If a Buy It Now listing is "Change to Auction", are the watchers kept / notified?

[absentmindedstudios]

I have a high priced item, and i've had it listed for a while. 16 watchers. I'd like to auction it off since they are all sitting pretty and waiting for the price to drop. 

If I click change to auction, will they all be notified, and / or stay watching on the listing that is now an auction?

I'd like to start the bidding at $200 less than list price, and let them fight over it.

If I recall correctly last time I did this it made a NEW listing instead. And ended the original. Losing the watchers entirely. (this was a long time ago)

Thanks in advance!

[duncanvr · Accepted solution]

They are supposed to be notified as change to auction uses the same item number. Any change in price should alert the original watchers to. Apart from that many of them have favourite searches saved and should find the auction. Others may simply be following your store listings and find it anyway. I am daily changing items from BIN to auctions and adjusting prices. They don't however stay watching it they have to rewatch the auction when they see it pop up again since the BIN listing got canned. But they should see a notification from ebay.

[nobody*s_perfect]

"last time I did this it made a NEW listing instead. And ended the original. Losing the watchers entirely. (this was a long time ago)"

It still works that way. The auction format listing will be a new listing (with its own new listing number).  

On Watch lists, the watched item's entry will have a button for "View relisted item".  In their site preferences, members can choose to be notified when a watched item is relisted, but I'm pretty sure that the default is to not be notified.

Watchers often do not turn into buyers. They might be waiting for the price to drop, or for their stimulus check to come in, or whatever. But they might be just window-shopping. Maybe they even have a similar item to sell, and they're watching yours to see what price it eventually sells for. So be sure that the auction opening bid price is an amount that you'd be willing to sell for, in case you get just one bidder.

[absentmindedstudios]

Thanks!