COLLECTIBLES

[warzak]

Collectibles is the category that launched EBay. It was a phenomena. This was because the auction format in collectibles really eliminated the middleman. Almost everything would sell. Both buyers and sellers were happy. Buy it Now and EBay Stores is a negative for this category. Sellers are in fact dealers. They do not mind listing thousands of items that never sell in hopes of finding novices with money. Because the same items and dealers are on the site, buyers now turn to Auction Houses. EBay had the auction market and could again. Solution: Have collectibles as an auction only format. Sellers should be rewarded for SALES not listings. Impose charges on unsold items and offer incentives to those who SELL. Reserves can be deployed. Eventually would be unnecessary. This because almost ALL potential buyers would be glued to the site. For those wanting to deal, breaking up collections would work. Buyers, Sellers and EBay would all succeed.

[chiaretta]

I am among top collectors in the world in my niche category, probably past 5.000 items, never really counted them.

Unless someone comes and shows a similar expertise on the same subject no one is really able to judge if an item is rare or not.

Collectibles can be rare without being museum pieces or have the same range of selling prices, and I've found extremely rare items the seller didn't really have a clue about their value, starting an auction at .99 and seeing it soar to more than 150.

Preprints sell well at fixed price, rare collectibles don't, and what I collect cannot be found anywhere outside ebay except when the seller was on the platform and at some point quit and sells by offering items through a mailing list or an individual offer

[rolenboy01]

Everyone started starting auctions at such prices because of a string of auctions ending at 99 cents free shipping after eBay advised them as such and it made them lose money, auctions were already pretty much dead by the time people started doing that it, they didn't die because of it.

[ted_200]

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@rolenboy01 wrote:

Everyone started starting auctions at such prices because of a string of auctions ending at 99 cents free shipping after eBay advised them as such and it made them lose money, auctions were already pretty much dead by the time people started doing that it, they didn't die because of it.

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That was one of their ill-advised attempts to fix what they had done to harm auctions in the years prior... search "improvements", hidden IDs, banning check, etc.  Ill-advised because it doesn't work for mass market consumer retail NIB goods, which is the sellers they were cultivating by then.   They even adjusted fees for a while, giving 100 free listings every month for auctions starting less than 1.00.

[double2trouble]

Any item needs to have more money chasing it than supply to be valuable. Rare base ball cards and the like have the very wealthy willing to buck up and pay millions of dollars. Mass produced **bleep** like Hummels, it ain't never coming back, that ship sailed, and the next generation has zero interest. 

[coolections]

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@rolenboy01 wrote:

Everyone started starting auctions at such prices because of a string of auctions ending at 99 cents free shipping after eBay advised them as such and it made them lose money, auctions were already pretty much dead by the time people started doing that it, they didn't die because of it.

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True, it was unbelievable how many started at 99 cents when the item should have never been sold at auction in the first place. How many people do you really think would be bidding on a man's shirt or a used toaster etc. Those folks unfortunately didn't know what they where doing and then blamed Ebay.

[duchess-at-speakeasy]

@coolections

The OP's topic was MOVED from the Community Platform Feedback board to the Selling board.

~~C~~

[ted_200]

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@double2trouble wrote:

Any item needs to have more money chasing it than supply to be valuable. Rare base ball cards and the like have the very wealthy willing to buck up and pay millions of dollars. Mass produced **bleep** like Hummels, it ain't never coming back, that ship sailed, and the next generation has zero interest. 

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That's going to involve a boring and dry discussion about elasticity or inelasticity in the supply and demand for a particular item. 

A rare baseball card will have a lower and upper limit on what it will sell for, there's enough demand and shortage of supply to hold that - although the limits will move up or down over time. 

I don't know anything about the Hummel market.  Maybe it won't sell at 100% of market ask, maybe it won't sell much better at 50% of market price.   In my niche, there's very common stuff that sells poor at $20, pretty much won't ever sell at $25, but you can find near unlimited demand at $18.   Auction is great for that common stuff.

There's other stuff that's truly rare, but only has a "retail" value of $20, yet you can't sell it for $10, there is just very thin demand at any price, which is why it's only a $20 item.  It might only auction for $3.  Do you want it gone, or do you want to relist it for a decade in hopes of getting $20? 

[bubbleman2010]

Simple solution is knock down all ebay completed info so history can't be used in pricing a item for sale. That will bring back all the dumb luck items that folks picked up for pennies and using completed search priced into the 100s. End all free listings make it a pay to play system and lastly for folks that feel they've just got to have completed info make it a $500.00 a year pay for service and use  those funds to reduce the FVFs...  ebays failure to tap into that market of folks using their sytem as a price guide shows you just how dumb they are....