that can be like trying to get two 4-leaf clovers together. And for most/many sellers, to put a reserve on an auction is a listing death sentence. You might want to try fixed price, with or best offer option. But then that can open up a whole new world of hurt, with low ballers and sport shoppers. As previously stated, one needs to experiment, and find out what works best for them.

[luckythewinner]

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@michellasboutique wrote:

Hi, I sell vintage items here on eBay. I have been doing very well but recently my sales have slowed down. About 99% of my listings are Buy it Now. I don't feel I overprice anything. I look at what has sold and price accordingly, But I am considering possibly moving everything to Auction. Any advise for which way works best? 

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Asking "which way works best" is like asking "should I buy a bicycle or a dump truck?" It depends upon what your needs are, what your goals are, what your financial situation is.

But that aside ...

IMHO moving "everything to auction" sounds like a decision made out of desperation, not logic. You have 200+ items in categories ranging from Video Games to Body Lotion to Italian Art Pottery. I doubt there is a one-size-fits-all "solution" that will stimulating sales for all 200+ items.

IMHO "auction" vs "fixed price" is almost always an item-by-item decision. The auction format may be preferable for some items and not for others, depending upon the nature of the item, pricing, demand, supply, and competition.

I would take a subset of (perhaps 50 items) that you think are a good fit for the auction format, and then list HALF of them at auction and continue to list half of them at fixed price. Then, after a month or two, see how the two groups compare.

[m60driver]

I sell lots of vintage items and most as BINs and only rarely with auction.  Auctions are still good when selling the rare item where no comps can be found.  But the vast majority of vintage items can be reasonable priced via prior sales and in fact there is usually competition found for most items these days.  And the added bonus of selling with a BIN is that you can get paid immediately.

[rpalma]

Auctions are fine for selling items that are in high demand.

They are a way to really give some one a bargain if you are selling something with no comps.

Instead, list it at a high price and wait for a buyer or an offer.

[coolections]

Keep in mind auctions are a different animal. Your prices are reasonable at the BIN price. If you want to switch to the auction format you would have to be willing to lower those price by 50% and let bidders decide the true selling price. You also have to hand select each and every item as not all items will sell at auction even with  lower price.

[keziak]

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@coolections wrote:

Keep in mind auctions are a different animal. Your prices are reasonable at the BIN price. If you want to switch to the auction format you would have to be willing to lower those price by 50% and let bidders decide the true selling price. 

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With the 200 free auctions I played around with some listings. I asked for maximum prices for my starting price. I was accurate in predicting that these would not sell. Earlier I had seller remorse for a few things. So I think that in MOST cases you  have to start as low as you can tolerate and be prepared to be OK if the items get only the one bid. 

I do feel like in many cases auctions force people off the sidelines because the listings have a drop-dead date not far off. With fixed price there is less urgency to go ahead and buy.  The stuff is on there indefinitely right?

[this*old*attic]

No kidding, and ditto.

Unless an item is really special and desirable in some way, or you have your own avid following of people who don't bother to comparison shop, it won't generate any kind of bidding. Most items go for opening price.

Auctions do get higher visibility, so you could seed your listings with a few at a minimum comfortable asking price, or even carefully choose a few loss leaders (99 cents).

[southern*sweet*tea]

I sell old paper items. (for the most part now) My stuff is very long tail. It has to be available all the time, because I never know when that right buyer may come along.  For me personally, I find that BIN with best offer works very well, especially since I have several items that there are no comps for, and actually no information available on the internet. 

I've found that in my case, auctions will 90% of the time go unsold, 9.95% of the time they'll sell for opening bid, and 0.05% of the time I might have two or three bidders.  (No, these aren't true figures, I'm grabbing them out of thin air, but I guarantee you they're fairly accurate lol)

[keziak]

The other thing about auctions is: what is the listing fee? I am about to upgrade to a Basic store and auctions will be 25 cents except I can list some in collectibles for free (mostly manga). Twenty-five cents can add up fast when listing auctions with abandon. 

I took advice here and started a non-store account for auctions and listed the first batches today. These are lots which do not really have much in the way of comps. If they do not sell I will either relist as Fixed Price or at auction with best offer. I put a note in the listings to see my main store for feedback history and other items for sale. I will continue to list auctions in the Basic store if I am pretty sure of them selling.

[slippinjimmy]

I used to do all auctions, many years ago I switched to almost all Fixed Price and sales increased, in 2019 I switched to GTC and sales really increased.

During that transition period of about 8 years I have experimented with auctions and have ALWAYS had dismal results.

These days I will list some auctions when I have truly rare items that rarely show up on eBay (or elsewhere) and have high established values. I start them pretty high and they definitely sell but rare for more than the opening price or slightly higher.

Once or twice when I have an item which historically always sells when listed on eBay and always at fair market value I will start it at $9.99 and let it run. Thos items always sell but they always sell for what I expect they would get.

It's been more than a decade since I listed an Auction that had an ending price that surprised me on the high side.

My take, Auctions for most items either don't sell or don't bring in the prices I hope for.

Now my view as a buyer, in the past 10 years I've bought exactly one item on eBay that was an auction listing and that was only because that was the only type of listing I could find for that specific item, a specific item I had been trying to find for many years. There were two bidders on that Auction, I won at $3 over the 0pening price, if I had seen it at Fixed Price I would have snapped it up even at a much higher price.

That said, I follow a seller who only uses Auctions, starts everything at 99 cents and does extremely well, sure they sell a lot of 99 cent items but that is balanced off by the items that attract many bidders and very nice ending prices.

[bluewin_45]

This is an interesting thread.  I am just getting ready to sell, and I have a bunch of collectible items.  Original redline Hot Wheels cars in particular do seem to have an avid following, and there are a quite a few clubs dedicated to them.  Some people collect ones that are in good-to-near-mint condition; others make a hobby of buying ones that have moderate-to-severe play wear and restoring them. 

The auction format for those seems to be pretty common.  There are also a lot of BINs.  I have been wrestling with which format to use.  I feel like I don't want a bunch of lowball hagglers if I include Best Offer, but maybe should do that anyway if listing as BIN.  I also feel that some of the cars I have could do well in the auction format -- hard-to-find color or interior, decent to very good condition (though nothing "mint"), and so on.  I guess it comes down to which option is the best for which particular car or item.  It's causing me a little bit of anxiety, though, researching and trying to figure out the best strategy.  Hope I get it (at least mostly) right.

I also have old, valuable coins, currency and stamps.  I hear that Managed Payments is not going to support the sale of those, at least not right away.  Guess I need to get in gear and sell those before I'm forced to switch to MP!  For most of these, I think I will go with BIN rather than auction.

Would be curious to hear from others selling these particular items.