Well, lots of things are odd... I get offers to sell "just the box" as people collect the boxes for the artwork. Then there are those that sell artwork from same boxes claiming they were from magazines of the day when actually they are reprinting said art as 90% of it never was in any magazines. How would I know that... Well I worked in the industry in many facets, people do as they do.
As to pricing well yea, it's a general problem across the site and its the sole reason Amazon made it's way to the top the pile and also now in large part the reason Walmart has snatched the number two spot in online sales. The singular listing with competitive offers is extremely buyer centric .vs. trying sift through many an individual listing which is how Amazon zShops and auction used to be until Amazon dumped all that. The moment they began going price competitive listing the third party sales went off like a rocket ship.
Walmart different in that they dictate third party sellers go at low web price and the robot code searches other popular venues for said low web price. If a listing doesn't meet the requirements they will hide the offer(s). That and the pick up in store model is hard for even Amazon to compete with. At camp a fellow campers daughter works at Walmart and say's everyday she and two others work two to three hours within the store areas then do nothing for the next four hours but handle online pickup orders, this is a community and general service area of about 30,000/35,000 families.
Now problem here IMHO and that of friends and folks I run into is that shoppers are OFTEN finding eBay prices higher than most anyplace and once that happens more than a few handful's of times... Well, folks prioritize where they shop and eBay heads down that list. When eBay created Half.com sellers didn't embrace it proper and that went under but those were different times. Personally I think eBay should offer buyers that option, in other words, click a button within any listing and get shown all offers but unlikely that ever happen as sellers would have tantrums. Reality however is it'd likely be more fruitful for sellers not fearing competition as in reality that competition already exists and is costing them prospect sales. The web has changed since Covid, now sellers need compete for the dollars against entities not even at the venue more or less those that have third party sellers. Online retailers have embraced the web versus it being a sideline to their brick and mortar and the deals are often just incredible. For example, many a clothing seller has stated their sales are down and folks tell em' it's a very saturated category, search engines issues etc but fail to mention big retail is very often putting forth online sales that are just spectacular in savings. What a handful of weeks back Macy's had an incredible blow out and Kohl's was offering 40% off and then another 25% off that and then as a cherry atop it 20% of the total order in "Kohls Dollars" redeemable in one's next order in store or not. My lady bought me sweaters and shirts via Kohls MSRP be over $400 and spent $120 plus change and earned another $20 some odd dollars in Kohls credit.
Folks keep pointing fingers at eBay saying they are doing this and that and perhaps they are doing some things, perhaps in preparation of significant changes they anticipate coming. But folks need take into account Big Retail is now all over the web as mainstream not sideline to the brick and mortar and that's not going to change. One can take an educated guess that Promoted Listings are the result of eBay seeing the change in big retail direction(s) thus creatively propping the bottom line as sales are sucked off the site via those big retailers and again Walmart who now has surpassed eBay online in online revenues by very significant fashion.
There is absolutely no reason that the same formula Amazon uses, has used, continues to use placing them as leader in eCommerce should not work here. I would bet if listings had a button that said, "Show all offers" it'd get more clicks than any other links at the site. Many a seller would scream and howl about it as they are so very accustomed to asking the price they want .vs. having to try compete directly for sales. Of course they scream and yell too when their sales seemingly dwindle more and more. Again, I believe a huge portion of that "dwindling" is due to shoppers shopping elsewhere where deals abound and they don't need try find needles in haystacks. Again, Amazon's former needle in haystack auction/zShops failed and it wasn't due to lack of numbers of sellers, there were oodles of em. The moment they changed the venue to be price competitive they soon blew past every other B2C and B2B commerce venue on the net.
