Nothing is in demand, at work we cover to many categories to list and there's not been a watcher or sale in 13 weeks now. We don't choose items, we sell off estates, bankruptcies, and abandoned freight. In past years, before last summer, everything sold sooner or later.
Items that have been sitting without a look or watcher were all selling well just recently. It turned off like a switch around mid March or so.
Its not just eBay, even our regular wholesalers and dealers are gone lately but I've never seen so many items go so many weeks without a look or sale.
We were told that if things do not improve by the end of the month to shu **bleep** all down and run everything through the grinders and they're going to just return to being a scrap/salvage business. The amount they lose paying people to sort, photo and list items that are not selling is not sustainable so they will go back to 'destroy and dispose of' methods of liquidation, at least that way they get a fast, although minimal return on the item recovered from sales and cleanouts. What they will save by ridding themselves of the labor and storage buildings alone will help offset the losses of the past months.
They've watched this format and several others become less and less productive over the past few years and feel that its the end of the road so rather than just putting more money into items that suddenly won't sell they will cut their losses and go with the sure shot way to remain profitable. They will return to grinding it all up for sorting and sending consumables to the incinerator for instant disposal.
If items like sporting goods, fishing tackle, and vehicle parts do not sell in the prime season there's no sense in continuing to bother to try and sell them. When an item won't bring half of its 20 year old retail price online are no longer worth trying to sell in this market.
If it is a matter of eBay blocking views somehow to make more money, they feel that if the normal fees are not enough, they can simply not make anything at all. Whether its eBay greed, or lack of willingness to spend amount buyers, or a simple lack of buyers or traffic here shutting it all down solves it permanently. Instead of removing, loading and storing, listing, and waiting for items to sell, only to find its a complete waste of time, they plan to stick to the only way they know of keeping the operation profitable by sending metal to recycling, and textiles to be turned to ash or landfill. For those of us listing, at least for me, I'll just call it retirement but for those who work in the warehouse its call unemployment I guess. For the company, its called returning to profitability.
