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Ebay Days and Timing?
Cubsfan71
Posts: 67 ✭✭
About to put my first card on Ebay, any advice on the best days, length, and maybe time to end an auction? Guessing ending on a Saturday or Sunday is the best so more people can follow the end of an auction? Appreciate any input.
Always looking for 1950's Graded Banks Cards
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Pretty sure Sunday around 9pm is the most established optimum time to have an auction end. 7 day auctions are the most popular
Having it end on Sunday or Thursday ate the big days. You can look at some of the big auction houses like Probstein and see when they usually end theirs.
Remember to consider all relevant time zones. If you have an item that you expect foreign bidding to play into it in addition to domestic bidding, then I'd recommend starting it between noon & 3pm Eastern time, in order to be ending not too early for those on the west coast as well as not too late for European bidders. A huge percentage of bidders use snipe programs so for them, timing is not as important, but it still helps to optimize inclusion for those who haven't figured out the sniping system yet.
A large amount of USA bidders have the auctions up on their work computers while they are at work during normal business day hours, as opposed to waiting until late evening when people have other things going on rather than being tied to a screen. Therefore, I'm not one to subscribe to the 9pm-being-optimal idea.
Also, 10-day if your item is a unique one where it is the only item like it listed by anyone at that time, but 7-day (or less) if there are others like it posted concurrently.
The only negative of ending on a Sunday night is the competition. I get worn out checking out all the 1969 Topps baseball listings that end Sunday night. I really don't have the patience to go through hundreds of listings that all end around 9 PM EST.
One big warning about listings. NEVER have them all end at exactly the same time and day! I see a few card guys who have hundreds of listings end at the same time or within a few seconds of each other. Many times, I'll have to pick one or the other to bid on, since I rarely bid until there's less than 10 seconds left in an auction. Yes, you can use one of those sniping programs, but that's not fun for me. Always space out your listings to end at least three minutes later than the last one if you're selling a lot of cards from the same year.
If the items are posted up as a result of a mass-relisting, then spacing out the timing is not a realistic endeavor.
Taking the easy route to relisting items isn't a good plan. Making money on eBay takes time and effort. I also see way too many sellers who keep relisting the same junk at the same prices month after month. Lazy people should never attempt to sell on eBay.
It depends on the volume. You can take the time if you're relisting 10 items. But not 1,000 or 10,000 or whatever high-volume number makes sense as an example.
Ebay does actually allow you to space out your listings when doing so in bulk using the "Start Time" feature:
Interesting, thanks for pointing that out! I'd never noticed that before.
I'm pretty sure they charge you (per listing) to space them out... I could be wrong though.
For the cards that buyers are looking for, can somebody please explain to me how in the hell these bidders are supposed to keep track of every auction's closing dates/times ?
I have never been charged extra to space out my listings, just FYI.
I don't pay attention to the day of the week, unless there's a major holiday involved (I won't have an auction ending on a day such as Christmas or Easter). I tend to schedule mine to end around 9PM Eastern time, 6PM Pacific. That way, it's not too late on the east coast, but by 6:00 people on the west coast are home from work.
Find it and set your snipe. Forget about it.
Nic
Guides Authored - Graded Card Scanning Guide PDF | History of the PSA Label PDF
This.
I could not agree more.
(gixen will send you an email notification if the item gets bid up higher than your snipe set point before the auction ends too)
I would normally go with ending on a Sunday at 10 PM. Just remember not to make it Super Bowl Sunday.