mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
You talk as if these issues are unique to older sellers and it absolutely isn't, you have just chosen to call out senior sellers. You might need to "reframe" your approach to the conversation.
@insaneshanedotnet wrote:I started selling on eBay I guess around 1997. I had 3 different accounts going at once. I bought and sold lots of items up until about 2010 or so when I stopped selling. This past week I thought I would start selling a few items I had laying around and eBay is nothing like it use to be. It is as far from being seller friendly as I ever seen it. The way they do the "final value fee" now threw me for a loop. Say I sold a very big and heavy item that only brought $10 then add an 8% sales tax and then pretend it cost me $80 to ship this item, how much do I actually walk away with? If my math is correct, I think I now owe ebay. I do not see this next generation selling many things here. A few more years like this, it will just be overpriced Temu and Aliexpress items for sale here no one wants.
Then either that might not be the right thing to sell on the internet because it has to be shipped or you aren't pricing it correctly. No matter where you sell it on the internet, you will have to ship it. Shipping isn't Ebay's fault.
The way Ebay charges fees has been the same since Managed Payments went site wide in the summer of 2020.
@mam98031 wrote:You talk as if these issues are unique to older sellers and it absolutely isn't, you have just chosen to call out senior sellers. You might need to "reframe" your approach to the conversation.
Let me reframe that in a way that is more accurate than @youn2240 ’s statement:
Why do resellers think their stuff is worth so much money?
I’ll preface this by still mentioning that I’m an older millennial for context because it may have an impact on my and my contemporary collectors’ habits but it very well might not be an older vs younger people as much as a reseller vs collector paradigm.
I collect old glass, vintage clothing from the 50s/60s/70s, vintage linen and my home is furnished in furniture varying from Victorian to the 60s.
But my fellow collectors and I absolutely REFUSE to pay reseller prices. We even often refuse to pay inflated Goodwill “thrift prices.”
When eBay was just coming up, collectors were happy to pay a little more to complete their collections, something that used to take a lifetime before online selling. At one point there were more collectors than resellers which created bidding wars and inflated the prices, enabling some resellers to make a living out of this.
Now the pool of potential collectors is growing smaller while more and more people try their hand at reselling and think they can get bidding war prices for everything.
Dont get me wrong, we understand the work and time involved in picking and cleaning but we’d often rather do it ourselves either a) because we believe the listed prices are way too inflated or b) we’re simply priced out with today’s cost of living (someone’s gotta pay for all that avocado toast and Starbucks).
Two of the most often heard phrases on this board: The market dictates prices and My items aren’t selling anymore! Maybe when it comes to vintage collectibles, one has a lot to do with the other.
Meanwhile, here’s my carnival glass haul from Saturday (which will go to my collection, not for resale), all acquired at church basement sales, for a under $20:
